The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai

“Everytime you hurt someone, you break off a little piece of them. Not only do they have to live with that broken piece, then the next person who comes along has to figure out a way to spackle that spot. Your behavior has Ripple effects.”

Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit

“…the youngest of my three female companions had her bottom groped by a man about Strauss-Kahn’s age. At first, she thought he had simply bumped into her. That was before she felt her buttock being cupped and said something to me, as young women often do, tentatively, quietly, as though it were perhaps not happening or perhaps not quite a problem.”

The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

“Men should spend more time developing their forearms. They had no idea the impact a flex of that hair-dusted whatever muscle that was right there could have on a woman.”

 

pg. 195

Alice Weaver Flaherty on Creativity

“Creative people don’t have a goal of wanting to be creative. Their goal is to solve a problem.”

The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

“When you are pregnant, you are never alone.”

The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy

“You have an affair because you are not getting what you want from your loved one. You want more: more love, more sex, more attention, more fun. You want someone to look at you with lust- after years of laundry- transforming you into something radiant. You want it, you need it, you owe it to yourself to get it. To live any other way is to be muffled and gray and marching meaninglessly toward death. You want what she gave you at the start (but what you had hoped would expand and intensify instead of shrinking until you find yourself so sad, so resentful, you can barely stand to be you).

You have an affair to get for yourself what you wish would come from the person you love the most. And then you have broken her heart and she can never give you any of it ever again.”

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

“But this is what loss has taught me of love. Our house isn’t simply empty, our home has been emptied. Love makes a place in your life, it makes a place for itself in your bed. Invisibly, it makes a place in your body, rerouting all your blood vessels, throbbing right alongside your heart. When it’s gone, nothing is whole again.

Before I met you, I was not lonely, but now I’m so lonely I talk to the walls and sing to the ceiling.”

The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

“Things feel hard now, but it will pass. Everything passes, and something new comes along to fill the space. You can’t go around holding the worst thing you ever did in your hand, staring at it. You got to cook supper, put gas in the car. You got to plant more zinnias.“

The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson

“When things went to shit, girls called their mothers. My own mom smelled like chamomile and honey, and I wanted to run home, crawl into her lap, and abdicate all pretense of adulthood.“

The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable

“Life is too short to live without passion.”

The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable

“Yes, I’m curious, but let’s not forget that many cats are killed by such sentiment.”

The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable

“When you love someone, what you get varies. But you give because you love, not because you expect something. If you’re lucky, you may be loved back, which is a wonderful thing, but there is no guarantee. True love is total devotion. And sometimes you really have to give all of yourself, every last miserable piece.”

The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable

“There are a million men, yes, until there is one.”

The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable

“Her English was stronger than she’d let on. The problem, she explained, was that most men weren’t worth more than four words.”

The Summer I Met Jack by Michelle Gable

“That’s how love goes. It has a way of taking over a person’s life.”

The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran

“Sometimes, we misjudge who people are.”

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

“I finally understood that no matter what I did, or who I found, I-he-none of us- would ever be able to win over the memories she had of Dad, memories that soothed her even while they made her sad, because she’d built a world out of them she knew how to survive in, even if no one else could.”

page 181

Finding Fraser by KC Dyer

I met Jamie Fraser when I was nineteen years old. He was tall, redheaded, and, at our first meeting at least, a virgin. I fell in love hard, fast, and completely. He was older than me. He was taller than me. He knew how to ride a horse, wield a sword, and stitch a wound. He was, in fact, the perfect man.

Finding Fraser by KC Dyer

“‘Well in our case, that book is the recipe for a happy marriage, I tell ya. A man who aspires to me like Jamie Fraser is one in a million.’”

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss

“That was the end of my search to find someone that would make my mother happy again. I finally understood that no matter what I did, or who I found, none of us would ever be able to win over …

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“It had to be that Americans were taught, from elementary school, to always say something in class, no matter what. And so she sat stiff-tongued, surrounded by students who were all folded easily on their seats, all flush with knowledge, not of the subject of their classes, but of how to be in the classes. They never said ‘I don’t know.’ They said, instead, ‘I’m not sure,’ which did not give any information but still suggested the possibility of knowledge. And they ambled, these Americans, they walked without rhythm. they avoided giving direct instructions: they did not say ‘Ask somebody upstairs’; they said ‘You might want to ask somebody upstairs.’ When you tripped and fell, when you choked, when misfortune befell you, they did not say ‘Sorry.’ They said ‘Are you okay?’ when it was obvious that you were not. And when you said ‘Sorry’ to them when the choked or tripped or encountered misfortune, they replied, eyes wide with surprise, ‘Oh, it’s not your fault.’ Ad they overused the word ‘excited,’ a professor excited about a new book, a student excited about a class, a politician on TV excited about a law; it was altogether too much excitement.”

American War by Omar El Akkad

“He was three years older than she was, and a boy –a different species altogether. But still she sensed in her brother a kind of insecurity, as though trying to scare her was not some cruel way to pass time, but a vital means of proving something to himself. She wondered if all boys were like this, their meanness a self-defense.”

