Quotes from The Replacement

Brenna Yovanoff ·  343 pages

Rating: (18.2K votes)


“I wanted to tell her that I loved her, and not in the complicated way I loved our parents, but in a simple way I never had to think about. I loved her like breathing.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“Do you really want to know where we come from?" she said. "In every century, in every country, they'll call us something different. They'll say we're ghosts, angels, demons, elemental spirits, and giving us a name doesn't help anybody. When did a name change what someone is?”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“Sometimes this was just the way the game ended. Sometimes you did your best, and it all went straight to hell anyway.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“Intention is one of the most powerful forces there is. What you mean when you do a thing will always determine the outcome. The law creates the world.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“The simple truth is that you can understand the way you are. You can know and love and hate it. You can blame it, resent it, and nothing changes. In the end, you're just a part of it.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement



“I wanted it in the way you sometimes want to jump into very cold water, even though you know it won't feel good. I wanted to go numb. To see what it felt like to be someone else.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“The Cutter leaned toward me, resting his forehead against mine. 'Fool me once,' he whispered, 'shame on you.' He pressed the bridge of his nose against mine, his breath burning the back of my throat. His voice was rough and furious. 'Fool me twice, and I will cut out your fucking throat.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“I'm not normal, Tate."

"I know." Her hand was working its way under my shirt, then touching my skin, sliding over my chest and stomach. "Does this feel good?"

I closed my eyes and nodded.

"You're normal enough.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“All great acts are ruled by intention. What you mean is what you get.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“Goodbye," she said.
When I didn't say it back, she rested her hand on the top of my head. The weight was strange and gentle. "I love you," she said. "And when I tell you goodbye, I don't mean forever or for long. Just that I'm going home now, and so are you.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement



“They?" he said, sounding apprehensive.
"Me. They're like me."
"Don't be a jackass," Roswell said, but not meanly. "No one's like you.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“When did a name ever change what someone is?”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“You're terribly selfish, you know. I've loved you so long, and it was never dear or precious to you. I might as well have not loved you at all.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“All I want is for you to stand here and watch the people you love be horribly mutilated. Is that too much to ask?”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“What's wrong?" His voice was loud, so sharp that he sounded angry.
I knew I should be careful, keep the secret, but I was too far gone to talk around it. My chest was working in huge spasms and I could barely breathe. "I kissed her."
"And then you went into anaphylactic shock?"
I closed my eyes and let the rain patter against my face through the open window "She has her tongue pierced.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement



“We lay on the grass beside the cemetery fence, kissing and shivering. Her teeth started to chatter and I pulled her against me, which made me feel like a superhero for no apparent reason.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“When he was done adding sloe gin and grenadine, Danny shoved the glass across the counter to Drew. "Try that and tell me what it needs."
Drew took a sip, then coughed and set the glass down. "That's awful."
Danny scowled and tossed a dripping tablespoon at him. "You're awful. I'm looking for constructive feedback, asshole. What does it need?"
Drew threw the tablespoon back. "It needs to be taken out and shot."
"Make your own damn drink, Mr. Mixology.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“Is it hypocritical to love a person and still find fault with their actions?"
-The Morrigan”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“Her voice was like loneliness. It was regret. She sang about a past you couldn't get out of and didn't want.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“Their lead guitar sounded like what would happen if someone wedged a traffic accident into a blender.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement



“Why does she always seem to think you drive like we're holding up a bank?"

Roswell grinned and rolled his eyes, "Because that's what teenagers do, right? They also carve swastikas into their arms, steal prescription drugs from old people, and freebase cocaine. I need to institute a policy where she stops watching 60 Minutes and pretty much all public service announcements.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“You presume to name those who have no name. We are pandemonium and disaster. We are the dancing, gibbering horror of the world.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“Our lives were limitless and unknowable, not perfect, but ours.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“She was the purest, biggest truth.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“I looked at the ground and the dark, drizzling sky and pretty much anyplace that wasn't her. "I like you. A lot." When I finally glanced at her, my face was hot and it was hard to keep looking.

She squinted up at me. Then she crossed her arms. "This is a really inappropriate place to be having this conversation."

"I know. I like you anyway."

Saying it a third time was like breaking some kind of spell. Her face went soft and far away.

"Don't say that unless you mean it."

"I don't say anything I don't mean.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement



“Take your necklace off."

"Why?"

"Because if you don't, I can't kiss you.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“It wasn't like the other songs. There was no story, no conversation. This was just the feeling, without words or pictures, and it had nothing to do with Luther or his clean, stinging guitar. It was the sound of being outside, of being alien. It was the pulse that ran under everything and never let you forget that you were strange, that the world hurt just to touch.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“We're literal people, you and me. Whatever the most obvious interpretation is, that's our truth.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“It was completely unshocking that there were monsters in the world, secret
rituals and underground burrows filled with the dead, when in my own way, I was secret and sort of monstrous too. It just didn’t show in the same way.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement


“I didn't know how to respond to that. There was something disturbing about being responsible for partially decayed girls going swimming.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement



About the author

Brenna Yovanoff
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Popular quotes

“I want something that makes people strong and energetic for the present, that borrows the strength of to-morrow for use to-day—leaving to-morrow without any at all for that matter; or even that would take all life away to-morrow, so long as it enabled me to get home again now.”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from A Pair of Blue Eyes


“Tibet has not yet been infested by the worst disease of modern life, the everlasting rush. No one overworks here. Officials have an easy life. They turn up at the office late in the morning and leave for their homes early in the afternoon. If an official has guests or any other reason for not coming, he just sends a servant to a colleague and asks him to officiate for him.
Women know nothing about equal rights and are quite happy as they are. They spend hours making up their faces, restringing their pearl necklaces, choosing new material for dresses, and thinking how to outshine Mrs. So-and-so at the next party. They do not have to bother about housekeeping, which is all done by the servants. But to show that she is mistress the lady of the house always carries a large bunch of keys around with her. In Lhasa every trifling object is locked up and double-locked.
Then there is mah-jongg. At one time this game was a universal passion. People were simply fascinated by it and played it day and night, forgetting everything else—official duties, housekeeping, the family. The stakes were often very high and everyone played—even the servants, who sometimes contrived to lose in a few hours what they had taken years to save. Finally the government found it too much of a good thing. They forbade the game, bought up all the mah-jongg sets, and condemned secret offenders to heavy fines and hard labor. And they brought it off! I would never have believed it, but though everyone moaned and hankered to play again, they respected the prohibition. After mah-jongg had been stopped, it became gradually evident how everything else had been neglected during the epidemic. On Saturdays—the day of rest—people now played chess or halma, or occupied themselves harmlessly with word games and puzzles.”
― Heinrich Harrer, quote from Seven Years in Tibet (Paladin Books)


“Es verdad que es imposible conocer a fondo a las personas, todas son insondables.”
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“Day after day we read about them, each new man more brilliant than the last. They were not just an all-star first team, but an all-star second team as well. There were counts kept on how many Rhodes scholars there were in the Administration, how many books by members of the new Administration (even the Postmaster, J. Edward Day, had written a novel, albeit a bad one).”
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