Britton > Britton's Quotes

“But that’s what being poor does to you; it shortens your childhood. It hardens your ambition.”
― Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment

“I could not explain that I simply wanted someone to love. Wholehearted, unreserved, requited.”
― Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment

“I've never let a door stay closed for long: I suppose you could say that's my main problem in life.”
― Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment

“I think a lot, but I don't say much.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“You must work and do good, not be lazy and gamble, if you wish to earn happiness. Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year old schoolgirl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing, and I have an even greater need to get all kinds of things off my chest.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Everyone thinks I'm showing off when I talk, ridiculous when I'm silent, insolent when I answer, cunning when I have a good idea, lazy when I'm tired, selfish when I eat one bite more than I should.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“Love, what is love? I don't think you can really put it into words. Love is understanding someone, caring for him, sharing his joys and sorrows. This eventually includes physical love. You've shared something, given something away and received something in return, whether or not you're married, whether or not you have a baby. Losing your virtue doesn't matter, as long as you know that for as long as you live you'll have someone at your side who understands you, and who doesn't have to be shared with anyone else!”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

“She could be attractive when she wanted to be but life had taught her that efficiency and competence often paid better results and avoided painful complications.”
― Agatha Christie, Cat Among the Pigeons

“Sometimes life isn’t what you thought it would be it’s just what it is.”
― Heather Hepler, The Cupcake Queen

“The world isn’t entirely beautiful. Everyone knows this, but in their hearts they still wish for that perfect, idyllic place. A bit of a contradiction.”
― Syougo Kinugasa, Classroom of the Elite (Light Novel) Vol. 1

“We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.”
― Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“It is easy to mourn the lives we aren't living. Easy to wish we'd developed other other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we'd worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn't make and the work we didn't do the people we didn't do and the people we didn't marry and the children we didn't have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It's the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people's worst enemy.
We can't tell if any of those other versions would of been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Sometimes just to say your own truth out loud is enough to find others like you.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Want,’ she told her, in a measured tone, ‘is an interesting word. It means lack. Sometimes if we fill that lack with something else the original want disappears entirely.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Regrets don’t leave. They weren’t mosquito bites. They itch for ever.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“You can have everything and feel nothing.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Why want another universe if this one has dogs?”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL

1. We are here to help you.
2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings.
3. The dress code will be enforced.
4. No smoking is allowed on school grounds.
5. Our football team will win the championship this year.
6. We expect more of you here.
7. Guidance counselors are always available to listen.
8. Your schedule was created with you in mind.
9. Your locker combination is private.
10. These will be the years you look back on fondly.

TEN MORE LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL

1. You will use algebra in your adult lives.
2. Driving to school is a privilege that can be taken away.
3. Students must stay on campus during lunch.
4. The new text books will arrive any day now.
5. Colleges care more about you than your SAT scores.
6. We are enforcing the dress code.
7. We will figure out how to turn off the heat soon.
8. Our bus drivers are highly trained professionals.
9. There is nothing wrong with summer school.
10. We want to hear what you have to say.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Do you think I am an automaton? — a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you — and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh: it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal — as we are!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Sometimes people use thought to not participate in life.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter