Quotes from Tiger Lily

“Did you know I always thought you were braver than me? Did you ever guess that that was why I was so afraid? It wasn't that I only loved some of you. But I wondered if you could ever love more than some of me.

I knew I'd miss you. But the surprising thing is, you never leave me. I never forget a thing. Every kind of love, it seems, is the only one. It doesn't happen twice. And I never expected that you could have a broken heart and love with it too, so much that it doesn't seem broken at all. I know young people look at me and think my youth seems so far away, but it's all around me, and you're all around me. Tiger Lily, do you think magic exists if it can be explained? I can explain why I loved you, I can explain the theory of evolution that tells me why mermaids live in Neverland and nowhere else. But it still feels magic.

The lost boys all stood at our wedding. Does it seem odd to you that they could have stood at a wedding that wasn't yours and mine? It does to me. and I'm sorry for it, and for a lot, and I also wouldn't change it.

It is so quiet here. Even with all the trains and the streets and the people. It's nothing like the jungle. The boys have grown. Everything has grown. Do you think you will ever grow? I hope not. I like to think that even if I change and fade away, some other people won't.

I like to think that one day after I die, at least one small particle of me - of all the particles that will spread everywhere - will float all the way to Neverland, and be part of a flower or something like that, like that poet said, the one that your Tik Tok loved. I like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the way things go after all - that all things end happy. Even for you and Tik Tok. and for you and me.

Always,
Your Peter

P.S. Please give my love to Tink. She was always such a funny little bug.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories. Like we may as well just be words on a page, because we're only what we've done and what we are going to do.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“For the girls with messy hair and thirsty hearts.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“She did not believe he could have really gone, because for her, to leave the person you loved was impossible.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“You have to be careful who you meet. You can’t unmeet them.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“Let me tell you something straight off. This is a love story, but not like any you've ever heard. The boy and the girl are far from innocent. Dear lives are lost. And good doesn't win.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“I'm not myself," she offered, guiltily. She softened around Tik Tok, and when she did she was, for those rare moments, girlish.

He smiled. "You can never say that. You're just a piece of yourself right now that you don't like.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“It turned out that my curiosity did not outweigh my courage after all. Sometimes love means not being able to bear seeing the one you love the way they are, when they're not what you hoped for.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“To love someone was not what she had expected. It was like falling from somewhere high up and breaking in half, and only one person having the secret to the puzzle of putting her back together.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“Sometimes I can't see myself when I'm with you. I can only just see you.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“And I never expected that you could have a broken heart and love with it too, so much that it doesn't seem broken at all.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“Still, the longer I was around her, the more I could see the colors of her mind and the recesses of her heart. There was a beast in there. But there was also a girl who was afraid of being a beast, and who wondered if other people had beasts in their hearts too. There was strength, and there was also just the determination to look strong. She guarded herself like a secret.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“How can I describe Peter's face, the pieces of him that stick to my heart? Peter sometimes looked aloof and distant; sometimes his face was open and soft as a bruise. Sometimes he looked completely at Tiger Lily, as if she were the point on which all the universe revolved, as if she were the biggest mystery of life, or as if she were a flame and he couldn't not look even though he was scared. And sometimes it would all disappear into carelessness, confidence, amusement, as if he didn't need anyone or anything on this earth to feel happy and alive.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“Tiger Lily went back into the house, from which she kept watch of the ocean. She held her arms around her stomach and stayed awake. She didn't want him to catch her sleeping.

Peter did not come that night, or the next day, and she stayed awake. She did not believe he could have really gone, because for her, to leave the person you loved was impossible.

For three days, she kept on studying the horizon, even speaking to it, as if a ship that had already disappeared could hear her. "Choose me."

And Peter did choose. But he chose something else.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“If there was a true moment that Tiger Lily fell so in love with Peter she could never turn back, it was that night, when he shivered and walked and told her he was warm, and told her he loved her so much. She was fierce, to be sure, but she had a girl's heart, after all. As she walked home that night, she was shaking from the largeness of it.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“There was no twinkle in his eyes.
"Maybe I just love some of you. Maybe not enough."
Tiger Lily blinked at him, and she didn't understand how anyone could only love a part. Her greedy heart didn't work that way.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“Sometimes love means not being able to bear seeing the one you love the way they are, when they’re not what you hoped for them.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“I like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the way things go after all - that all things end happy.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“If you have reasons for not coming back, I don’t want to know them. I just want you to come back anyway. Ignorance, see?”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“A faerie heart is different from a human heart. Human hearts are elastic. They have room for all sorts of passions, and they can break and heal and love again and again. Faerie hearts are evolutionarily less sophisticated. They are small and hard, like tiny grains of sand. Our hearts are too small to love more than one person in a lifetime.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“Everyone will think I'm ugly."
Tik Tok smiled. "That's true. But we are a small village. We have narrow tastes. There's no telling who else in the world would think you're beautiful.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“To not do what you can to protect someone, that's cowardly.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“Many people in the village wanted her to be more of a girl, and Peter had wanted her to be large and brave but a little less large and brave than him. But Pine Sap was sure enough to want her to be exactly who she was.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“I could have been stronger,” she said. “I wasn’t enough to keep something so important.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“Peter loves to make promises. He has the best intentions of keeping them. It makes it worse, somehow, that he doesn’t know how to. He thinks he’s a nice boy, that’s the worst part.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“There was a long moment between them that might have gone differently. Of all the times I saw the two of them together, this is the picture that is most stamped in my soul. It's the two of them, jumbled up and broken apart into confused pieces, and not really understanding, themselves, what they were doing.

