“Everyone wants a Christmas tree. If you had a Christmas tree Santa would bring you stuff! Like hair curlers and slut shoes.”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Visions of Sugar Plums
“I wasn’t sure anymore what made a good marriage. There had to be love, of course, but there were so many different kinds of love. And clearly, some love was more enduring than others.”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Visions of Sugar Plums
“Cripes, I can’t keep up on this political correct shit. I don’t even know what to call myself. One minute I’m black. Then I’m African American. Then I’m a person of color. Who the hell makes these rules up, anyhow?”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Visions of Sugar Plums
“In my father’s scheme of things, there were Italians and then there was the rest of the world.”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Visions of Sugar Plums
“So elves could be walking around in our midst, disguised as normal, everyday, vertically challenged citizens.”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Visions of Sugar Plums
“Trust him,” I said. Trust Superman, Spider-man, E.T., the Ghost of Christmas Present . . . whoever the hell.”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Visions of Sugar Plums
“was standing facing my car, and behind me, I could hear windows being thrown open in my apartment building. It was Lorraine in her nightie and Mo in his cap. They’d just settled their brains for a long winter’s nap in front of the television. When out in the lot there arose such a clatter, they sprang from their recliners to see what was the matter. Away to the window they flew like a flash, tore open the blinds and threw up the sash. And what to their wondering eyes should appear, but Stephanie Plum and yet another of her cars burning front to rear.”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Visions of Sugar Plums
“That's how our system works. It's a giant con game. One thing gets old, then you have to buy the next thing that gets old, then the next thing. Our whole society's a training ground for addicts.”
― Tim Tharp, quote from The Spectacular Now
“We're so different. You're an intellectual. I'm an idiot."
"Don't say that," I yelled. "You're not an idiot, you stupid idiot.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from Looking for Alibrandi
“Dear Madam Vorsoisson, I am sorry.
This is the eleventh draft of this letter. They’ve all started with those three words, even the horrible version in rhyme, so I guess they stay.
You once asked me never to lie to you. All right, so. I’ll tell you the truth now even if it isn’t the best or cleverest thing, and not abject enough either.
I tried to be the thief of you, to ambush and take prisoner what I thought I could never earn or be given. You were not a ship to be hijacked, but I couldn’t think of any other plan but subterfuge and surprise. Though not as much of a surprise as what happened at dinner. The revolution started prematurely because the idiot conspirator blew up his secret ammo dump and lit the sky with his intentions. Sometimes these accidents end in new nations, but more often they end badly, in hangings and beheadings. And people running into the night. I can’t be sorry that I asked you to marry me, because that was the one true part in all the smoke and rubble, but I’m sick as hell that I asked you so badly.
Even though I’d kept my counsel from you, I should have at least had the courtesy to keep it from others as well, till you’d had the year of grace and rest you’d asked for. But I became terrified that you’d choose another first. So I used the garden as a ploy to get near you. I deliberately and consciously shaped your heart’s desire into a trap. For this I am more than sorry, I am ashamed.
You’d earned every chance to grow. I’d like to pretend I didn’t see it would be a conflict of interest for me to be the one to give you some of those chances, but that would be another lie. But it made me crazy to watch you constrained to tiny steps, when you could be outrunning time. There is only a brief moment of apogee to do that, in most lives.
I love you. But I lust after and covet so much more than your body. I wanted to possess the power of your eyes, the way they see form and beauty that isn’t even there yet and draw it up out of nothing into the solid world. I wanted to own the honor of your heart, unbowed in the vilest horrors of Komarr. I wanted your courage and your will, your caution and your serenity. I wanted, I suppose, your soul, and that was too much to want.
I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given. They must be taken, and the worse the odds and the fiercer the resistance, the greater the honor. Victories can’t be gifts.
But gifts can be victories, can’t they. It’s what you said. The garden could have been your gift, a dowry of talent, skill, and vision.
I know it’s too late now, but I just wanted to say, it would have been a victory most worthy of our House.
Yours to command,
Miles Vorkosigan”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from A Civil Campaign
“God deals us all different hands. How we play 'em is up to us.”
― Jeannette Walls, quote from Half Broke Horses
“I'll sit in the park and feed the pigeons for a while.'
We don't have pigeons.'
Then I'll feed the pterodactyls.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Forever Odd
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.
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