Quotes from Who's That Girl?

Alexandra Potter ·  370 pages

Rating: (4.7K votes)


“And so taking the long way home through the market I slow my pace down. It doesn't come naturally. My legs are programmed to trot briskly and my arms to pump up and down like pistons, but I force myself to stroll past the stalls and pavement cafes. To enjoy just being somewhere, rather than rushing from somewhere, to somewhere. Inhaling deep lungfuls of air, instead of my usual shallow breaths. I take a moment to just stop and look around me. And smile to myself.
For the first time in a long time, I can, quite literally, smell the coffee.”
― Alexandra Potter, quote from Who's That Girl?


“Life isn't complicated. It's very simple, really. It's us who make it complicated.”
― Alexandra Potter, quote from Who's That Girl?


“If the worst is going to happen, it'll happen. Worrying can't protect you from that. And if it doesn't happen then you've missed out on all the time that when you could have been having fun”
― Alexandra Potter, quote from Who's That Girl?


“The first time I met you, I fell in love with you there and then, but you didn't notice me. Then you stood me up. And then I met you again and I hated you. Well, I tried to hated you, but then when you cleaned up after Welly... I fell in love with you all over again.”
― Alexandra Potter, quote from Who's That Girl?


“So what are you doing around here?" I ask, feeling all jittery, but this time it's in a good way.
"Oh, I was just in the area." he says vaguely. "I thought I'd take Welly for a walk..." He trails off and stuffs his hands in his pockets.
Those butterflies are going crazy in there.”
― Alexandra Potter, quote from Who's That Girl?



“Goodbye, Dr Goldstein.' I start to walk away, then stop and turn. 'Oh, and for the record my name's Charlotte.' And turning back, I keep on walking. Somehow I don't think that's a name he's going to forget in a hurry.”
― Alexandra Potter, quote from Who's That Girl?


“And suddenly it hits me. Our roles have completely reversed.It's no longer me giving my younger self advice; it's her giving me advice. And I'm fast realising that actually I don't know better at all. About some things, yes - I glance at that terrible silver eyeshadow - but not about everything, far from it.”
― Alexandra Potter, quote from Who's That Girl?


“I can’t help feeling as if there’s something missing in my life. But I don’t know what it is. And the harder I look, the more I can’t find it because there’s just too much pressure and not enough time.”
― Alexandra Potter, quote from Who's That Girl?


About the author

Alexandra Potter
Born place: in Bradford, Yorkshire, The United Kingdom
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Popular quotes

“For that entire journey across the rough terrain of Afghanistan, I never stopped praying that everything of the world could be peaceful, that all lives might return to normal. I believe that wish is universal for every woman who is a mother.

For all the horrible happenings that have occurred since I left Afghanistan, I can only think and feel with my mother's heart. For every child lost, a mother's heart harbors the deepest pain. None can see our sons grow to men. None can see our daughters become mothers. No longer can we see the smiles on their faces, or wipe away their tears. My mother's heart feels the pain of every loss, weeping not only for my children, but for the lost children of every mother.”
― Jean Sasson, quote from Growing Up Bin Laden: Osama's Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World


“And then there was the sad sign that a young woman working at a Tim Hortons in Lethbridge, Alberta, taped to the drive-through window in 2007. It read, “No Drunk Natives.”

Accusations of racism erupted, Tim Hortons assured everyone that their coffee shops were not centres for bigotry, but what was most interesting was the public response. For as many people who called in to radio shows or wrote letters to the Lethbridge Herald to voice their outrage over the sign, there were almost as many who expressed their support for the sentiment. The young woman who posted the sign said it had just been a joke.

Now, I’ll be the first to say that drunks are a problem. But I lived in Lethbridge for ten years, and I can tell you with as much neutrality as I can muster that there were many more White drunks stumbling out of the bars on Friday and Saturday nights than there were Native drunks. It’s just that in North America, White drunks tend to be invisible, whereas people of colour who drink to excess are not.

Actually, White drunks are not just invisible, they can also be amusing. Remember how much fun it was to watch Dean Martin, Red Skelton, W. C. Fields, John Wayne, John Barrymore, Ernie Kovacs, James Stewart, and Marilyn Monroe play drunks on the screen and sometimes in real life? Or Jodie Marsh, Paris Hilton, Cheryl Tweedy, Britney Spears, and the late Anna Nicole Smith, just to mention a few from my daughter’s generation. And let’s not forget some of our politicians and persons of power who control the fates of nations: Winston Churchill, John A. Macdonald, Boris Yeltsin, George Bush, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Hard drinkers, every one.

The somewhat uncomfortable point I’m making is that we don’t seem to mind our White drunks.

They’re no big deal so long as they’re not driving. But if they are driving drunk, as have Canada’s coffee king Tim Horton, the ex-premier of Alberta Ralph Klein, actors Kiefer Sutherland and Mel Gibson, Super Bowl star Lawyer Milloy, or the Toronto Maple Leafs’ Mark Bell, we just hope that they don’t hurt themselves. Or others.

More to the point, they get to make their mistakes as individuals and not as representatives of an entire race.”
― Thomas King, quote from The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America


“„But don't you think it's unfair to be with someone just because the past you share with them?”
― Adriane Leigh, quote from The Mourning After


“Seeing those scars, those marks that he most definitely had never asked for, I had to wonder how he felt about being permanently marked up against his will.”
― Jay Crownover, quote from Rome


“My heart knows right where to go”
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