“There is lust and then there is love. They are related, but still very different things. To indulge in one requires little but honeyed speech and a change of clothes; to obtain the other, by contrast, a man must give up his rib. In return, his woman will undo the sin of Eve, and bring him back into Paradise.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Everything we say is a story. But nothing we say is just a story.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“You were right and I was wrong. When life hurts more than death, it is not worth living.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“I did not know my soul until I saw it's reflection in your eyes.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“There is a trick to flying. The angels told me." He had smiled at my wide-eyed awe. "You need to forget everything you know as a human being. When you are human, you discover that there is great power in hating the earth. And it can almost make you fly. But it never will."
I had frowned, not quite understanding him. "So, what's the trick?"
"Love the sky.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Don't underestimate the power of events that happened a long time ago. That is the tragic flaw of modern man.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“You owe me nothing, but I want everything.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, “at nine o’clock. Don’t open your door to anyone else.”
“Not even my balcony door?”
“Especially not your balcony door.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Perhaps. But the firstborn of hope is tragedy.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“.... "death turns all men into great lovers. Would that they were equally ardent while the lady was still alive!”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“She laughed out loud, a warm, knowing laughter that made me once again wonder about the secret ingredient in these women’s lives. Whatever it was, I was clearly missing it. It was so much more than just self-confidence; it seemed to be the ability to love oneself, enthusiastically and unsparingly, body and soul, naturally followed by the assumption that every man on the planet is dying to get in on the act.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Think about it. He drinks poison. What kind of man drinks poison? She is the one who stabs herself with his dagger. The manly way.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“By the time we left college, I had become my own image: a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Kinda cute, but still a weed.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“If you let go of me now,” I whispered, stretching against him, “it could be another six hundred years before you find me again. Are you willing to take that risk?”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Peppo!" I yelled, pulling at my cousin's suspenders. "I really don't want to be arrested, okay?"
"Don't worry!" Peppo turned a corner and accelerated as he spoke. "I go too fast for police!”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“But he is an Italian," was Umberto's sensible reply. "He doesn't care if you break some law a little bit, as long as you wear beautiful shoes. Are you wearing beautiful shoes? Are you wearing the shoes I gave you?...principessa?"
I looked down at my flip-flops. "I guess I'm toast.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow. Well, perhaps you are right. Perhaps the wise spurn one to remain safe from the other, but I should rather choose to have my eyes burnt in their sockets than to have been born without.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“It's what we call a dolce pazzia... a sweet madness. Once you feel it, you will never want to leave it.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Romeo was cute …”
“Cute?” Alessandro rolled his eyes. “What kind of man is cute?”
“… and an excellent dancer …”
“Romeo had feet of lead! He said so himself!”
“… but most importantly,” I concluded, “he had nice hands!”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“I am sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. You kept asking about Romeo and what he was really like. I was hoping that”—he smiled wistfully—“you would recognize me.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“as a bird swoops down on it's prey, and assumes this land bound wretch into heaven, so did romeo steal her lips before they fled him again. suspended somewhere between cherubs and devils, his quarry ceased to buck, and he spread his wings wide and let the rising wind carry them off across the sky, until even the predator himself had lost every hope of returning home. within that one embrace, [he] became aware of a feeling of certainty he had not thought possible for anyone - even the virtuous. with her in his arms, all other women, past, present, and future, simply ceased to exist.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“After the dress rehearsal that afternoon, someone had misplaced the vial of poison, and for lack of better, Romeo would have to commit suicide by eating Tic Tacs.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Look,' I said, struggling to keep up, 'I just wanna make one thing absolutely clear. I don't believe in guns. I just want peace. Okay?'
Alessandro stopped in the middle of the corridor, took out the gun, and wrapped my hand around it before I realized what he was doing. 'Can you feel that? That's a gun. It exists. And there are a lot of people out there who do believe in it. So, excused me for taking care of them so you can have your peace.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Everything has a shadow-side. In my opinion, that is what makes life interesting.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“When the old men fight, the young people die.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“...it is fifty percent what they see, and fifty percent what they think they see.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“...and whether or not we had now paid our dues, he was my blessing, and I was his...”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“She had died peacefully, in her sleep, after an evening of listening to all of her favorite Fred Astaire songs, one crackling record after another. Once the last chord of the last piece had died out, she had stood up and opened the French doors to the garden outside, perhaps waiting to breathe in the honeysuckle one more time.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
Anne Fortier
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“Now there are two kinds of hardening, one of the understanding, the other of the sense of shame, when a man is resolved not to assent to what is manifest nor to desist from contradictions. Most of us are afraid of mortification of the body, and would contrive all means to avoid such a thing, but we care not about the soul's mortification. And indeed with regard to the soul, if a man be in such a state as not to apprehend anything, or understand at all, we think that he is in a bad condition; but if the sense of shame and modesty are deadened, this we call even power (or strength).”
― Epictetus, quote from The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
“Ask him why there are hypocrites in the world.'
'Because it is hard to bear the happiness of others.'
'When are we happy?'
'When we desire nothing and realize that possession is only momentary, and so are forever playing.'
'What is regret?'
'To realize that one has spent one's life worrying about the future.'
'What is sorrow?'
'To long for the past.'
'What is the highest pleasure?'
'To hear a good story.”
― Vikram Chandra, quote from Red Earth and Pouring Rain
“The higher Christian churches--where, if anywhere, I belong--come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect in any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from Holy the Firm
“There are many reasons for a person to lie, but to have a reason to tell the truth, you must have deep belief. And great courage.”
― Susan Campbell Bartoletti, quote from The Boy Who Dared
“How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers
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