Quotes from The Perfectionists

Sara Shepard ·  336 pages

Rating: (7.4K votes)


“With perfection comes pressure. Students here are some of the best in the country, and sometimes, they have to let off a little steam. What five girls don’t know, though, is that steam can scald just as badly as an open flame.”
― Sara Shepard, quote from The Perfectionists


“This doesn't mean you're damaged. It just means your mind has adapted to feelings of being unsafe. It's a coping mechanism”
― Sara Shepard, quote from The Perfectionists


“all of us are damaged in our own ways. It's just that most people call it 'experience'. And you've had a lot of experience.”
― Sara Shepard, quote from The Perfectionists


“The first step of any therapy is a little self-awareness. I want you to think about the ways your habits, your belief systems, your personality quirks have been developed to help you and protect you. Then ask yourself if they are truly working or if they’re hurting you. For instance, when you feel a headache coming on, focus on something in front of you. Something real, like your hand, to keep you in the moment. It sounds small, but it helps, I promise.”
― Sara Shepard, quote from The Perfectionists


“She wanted more than anything to believe him. To believe that things didn’t always have to be so desperate, so painful. To believe she didn’t always have to be alone. To believe that maybe, just maybe, one day, everything would be okay.”
― Sara Shepard, quote from The Perfectionists



“Don’t you think it’s a good idea to . . . I don’t know. To slow down sometimes? To look around and see what you want out of life?”
― Sara Shepard, quote from The Perfectionists


“Memory was a tricky thing, but reality was even trickier. Once you made up your mind about something, it was hard to comprehend that the truth could be something else”
― Sara Shepard, quote from The Perfectionists


“I know what I know,” she said softly. “But I let go of the fury I had for that boy a long time ago. If I didn’t, it would consume me. Like perhaps it’s consuming you”
― Sara Shepard, quote from The Perfectionists


“Under the glitzy, glamorous surface of the simplest popcorn flick, there were often hidden depths of meaning.”
― Sara Shepard, quote from The Perfectionists


About the author

Sara Shepard
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“I know my head isn't screwed on straight. I want to leave, transfer, warp myself to another galaxy. I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me. My closest is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these thoughts inside my head where no one can hear them.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, quote from Speak


“There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours you haven't started wondering about yet.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from James and the Giant Peach


“I'm going up to my room now, where I may die.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from Howl's Moving Castle


“Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, quote from Uncle Tom's Cabin


“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.”
― Ralph Ellison, quote from Invisible Man


Interesting books

The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami
(2.5K)
The Journey Home: Au...
by Radhanath Swami
Ice
(2K)
Ice
by Anna Kavan
The Pecan Man
(16.3K)
The Pecan Man
by Cassie Dandridge Selleck
Fall of Night
(9.9K)
Fall of Night
by Rachel Caine
Predatory Kill
(504)
Predatory Kill
by Kenneth Eade
World Peace: The Voice of a Mountain Bird
(79)
World Peace: The Voi...
by Amit Ray

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters 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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.