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

“I learned long ago that loss is not only probable but inevitable. I know what it means to lose everything, to let go of one life and find another.”

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

“My entire life has felt like chance. Random moments of loss and connection.”

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

“A man whose mother won’t let him lift a finger is ruined for a wife.”

After You by Jojo Moyes

“Do you know how long the hairs in his nostrils are? I’ll tell you! He could wipe his plate with them. For the last fifteen years, I’ve been the one telling the barber to give him a trim up there, you know? Like he’s some kind of child. Do I mind? No! Because that’s the way he is. He’s a human being! Nose hair and all! But if I dare not to be as smooth as a ruddy baby’s bottom he acts like I’ve turned into flipping Chewbacca!”

After You by Jojo Moyes

“Sometimes I look at the lives of the people around me and I wonder if we aren’t all destined to leave a trail of damage. It’s not just your mum and dad who fuck you up, Mr. Larkin. I gazed around me, like someone suddenly handed clear glasses, and I saw that pretty much everyone bore the brutal imprint of love, whether it was lost, whipped away from them, or simply vanished into a grave.”

After You by Jojo Moyes

“Too many people follow their own happiness without a thought for the damage they leave in their wake.”

Single Women Are Now the Most Potent Political Force in America By Rebecca Traister

I was a grown-up: a reasonably complicated person. I’d become that person not in the company of any one man, but alongside my friends, my family, my city, my work, and, simply, by myself.

The Orchard by Theresa Weir

“There are things you don’t talk about. There are things you don’t want people to know because as soon as they know, you change. You become someone different in their eyes.”

How to Love An American Man by Kristine Gasbarre

“If I’ve given a man- multiple men- my most beautiful, sacred form with nothing required from them, then no wonder that’s left me feeling worthless at times.  Why weren’t they calling, why weren’t they trying to see me again?  It’s because my feelings didn’t matter to them, because for a minute, probably after too much wine or a few Jaggerbombs with my friend, my feelings did not matter much to me.  I had wanted to be desired without expecting that these men should want to know my heart first- and they should!”

How to Love An American Man by Kristine Gasbarre

“You have to decide on the things you want in life, and address them, before you can commit to sharing a life with some one else.”

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

“I, Carlo Piero Guercio, write these words with the intention that they should be found after my death, when neither scorn nor loss of reputation may dog my steps nor blemish me.  The circumstances of life leaves it impossible that this testament of my own nature should find its way into the world before I have drawn my last breath, and until that time I shall be condemned to wear the mask decreed by misfortune.

I have been reduced to eternal and infinite silence, I have not even told the chaplain in confession.  I know in advance what I will be told; that it is a perversion, an abomination in the sight of God, that I must fight the good fight, that I must marry and lead the life of a normal man, that I have a choice.

I have not told a doctor.  I know in advance that I will be called an invert, that I am in some strange way in love with myself, that I am sick and can be cured, that my mother is responsible, that I am effeminate even though I am as strong as ox and fully capable of lifting my own weight above my head, that I must marry and lead the life of a normal man, that I have a choice.

What could I say to such priests and doctors? I would say to the priest that God made me as I am, that I had no choice, that He must have made me like this for a purpose, that He knows the ultimate reasons for all things and that therefore it must be all good that I am as I am, even if we cannot know what that good is.  I can say to the priest that if God is the reason for all things, then God is to blame and I should not be condemned.

And the priest will say, ‘This is a matter of the Devil and not of God,’ and I will reply, ‘Did God not make the Devil? Is he not omniscient? How can I blamed for what He knew would occur from the very moment of commencement of time?’ And the priest will refer me to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and tell me that God’s mysteries are not to be understood by us.  He will tell me that we are commanded to be fruitful and multiply.

I would say to the doctor, ‘I have been like this from the first, it is nature that has molded me, how am I supposed to change? How can I suddenly decide to enjoy women, any more than I can suddenly decided to enjoy eating anchovies, which I have always detested? I have been to the Casa Rosetta, and I loathed it, and afterwards I felt sick. I felt cheapened. I felt I was traitor.  I had to appear to be normal.’

And the doctor will say, ‘ How can this be natural? Nature serves its interests by making us reproduce.  This is against nature.  Nature wants us to be fruitful and multiply.’

This is a conspiracy of doctors and priests who repeat the same things in different words.  I am like a spy who has signed a covenant of perpetual secrecy, I am like someone who is the only person in the world that knows the truth and yet is forbidden to utter it.  And this truth weighs more than the universe, so that I am like Atlas bowed down forever beneath a burden that cracks the bones and solidifies the blood. There is no air in this world that I am fated to inhabit, I am a plant suffocated by lack of air and light, I have had my roots clipped and my leaves painted with poison. I am exploding with the fire of love and there is no one to accept it or nourish it.     I am a foreigner within my own nation, an alien in my own race, I am as detested as cancer when I am as purely flesh as any priest or doctor.

