“Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“I think Heaven will be like a first kiss.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“It was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I don't know where I was, but I didn't care. I didn't care because the only person who mattered was there with me.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“She accepted it from then on. Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Girls like us, when we love, it takes everything we have.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“It feels like he's taken your heart, doesn't it?....Like he's reached in and pulled it out from you. And I bet he smiles like he doesn't know, like he doesn't know he's holding your heart in his hand and you're dying from him.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Safe is just another word for scared.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“He was the only person in the world she was tongue-tied around, and yet the only person she really wanted to talk to.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“To this day she could make tap water boil just by kissing him.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“She went to the window. A fine sheen of sugary frost covered everything in sight, and white smoke rose from chimneys in the valley below the resort town. The window opened to a rush of sharp early November air that would have the town in a flurry of activity, anticipating the tourists the colder weather always brought to the high mountains of North Carolina.
She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“She'd always known he didn't love her. But it was easier to bear when he didn't know she loved him. That way they were even. Now he knew he had all the power.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“She'd fallen into the best part of her past.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Embarrassment felt a lot like eating chili peppers. It burned in the back of your throat and there was nothing you could do to make it go away. You just had to take it, suffer from it, until it eased off.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Not every man was sorry when he hurt a woman.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“He used to believe good things happened in this kind of weather.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“He had a smug smile on his lips like he knew, even in his sleep, that women all around him were dying from love because he'd taken their hearts and hidden them where they'd never find them.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“The area was encompassed in a bubble of warm, fragrant steam from the funnel cake deep fryers. It smelled like sweet vanilla cake batter you licked off a spoon.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“There was a certain power beautiful mothers held over their less beautiful daughters.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“You're dying with the way things are," Della Lee said harshly, causing Josey to lower the handful of popcorn she was about to put in her mouth. "You're going to lose yourself in this, Josey. It's going to happen if you don't change. I know. I lost myself trying to find happiness in things that didn't love me back.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Even at seventy-four, with a limp from a hip replacement, Margaret could still enter a room and fill it like perfume.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Ice queens didn't break, after all. They melted. And Marco didn't have enough warmth for that.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“So you stay, you don't tell anyone, is that it?"
"Sure," Della Lee said easily.
"That's blackmail."
"Add it to my list of sins."
"I don't think there's room left on that list," Josey said as she took a dress from its hanger. Then she closed the closet door on Della Lee.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“He fell in love with a skinny stray cat that would skulk around the dining hall during meals. Every day, Jake would offer it sausage or egg from breakfast and pepperoni or hamburger from lunch. Every day, it ran away from him. But Jake didn’t give up. Even when he had the stomach flu, he snuck out of the infirmary to try to feed it. He was not going to let it down. He would watch it from classroom windows. He even made up a poem about it that he sent home to his mother in a letter. Three months later, the little cat was finally hungry enough to trust him. It never occurred to Jake that the cat...”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Josey?” She heard her mother’s voice in the hall, then the thud of her cane as she came closer. “Please don’t tell her I’m here,” the woman in the closet said, with a strange sort of desperation. Despite the cold outside, she was wearing a cropped white shirt and tight dark blue jeans that sat low, revealing a tattoo of a broken heart on her hip. Her hair was bleached white-blond with about an inch of silver-sprinkled dark roots showing. Her mascara had run and there were black streaks on her cheeks. She looked drip-dried, like she’d been walking in the rain, though there hadn’t...”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“And you couldn't make a snowman in your neighborhood because?
Because you weren't there.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
Sarah Addison Allen
Born place: in North Carolina, The United States
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“Animal in man is the drive to concentrate on the satisfaction of needs; spiritual in man is the will to serve higher ends, and in serving ends he transcends his needs.”
― Abraham Joshua Heschel, quote from God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism
“A friend asked, "If increased awareness means less happiness, why bother?" No answer.”
― Derrick Jensen, quote from A Language Older Than Words
“Wallingford vaulted up from his chair. “You’ve come here so that I can mollify you and share in your belittling of Anais? Well, you’ve knocked on the wrong bloody door, Raeburn, because I will not join you in disparaging Anais. I will not! Not when I know what sort of woman she is—she is better than either of us deserves. Damn you, I know what she means to you. I know how you’ve suffered. You want her and you’re going to let a mistake ruin what you told me only months ago you would die for. Ask yourself if it is worth it. Is your pride worth all the pain you will make your heart suffer through? Christ,” Wallingford growled, “if I had a woman who was willing to overlook everything I’d done in my life,
every wrong deed I had done to her or others, I would be choking back my pride so damn fast I wouldn’t even taste it.”
Lindsay glared at Wallingford, galled by the fact his friend— the one person on earth he believed would understand his feelings—kept chastising him for his anger, which, he believed, was natural and just.
“If I had someone like Anais in my life,” Wallingford continued, blithely ignoring Lindsay’s glares, “I would ride back to Bewdley with my tail between my legs and I would do whatever I had to do in order to get her back.”
“You’re a goddamned liar! You’ve never been anything but a selfish prick!” Lindsay thundered. “What woman would you deign to lower yourself in front of? What woman could you imagine doing anything more to than fucking?”
Wallingford’s right eye twitched and Lindsay wondered if his friend would plant his large fist into his face. He was mad enough for it, Lindsay realized, but so, too, was he. He was mad, angry—all but consumed with rage, but the bluster went out of him when Wallingford spoke.
“I’ve never bothered to get to know the women I’ve been with. Perhaps if I had, I would have found one I could have loved—one I could have allowed myself to be open with. But out of the scores of women I’ve pleasured, I’ve only ever been the notorious, unfeeling and callous libertine—that is my shame.Your shame is finding that woman who would love you no matter what and letting her slip through your fingers because she is not the woman your mind made her out to be. You have found something most men only dream of. Things that I have dreamed of and coveted for myself. The angel is dead. It is time to embrace the sinner, for if you do not, I shall expect to see you in hell with me. And let me inform you, it’s a burning, lonely place that once it has its hold on you, will never let you go. Think twice before you allow pride to rule your heart.”
“What do you know about love and souls?” Lindsay growled as he stalked to the study door.
“I know that a soul is something I don’t have, and love,” Wallingford said softly before he downed the contents of his brandy, “love is like ghosts, something that everyone talks of but few have seen. You are one of the few who have seen it and sometimes I hate you for it. If I were you, I’d think twice about throwing something like that away, but of course, I’m a selfish prick and do as I damn well please.”
“You do indeed.”
Wallingford’s only response was to raise his crystal glass in a mock salute.“To hell,” he muttered,“make certain you bring your pride. It is the only thing that makes the monotony bearable.”
― Charlotte Featherstone, quote from Addicted
“We discuss things, rather than ideas; we exchange information, not theories; we keep ourselves steady by thinking about the particular. The general is frightening.”
― Fay Weldon, quote from The Life and Loves of a She Devil
“Remember that time you made the wish?
I make a lot of wishes.
The time I lied to you
about the butterfly. I always wondered
what you wished for.
What do you think I wished for?
I don't know. That I'd come back,
that we'd somehow be together in the end.
I wished for what I always wish for.
I wished for another poem.”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
The Death and Life o...
State of Wonder
Hallowed
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