Jenny Colgan · 465 pages
Rating: (5.7K votes)
“Dear ignoramuses,
Halloween is not 'a yankee holiday' celebrated only by gigantic toddlers wearing baseball caps back to front and spraying 'automobiles' with eggs. This is ignorance.
Halloween is an ancient druidic holiday, one the Celtic peoples have celebrated for millennia. It is the crack between the last golden rays of summer and the dark of winter; the delicately balanced tweak of the year before it is given over entirely to the dark; a time for the souls of the departed to squint, to peek and perhaps to travel through the gap. What could be more thrilling and worthy of celebration than that? It is a time to celebrate sweet bounty, as the harvest is brought in. It is a time of excitement and pleasure for children before the dark sets in. We should all celebrate that.
Pinatas on the other hand are heathen monstrosities and have no place in a civilised society.”
― Jenny Colgan, quote from Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
“I think love is caramel. Sweet and fragant; always welcome. It is the gentle golden colour of a setting harvest sun; the warmth of a squeezed embrace; the easy melting of two souls into one and a taste that lingers even when everything else has melted away. Once tasted it is never forgotten.”
― Jenny Colgan, quote from Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
“That thing that everyone talks about. That really big newspaper in the sky that came along and ruined everything else, blah blah blah.'
Rosie was stumped, until light finally dawned. 'You mean the internet?'
'Well, yes. I hate that thing.'
'The whole thing?'
'Yes.'
'You hate the entire internet?'
'Yes.”
― Jenny Colgan, quote from Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
“That didn't sound much like a date, Rosie thought. Useful wasn't a word you used about a date. It was a word you used about a stapler.”
― Jenny Colgan, quote from Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
“Turkish Delight
Turkish delight has had a bad reputation since that man C.S.Lewis - a positive genius in other ways - linked it for ever with one of the most terrifying creations in literature, the White Witch of Narnia, and that naughty, sticky, traitorous Edmund. But with the sensuous pleasure imbued in its melting, gelatinous texture, and, when made in the proper way, delicately perfumed with rose petals, flavoured with oils and dusted with sugar, it reclaims its power as a sweet as seductive as Arabian nights. The fact that it now carries with it a whiff of danger merely adds to its pleasure. It is not, truly, a sweet for children. They simply complain, and get the almonds stuck up their noses,”
― Jenny Colgan, quote from Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweet Shop of Dreams
“You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction. You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you. The flaw? Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion. Why? Why this unreasonable anger at the sight of others who are happy or content, this growing contempt for people and the desire to hurt them? All right, you think they're fools, you despise them because their morals, their happiness is the source of your frustration and resentment. But these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself--in time destructive as bullets. Mercifully, a bullet kills its victim. This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted; there is still fire within his being but it is kept alive by casting upon it faggots of scorn and hate. He may successfully accumulate, but he does not accumulate success, for he is his own enemy and is kept from truly enjoying his achievements.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood
“They don't know it, but the wrath of the Lord is about to descend upon them.”
― Larry McMurtry, quote from Lonesome Dove
“Look at me!
Look at me!
Look at me NOW!
It is fun to have fun
But you have to know how.”
― Dr. Seuss, quote from The Cat in the Hat
“You'd think people had better things to gossip about," said Ginny as she sat on the common room floor, leaning against Harry’s legs and reading the Daily Prophet. "Three Dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it’s true you’ve got a Hippogriff tattooed across your chest."
Ron and Hermione both roared with laughter. Harry ignored them.
What did you tell her?"
I told her it's a Hungarian Horntail," said Ginny, turning a page of the newspaper idly. "Much more macho."
Thanks," said Harry, grinning. "And what did you tell her Ron’s got?"
A Pygmy Puff, but I didn’t say where.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
“I’ve met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, “Why?”
Why did I cause so much pain?
Didn’t I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness?
Can’t I see how we’re all manifestations of love?
I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God’s got this all wrong.
We are not special.
We are not crap or trash, either.
We just are.
We just are, and what happens just happens.
And God says, “No, that’s not right.”
Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can’t teach God anything.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Fight Club
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