Anne > Anne's Quotes

“A woman is like a tea bag; you never know how strong it is until it's in hot water.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“You don’t have to figure out your life’s purpose every time you pick your belly button lint. Just find a passion and pursue it with reckless abandon. When that runs out, find another passion.”
― Anne R. Tan, Murky Passions and Scandals

“People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“The Titanic has left the dock; we’re just steering at this point.”
― Anne R. Tan, Raining Men and Corpses

“You are speaking of my future lover. Be more respectful.”
― Charlaine Harris, Club Dead

“Cassie: What would it cost me if I kissed him? What would it cost me if I didn’t?”
― Melanie Cusick-Jones, Outlanders

“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emerson in His Journals

“Men are very sensitive, Mma Makutsi. You would not always think it to look at them, but they are. They do not like you to point out that they are wrong, even when they are. That is the way things are, Mma--it just is.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

“That’s a man for you. Spent his entire life growing his business outside the home, but an expert in childcare.”
― Anne R. Tan, Raining Men and Corpses

“How could a man just glisten when she smelled like the underside of a moldy mushroom?”
― Anne R. Tan, Raining Men and Corpses

“No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it.”
― Elizabeth Peters

“Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries.”
― Elizabeth Peters, The Mummy Case

“It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

“And there's a thin line between genius and insanity, isn't there?”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Among the Mad

“Never judge a journey by the distance...”
― Jacqueline Winspear, Birds of a Feather

“Don’t get me wrong. I like dogs. I love them, in fact. It’s their human counterparts I could sometimes do without.”
― Tracy Weber, Murder Strikes a Pose

“Michael spoke slowly and sternly, as if scolding an obstinate child. “Kate, let me be very clear about this. You will not continue this murder investigation, under any circumstances. I forbid it.” Michael’s words were unequivocal, not to be challenged. He was man. He was in charge. He expected no argument.

He was an idiot.”
― Tracy Weber, Murder Strikes a Pose

“Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it.”
― Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle

“She had always found villains more exciting than heroes. They had ambition, passion. They made the stories happen. Villains didn't fear death. No, they wrapped themselves in death like suits of armor! As she inhaled the school's graveyard smell, Agatha felt her blood rush. For like all villains, death didn't scare her. It made her feel alive.”
― Soman Chainani, The School for Good and Evil

“The day’s still young and I'm trying to stay out of trouble."

"What’s the fun in that? Trying to find me some.”
― Anne R. Tan, Breezy Friends and Bodies

“I love these smarty pants phones. I’m sending out an SOS on Facebook for a secret meeting later this evening at the center. You’ll have to bake me cookies since we’re fighting for your cause.”
― Anne R. Tan, Raining Men and Corpses

“once you stop learning you start dying”
― Albert Einstein

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
― Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey

“there's no point in mourning mistakes when you can fix them”
― Jess Lourey, The Toadhouse Trilogy

“It's only possible to provide help when it's asked for. The rest of the time, all you can give is love.”
― Jess Lourey

“Graduate student Raina Sun is trying to keep her head above water as the bills roll in when her dashing college adviser cons her out of several months of rent. But her quest to get her money back sets into a motion a streak of bad luck.”
― Anne R. Tan, Raining Men and Corpses

“Artists are visionaries. We routinely practice a form of faith, seeing clearly and moving toward a creative goal that shimmers in the distance - often visible to us, but invisible to those around us.”
― Julia Cameron

“The last thing she needed going into Chinese New Year were uncomfortable questions about Ah Gong’s secret family in China. As if she knew why or how her grandfather was able to keep this skeleton for fifty years. At the moment, she wanted to know how his journal ended up in her older sister’s house.”
― Anne R. Tan, Breezy Friends and Bodies