“It's pain that changes our lives.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“...it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“How is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her?”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“She has learned that her body is precious and it mustn't be offered carelessly ever again, as it holds a direct connection to her heart.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn't, because he didn't care.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“[her] mind blackens. The blackness is not a thought, but if it could be pressed into a thought, if a chemical from a dropper could be dripped onto it causing its color and essence to become visible, it would take the shape of this sentence: Why does no one want me?”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her and not all of her has damaged them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“The self-prepared dinner is a great time killer for lonely people and as much time should be spent on it as possible.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“...just remember, darling, it is pain that changes our lives.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“She was feeling her bohemian oats.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“He gave her his phone number, in a peculiar reversal of dating procedure. She might have considered kissing him, even after the horrible first date, but he just didn’t seem to know what to do. However, Jeremy does have one outstanding quality. He likes her. And this quality in a person makes them infinitely interesting to the person who is being liked.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“For a while, Mirabelle believes there will be a moment when he will cave in and let himself love her, but eventually she lets the idea go. She hits bottom. She dwells in the muck for several months, not depressed exactly, but involved in a mourning that at first she thinks is for Ray but soon realizes is for the loss of her old self.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“Mirabelle is attractive; it's just that she is never the first or second girl chosen.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“Mirabelle replaces the absent friends with books and television mysteries of the PBS kind. The books are mostly nineteenth-century novels in which women are poisoned or are doing the poisoning. She does not read these books as a romantic lonely hearts turning pages in the isolation of her room, not at all. She is instead an educated spirit with a sense of irony. She loves the gloom of these period novels, especially as kitsch, but beneath it all she finds that a part of her indentifies with all that darkness.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“So, I can hurt now, or hurt later.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“His view of the world is one that keeps his blood pressure low, sweeping the cholesterol from his relaxed, freeway-sized arteries. Everyone knows he is going to live till age ninety, although the question that goes begging is, “for what?”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“Unlike Ray Porter, his love is fearless and without reservation.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“Mirabelle is not affected by a man’s failures to approach her, as her own self-depreciating attitude never allows the idea that he would in the first place.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“introductions are hard to come by when your natural state is shyness”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“It is the perfect wrong time for Jeremy to do to Mirabelle what she had done to him - call him up for a quick fix - because;, in a sense, she is now betrothed. Her first date with someone who treated her well obligates her to faithfulness, at least until the relationship is explored.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“As she sits in a booth, it never occurs to her to observe herself, and thus she is spared the image of a girl sitting alone in a bar on Saturday night. A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps within her, waiting to be stirred. .... She keeps working to make connections, but the pile of near misses is starting to overwhelm her. What Mirabelle needs is some omniscient voice to illuminate and spotlight her, and to inform everyone that this one has value, this one over here, the one sitting in the bar by herself, and then to find her counterpart and bring him to her.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“He doesn’t understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“In spite of her depression, Mirabelle likes to think of herself as humourous. She can, when the occasion calls, become a wisecracker and buoyant party girl. This mood, Mirabelle thinks, sometimes makes her the centre of attention at parties and gatherings. The truth is that these episodes of gaiety merely raise her to normal, but for Mirabelle the feeling is so exceptional that she believes herself to be standing out.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“The overhead lights reflect in the glass countertop and mingle in the gray and black of the gloves, resulting in a mother-of-pearl swirl that sometimes sends Mirabelle into a shallow hypnotic dream.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“He knows only what is right in front of him; she is aware of every incoming sensation that glances obliquely against her soft, fragile core”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“She has simply never quite learned to walk or hold herself comfortably”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“To Mirabelle, the idea of being an object of obsession is alluring and represents a powerful love. She fails to understand, however, that men become obsessive over beautiful women because they want no one else to have them, but they fall in love with women like Mirabelle because they want a certain, specific part of them.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
“Mirabelle is not sparkling tonight, because she works only in gears, and tonight she is in the wrong gear. Third gear is her scholarly, perspicacious, witty self; second gear is her happy, giddy, childish self; and first gear is her complaining, helpless, unmotivated self. Tonight she is somewhere midshift, between helpless and childish.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Shopgirl
Steve Martin
Born place: in Waco, Texas, The United States
Born date August 14, 1945
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“My last penny! I think I'll squander it on myself. I never feel badly about spending money my dad has earned honestly! I can't decide whether I should buy a balloon or a gumball. A gumball would taste mighty good, but a balloon would be a lot more fun... I'll take a balloon! Sooner or later in life a person has to learn to make decisions! (Sees someone with a different color balloon) Gee, I wish I'd bought a RED balloon.”
― Charles M. Schulz, quote from The Complete Peanuts, Vol. 1: 1950-1952
“What I tried to make clear in Good Calories, Bad Calories was that nutrition and obesity research lost its way after the Second World War with the evaporation of the European community of scientists and physicians that did pioneering work in those disciplines. It has since resisted all attempts to correct it. As a result, the individuals involved in this research have not only wasted decades of time, and effort, and money but have done incalculable damage along the way. Their beliefs have remained imperious to an ever-growing body of evidence that refutes them while being embraced by public-health authorities and translated into precisely the wrong advice about what to eat and, more important, what not to eat if we want to maintain a healthy weight and live a long and healthy life.”
― quote from Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Life on the Mississippi
“William, my sweet William! I want him.”
― Gena Showalter, quote from The Darkest Seduction
“How perfectly whimsical. I expect we’ll be roasting marshmallows over the fireplace and singing happy sing-alongs round about midnight, yes? Perhaps someone could point me in the direction of the dormitories.”
― G. Norman Lippert, quote from James Potter and the Curse of the Gatekeeper
Almost Heaven
Airman
Sepulchre
A Raisin in the Sun
The Traveler
The Secret AgentBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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