"I won't wait for you to change your mind," she finally said, her chin set stubbornly.

He bit his lip thoughtfully. "I understand." And to Tiger Lily, he suddenly, inexplicably, seemed older than her, and wiser, and the thought hit her hard that it wasn't fair, because she'd suffered, and there he was, looking like he knew so much more than she ever would.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“Maybe all of her strangeness, her curse, her always feeling like an outsider, had all existed so that she could belong here, with Peter.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“As you may have guessed already, Peter had a soul that was always telling itself lies. When he was frightened, his soul told itself, "I'm not frightened." And when something mattered that he couldn't control, Peter's soul told itself, "it doesn't matter." So while I trained my ears and tired to listen hard to him, I couldn't always make out where he was, or what he felt. And so each time he let Wendy come a little closer, I didn't see what it meant, or how it would end.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“From where I sat, Peter and Wendy were the two loneliest figures in the world. But Peter was somehow the lonelier of the two.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

“He even listened to more than her sounds, because Tiger Lily was a girl of few words. He listened with his eyes, watched her facial expressions, judged body language, and therefore read Tiger Lily better than anyone else.”
― Jodi Lynn Anderson, quote from Tiger Lily

About the author

Popular quotes

“...the place I was bound for on my latest pilgrimage was filled with living, first-hand memories of all the enchanted years that lie between two and eighteen. How enchanted those years are is made more and more clear to me the older I grow. There has been nothing in the least like them since; and though I have forgotten most of what happened six months ago, every incident, almost every day of those wonderful long years is perfectly distinct in my memory.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, quote from Elizabeth and Her German Garden

“It had been different when I was the princess. Then I had looked at his flirtations with other girls and at least told myself that his heart lay there. It had been easy to think that, even though he always returned to me after every infatuation, he wanted only my friendship. And he must have held it in, kept his true feelings to himself, knowing that I would never have been allowed to marry a minor lord of Rithia, no matter what his parents might hope. I would marry for political reasons; we had both known that. There had been no reason to acknowledge that we could ever be anything more than friends. But still, it had been a thin façade, one that I could have seen through, if I had wanted to.
And when I was no longer the princess? Had I known? If I really looked, had I known? Yes, I had to admit, I had. But it was like knowing that you need air to breathe or water when you’re thirsty. Something I knew, but without ever thinking about it, without even really considering it. I had held Kiernan’s heart for so long that I had forgotten I had it, tucked away beneath my own.
So, yes, I had known. Hadn’t his face inserted itself between Tyr and me, no matter how I tried to forget it? Hadn’t I felt somehow guilty when I’d kissed Tyr, as if I were betraying Kiernan? And hadn’t he come looking for me in Treb, hadn’t he been with me every day he could since I returned to the city? I had told Philantha otherwise, but hadn’t I felt strange with him for weeks, awkward, knowing somewhere inside me that things between us were changing?
Or maybe they weren’t changing. Maybe they were just now becoming what they had always wanted to be.
What I wanted them to be.
Because I did. I had felt it in that one kiss, how things could be. And I wanted it. Oh, how I wanted it.
But I had thrown it all away, by putting that spell on Kiernan against his will, by keeping him from doing what he thought he must do to protect me. I had seen the look of shock on his face when I used my magic on him. I didn’t know how he would be able to forgive me, after that.
I had destroyed my chance at happiness with the one person who had always understood me.
All to save the kingdom that had abandoned me, or maybe just to prove to myself that I was worth something.”
― Eilis O'Neal, quote from The False Princess

“made out a shape at the other end of the greenhouse,”
― Jonathan Kellerman, quote from When the Bough Breaks

“The way a man relates to his dad will often affect how he relates to his Father God.”
― Stormie Omartian, quote from The Power of a Praying Wife

“Trouble can be purchased cheaply, though the refund may be more than you can bear.”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from Creatures of Light and Darkness

Interesting books

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.