Quotes from The Secret Year

Jennifer R. Hubbard ·  192 pages

Rating: (4.2K votes)


“Once you're out here in the world, nobody cares where you used to live. Who you are, that's what counts.”
― Jennifer R. Hubbard, quote from The Secret Year


“Believe me," he said, pointing his finger at me like a gun, "no good comes from lying about what you really want.”
― Jennifer R. Hubbard, quote from The Secret Year


“Like I told you on Thanksgiving, pretending is a lousy way to get through life.”
― Jennifer R. Hubbard, quote from The Secret Year


“What do you think about when you can't sleep? Sometimes I think about the ocean. I can see it lapping on the shore, waves rolling in one after the other, washing over the sand, never stopping. That's what usually puts me to sleep.”
― Jennifer R. Hubbard, quote from The Secret Year


“But we'd had only so many nights together, and the notebook had only so many pages, and that world was never going to get any bigger. The truth was that I couldn't have kept her even if she'd lived. At the end, we'd both been pushing at the walls of our secret world, pushing at each other. We'd given each other everything we could. It wasn't enough for either of us anymore.”
― Jennifer R. Hubbard, quote from The Secret Year



“But we'd only had so many nights together, and the notebook had so many pages, and the world was never going to get bigger.”
― Jennifer R. Hubbard, quote from The Secret Year


About the author

Jennifer R. Hubbard
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Popular quotes

“Tell me “The Subtle Briar” again,’ she asked. She knew I would still know it by heart. I whispered to her in the dark.

‘When you cut down the hybrid rose,
its blackened stump below the graft
spreads furtive fingers in the dirt.
It claws at life, weaving a raft
of suckering roots to pierce the earth.
The first thin shoot is fierce and green,
a pliant whip of furious briar
splitting the soil, gulping the light.
You hack it down. It skulks between
the flagstones of the garden path
to nurse a hungry spur in shade
against the porch. With iron spade
you dig and drag it from the gravel
and toss it living on the fire.

‘It claws up towards the light again
hidden from view, avoiding battle
beyond the fence. Unnoticed, then,
unloved, unfed, it clings and grows
in the wild hedge. The subtle briar
armors itself with desperate thorns
and stubborn leaves – and struggling higher,
unquenchable, it now adorns
itself with blossom, till the stalk
is crowned with beauty, papery white
fine petals thin as chips of chalk
or shaven bone, drinking the light.

‘Izabela, Aniela, Alicia, Eugenia,
Stefania, Rozalia, Pelagia, Irena,
Alfreda, Apolonia, Janina, Leonarda,
Czeslava, Stanislava, Vladyslava, Barbara,
Veronika, Vaclava, Bogumila, Anna,
Genovefa, Helena, Jadviga, Joanna,
Kazimiera, Ursula, Vojcziecha, Maria,
Wanda, Leokadia, Krystyna, Zofia.

‘When you cut down the hybrid rose
to cull and plough its tender bed,
trust there is life beneath your blade:
the suckering briar below the graft,
the wildflower stock of strength and thorn
whose subtle roots are never dead.”
― Elizabeth Wein, quote from Rose Under Fire


“When I think back upon the kids that I tried to treat back in the 1960s, who were so extremely self-injurious, I think, “Boy, they were tough!” What they were really saying is, “You haven’t taught me right, you haven’t given me the tools whereby I can communicate and control my environment.” So the aggression that these kids show, whether it is directed toward themselves or others, is an expression of society’s ignorance, and in that sense I think of them as noble demonstrators. I have a great deal of respect for them.”
― Steve Silberman, quote from NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity


“Usually I have no issues controlling my temper, but when people want to act like half-wit window lickers I just can’t hold it back.”
― Harper Sloan, quote from Corps Security: The Series


“My face was burning, and I knew I must look like a gorilla on a greyhound.”
― Stephenie Meyer, quote from Twilight / Life and Death


“Bad things are always going to happen,” my father had told me in his last year. “There’s no way to avoid that. Our control comes in how we face them. Do we let them crush us, making us despondent? Do we face them unflinchingly and endure the pain? Do we outsmart them?”
― Richelle Mead, quote from The Glittering Court


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