“I plan to learn enough to read you like a book.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“Such nights are possible, and we survive them. It is a matter of sleeping next to the adored body you no longer have the right or inclination to love. Whether you are the one who casts off, or are the cast of yourself; whether your arms are the recoilers, or the ones that reach wantingly, then pull back, remembering they are no longer wanted. Two bodies that are used to each other's rhythms and sleep sounds, that know the turnings and breathings, know not to worry about that cough or that brief garbled grunt, that wildly flung arm or that stone-cold foot. Bodies that soon will not know each other's night selves: will touch each other through jackets and jeans and the cooled-down air of reestablished acquaintance, if such a thing is possible between a given pair of ex-lovers.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“No wonder you want to be a writer. How can you not, with all that behind you? You practically are a novel already.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“It could not always be love in the afternoon and passion in the night, gifts given, notes written, meals fed to each other. It can't all be like that.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“This was another item about growing up: you encountered all the cliches of love and loss and heartbreak.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“Flannery craved a cigarette. Her nerves were so tense that only nicotine could soothe them, and for the first time, she genuinely understood how the drug worked. It wasn't just a prop or an affectation. It was a tool for mental health.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“Don;t blush, for God's sake. You and your blushing - you're like some Victorian maiden.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“She'd have to start smoking. There would be no other way through this.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“He did not know what it was like to be two women in love.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“And how easy it was to leave this life, after all - this life that could feel so present and permanent that departing from it must seem to require a tear into a different dimension. There the bunch of them were, young hopefuls, decorating their annually purged dorm rooms with postcards and prints and favorite photographs of friends, filling them with hot pots and dried flowers, throw rugs and stereos. Houseplants, a lamp, maybe some furniture brought up by encouraging parents. They nested there like miniature grownups. As if this provisional student life - with its brushfire friendships and drink-addled intimacies, its gorging on knowledge and blind sexual indulgences - could possibly last. As if it were a home, of any kind at all: someplace to gather one's sense of self. Flannery had never felt for a minute that these months of shared living took place on anything other than quicksand, and it had given this whole year (these scant seven or eight months, into which an aging decade or so had been condensed) a sliding, wavery feel. She came from earthquake country and knew the dangers of building on landfill. That was, it seemed to Flannery, the best description of this willed group project of freshman year: construction on landfill. A collective confusion of impressions and tendencies, mostly castoffs with a few keepers. What was there to count on in any of it? What structure would remain, founded on that?”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“I'd like to pay your palms the same favor that you pay these pages, searching them for grooves and images and the secret signs of hunger, as you may scan these words for hidden messages. The lines of your hand might be a guide to your gifts for pleasure, or a clue to where you'll take me, or a map of where I might take you.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“People are cruel, and they will do anything.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“You know, babe." Her voice had an older woman's weary advice in it. "You're so hungry. You want so much."
"Well." Flannery shrugged. "So what? I'll never get it."
"You might. If you stop asking."
"I'll never stop asking."
"I know." Anne touched her cheek. "It's one of the things that makes you strangely lovable.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“The heart did ache, actually. She felt a dull grind of lack somewhere near her diaphragm, a pain that occupied the space of something removed. A phantom limb. A scratchy hunger. The wasting muscle fatigue of want.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“She needed a nap already, and it was not yet ten o’clock.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“We will never be together. Sweetheart. I am too brittle, hidden, and snappish, and you are too married. You are altogether too married.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“He wants me back." The closing punctuation of "obviously" hung in the air. The confidence in her! Anne would always have it: the certainty that there would be a trail of people following her, wanting her love and her beauty. Flannery saw that confidence, and through the polluted air now between them it no longer charmed her. Not tonight it didn't. Flannery was not inclined to be one of that number.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“How could Flannery be so old and still not know herself? For this seventeen-year-old did feel old. Those private years of intense adolescent reading and music-fueled writing in her journal had made her sure she was full of maturity—of a certain unusual, and in its way impressive, emotional self-assurance. She had an alert awareness of what people were like. She’d talked two of her high-school friends through the loss of their virginity, even as she’d held on easily to her own.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“Once Flannery found it, she couldn’t stop wanting that pleasure, enjoying the sound of her own short breaths in the quiet night air. More. Over. Again. She had to make up for lost years.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
“Sometimes college seemed merely an endless exhausting string of appointments.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You
Sylvia Brownrigg
Born place: in Mountain View, California, The United States
Born date December 16, 1964
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“Sure, okay, I'll pick up some cat litter. Anything else?"
"Watch your back, G." Then she hung up.
Hero paused in her sobbing to look at me quizzically. "Why does your mom want cat litter? You guys don't even have a cat."
"She uses it for..." I searched my brain madly, but all I could come up with was "teaching."
"She uses cat litter to teach English?"
I nodded. "She's kind of unconventional in her methods."
Hero frowned. "But how does she use it?"
The girl was relentless when she fixated on something. "Um, when their papers are really bad, she gives them a little bag of cat litter. It's her way of telling them their writing is crap." I laughed. "She's kooky.”
― Jody Gehrman, quote from Confessions of a Triple Shot Betty
“He dreams he is happy; that his corporeal nature has changed; or at least that he has flown off upon a purple cloud of another sphere peopled by beings of the same kind as himself. Alas! May his illusion last till dawn’s awakening! He dreams the flowers dance round him in a ring like immense demented garlands, and impregnate him with their balmy perfumes while he sings a hymn of love, locked in the arms of a magically beautiful human being. But it is merely twilight mist he embraces, and when he wakes their arms will no longer be entwined. Awaken not, hermaphrodite. Do not wake yet, I beg you. Why will you not believe me? Sleep … sleep forever. May your breast heave while pursuing the chimerical hope of happiness — that I allow you; but do not open your eyes. Ah! do not open your eyes.”
― Comte de Lautréamont, quote from Maldoror and the Complete Works
“I suppose that, too, is what life is like between people. Some good things, some bad things, a good bit of understanding ...
And a lot of love.”
― Jennifer Erin Valent, quote from Fireflies in December
“One hundred percent of royalties from Safely Home go to help persecuted Christians and to spread the gospel in their countries.”
― Randy Alcorn, quote from Safely Home
“Noah." Grace sounded as though she was strangling. "Why don't you just paint a big red A on my forehead, for heaven's sake?"
He grinned. Grace was more prickly than usual, and Noah hoped part of that mood was caused by sexual frustration. She wanted him, but he'd deliberately kept her from knowing what he'd ask of her. He'd hoped to heighten her anticipation, and help her forget some of her nervousness.
"Gracie, you're the one who announced to all and sundry that you'd taken advantage of me. What difference does it make if Graham knows your intent?"
She mumbled again and punched the elevator button.
Making no attempt to hide his good humor, Noah asked, "What was that, Grace?"
The elevator doors slid open and he allowed Grace to yank him inside. As the doors shut behind them, she glared, and her brown eyes smoldered. Indicating her clothes, she said, "I'd at least like to look presentable while ruining my reputation.”
― Lori Foster, quote from Too Much Temptation
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