According to Dante my like is confined to the third ring of the Seventh Circle of Nether Hell, in the improbable company of usurers.  He gives me a desert of naked, spirits scourged by the flakes of fire, he makes me run in circles, perpetually and in futility, looking for the ones whose bodies I’ve defiled.  You see how it is; I have been driven to search everywhere just to find myself mentioned.  I am mentioned almost nowhere, but where I find myself, I find myself  condemned.  And how remarkable it is, you doctors and priests, that Dante pitied us when God did not.  Dante said, ‘It makes me heartsick only to think of them.’ And Dante was right, I have always run in circles, futilely, looking for the warmth of bodies, scorned by God who created me, and all my life has been a desert and rain of flakes of fame.”

Page 28

The Serenity Prayer, Reinhold Niebuhr

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference”

Maya Angelou

“I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision.”

The Daily Coyote, Shreve Stockton

“It’s so egotistical to believe that we know more about some one else’s reality  than they do, and such a waste of time.”

Anonymous

“While speaking with others, do not hope or pray not to be disagreed with.  With out disagreements, self-righteousness can flourish.”

Madam Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

“It’s those eyes… they go right into your heart.”

Wildfire Show-Off, Catherine Hapka

“It was as if he saw too clearly, felt too deeply, wanted too much… he wasn’t a mindless jock… he was sweet.”

Forever, Judy Blume

“… you can’t excel at everything.  I’m realistic about myself.  I think a person has to be.”

The Princess and the Hound, Mette Ivie Harrison

“This was hope, painful and sweet.”

Just Listen, Sarah Dessen

“There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart.  So you’d better learn to know the sound of it.  Otherwise you’ll never understand what it’s saying.”

Just Listen, Sarah Dessen

“A song can take you back instantly to a moment, or a place, or even a person. No matter what else has changed in you or the world, that one song stays the same, just like that moment.”

Joseph Conrad

“Fear always remains.  A man may destroy everything within himself, love and hate, and belief, even doubt, but as long as he clings to life, he cannot destroy fear.”

Rules of the Wild, Francesca Marciano

“What’s the point in remembering?  When something is lost forever, its memory only makes you feel lonelier.”

Rules of the Wild, Francesca Marciano

“… laying out all the bits and pieces, all the memorable scenes, the fragments of conversations and the turning points, everything I can recall- like a child taking all the toys out of the box just to make sure he still owns them- all that has been happening without any apparent order or reason but which never-the-less has ended up shaping my life…”

Song of Unmaking, Caitlin Brennan

“There was no point in being envious.  [She] could only study and learn, if she could not exactly imitate.”

Forever Amber, Kathleen Winsor

“She lived like one imprisoned in a drum, who can think of nothing but the noise on every side.”

The Morning Gift, Eva Ibbotson

“… there would be an explanation.  It couldn’t be real, this decent into hell.”

Twilight, Stephanie Meyer

“…he questioned me relentlessly about every insignificant detail of my existence.  Movies I’d liked and hated, the few places I’d been and the many places I wanted to go, and books- endlessly books.”

Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins

“It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.”

Matched, Ally Condie

” For what is the point of having something lovely if you never share it?”

Matched, Ally Condie

“It’s hard to know which ways to be strong.”

Matched, Ally Condie

“I tilt my head back again and look at the sun through my closed eyelids.  It is stronger than I am; it burns red against the black.”

Opposites Attract, Hailey North

“What comes easy ain’t worth winning.”

The Truth About Forever, Sarah Dessen

“But if something was really important, fate made sure it somehow came back to you and gave you another chance… Events conspired to bring you back to where you’d been.  It was what you did then that made all the difference: it was all about potential.”

The Mountain’s Call, Caitlin Brennan

“When you fail, learn from it.”

Primal Heat, Susan Sizemore

“Could. Would. Should. If. What the hell do any of them have to do with what is?  Cope with what happens, not with what might happen.”

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

“…and after all is well, remember you don’t forget resolutions formed in the hour of fear.”

Belle, Cameron Dokey

“This is not a fairy tale.  Its real life.”

The Horsemaster’s Daughter, Susan Wiggs

“Life was like that, a mixture  of dark and light.  You had to learn to wait until the sunshine broke through.  And if you were patient, it always did, no matter what.”

The Outlaws of Sherwood, Robin McKinley

“There is something terribly attractive about any action that one wants not to be observed.”

The Dream Hunter, Sherrilyn Kenyon

“Sometimes we don’t want what’s best for us but we need it anyway.”

The Dream Hunter, Sherrilyn Kenyon

“I am glad that though some one did me grossly wrong, my final mark in this world is not one of countering hurt with more hurt but one of love and friendship.  We will always be known by our actions.  Let them always be good ones.”

Someone Like You, Sarah Dessen

“The right thing always seemed to be met with such resistance, when you’d think it would be the easier path. You had to fight to be virtuous.”