Louise Rennison · 271 pages
Rating: (12.3K votes)
“Biology
The film turns out to be about bees. It is a film about a bee center. How crap is this going to be?
An hour later
That was the best thing I have seen for ages. We made Miss Wilson rewind the bit where the two queens were having a bitch fight.”
― Louise Rennison, quote from Love Is a Many Trousered Thing
“I always want to tell him everything. But
instead I said, “What’s your advice, Horn -
meister?”
And he started doing pretend beard stroking
and said, “Well, luuurve is a many trousered
thing. . . .”
― Louise Rennison, quote from Love Is a Many Trousered Thing
“I was going to say, No, no, don’t cry, I’ll go out
with you. Anything, but don’t cry. . . . But I still
couldn’t make my voice work.
And then he sort of cleared his throat and said,
“Georgia, don’t feel bad.
It’s always tough to hurt someone and tell them the truth. I know that. You’re a really lovely girl. Lovely . . . mad . . . but
lovely. I’ll always like you. Don’t worry.”
― Louise Rennison, quote from Love Is a Many Trousered Thing
“It’s hard to tell the truth sometimes, especially if you don’t want to hurt someone. And you did. You said what you feel. And you must do what is right for you, not what other people say is right.”
― Louise Rennison, quote from Love Is a Many Trousered Thing
“This is the first day of the rest of my life. So why is my hair sticking up like a cockerel?”
― Louise Rennison, quote from Love Is a Many Trousered Thing
“«El que algo sea una realidad 'física' no es el único criterio de verdad. También existen verdades 'anímicas', las cuales no pueden ni probarse ni explicarse, pero tampoco negarse físicamente. [...] Los milagros son únicamente una apelación al entendimiento de aquellos hombres que no son capaces de entender el 'sentido'; los milagros son en realidad un simple sustituto de la realidad no comprendida del 'espíritu'.»”
― C.G. Jung, quote from Answer to Job
“But the manner of giving voice to thoughts and feelings becomes particularly significant in the case of negative feelings or doubts about a relationship. The difference was highlighted for me when a fifty-year-old divorced man told me about his experiences in forming new relationships with women. On this matter, he was clear: "I do not value my fleeting thoughts, and I do not value the fleeting thoughts of others." He felt that the relationship he was currently in had been endangered, even permanently weakened, by the woman's practice of tossing out her passing thoughts, because, early in their courtship, many of her thoughts were fears about the relationship. Not surprisingly, since they did not yet know each other well, she worried about whether she could trust him, whether their relationship would destroy her independence, whether this relationship was really right for her. He felt she should have kept these fears and doubts to herself and waited to see how things turned out.
As it happens, things turned out well. The woman decided that the relationship was right for her, she could trust him, and she did not have to give up her independence. But he felt, at the time that he told me of this, that he had still not recovered from the wear and tear of coping with her earlier doubts. As he put it, he was still dizzy from having been bounced around like a yo-yo tied to the string of her stream of consciousness.
In contrast, the man admitted, he himself goes to the other extreme: he never expresses his fears or misgivings about their relationship at all. If he's unhappy but doesn't say anything about it, his unhappiness expresses itself in a kind of distancing coldness. This response is just what women fear most, and just the reason they prefer to express dissatisfactions and doubts - as an antidote to the isolation and distance that would result from keeping them to themselves.
The different perspectives on expressing or concealing dissatisfactions and doubts may reflect a difference in men's and women's awareness of the power of their words to affect others. In repeatedly telling him what she feared about their relationship, she spoke as though she assumed he was invulnerable and could not be hurt by what she said; perhaps she was underestimating the power of her words to affect him. For his part, when he refrains from expressing negative thoughts or feelings, he seems to be overestimating the power of his words to hurt her, when, ironically, she is more likely to be hurt by his silence than his words.
Such impasses will perhaps never be settled to the complete satisfaction of both parties, but understanding the differing views can help detoxify the situation, and both can make adjustments.”
― Deborah Tannen, quote from You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation
“Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs.”
― Euripides, quote from Medea and Other Plays
“I’m okay,” he reassured her before he could say something stupid. Like “marry me.”
― quote from The Mane Event
“Because, my dear, in the spiritual life opposites meet. It's not the cold passionless ones who become great ascetics, but the most hot-blooded, people with something worth renouncing. That's why the church won't allow eunuchs to become priests.”
― Antal Szerb, quote from Journey by Moonlight
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