Ecem Yücel > Ecem's Quotes

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”
― Rosemarie Urquico

“It's like learning to ride a unicorn. You never forget.”
― Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl

“Girls are taught a lot of stuff growing up. If a guy punches you he likes you. Never try to trim your own bangs and someday you will meet a wonderful guy and get your very own happy ending. Every movie we see, Every story we're told implores us to wait for it, the third act twist, the unexpected declaration of love, the exception to the rule. But sometimes we're so focused on finding our happy ending we don't learn how to read the signs. How to tell from the ones who want us and the ones who don't, the ones who will stay and the ones who will leave. And maybe a happy ending doesn't include a guy, maybe... it's you, on your own, picking up the pieces and starting over, freeing yourself up for something better in the future. Maybe the happy ending is... just... moving on. Or maybe the happy ending is this, knowing after all the unreturned phone calls, broken-hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment you never gave up hope.”
― Greg Behrendt

“Solitude is fine but you need someone to tell that solitude is fine.”
― Honoré de Balzac

“We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“Not all those who wander are lost.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“The weariest nights, the longest days, sooner or later must perforce come to an end.”
― Baroness Emmuska Orczy

“When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew.”
― Arrigo Boito

“Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“When two people meet and fall in love, there's a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more. One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then it's usually too late, we've used it up. What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. It's hard work, but if we can remember to do it, we greatly improve our chances of making love stay.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“Funny how we think of romance as always involving two, when the romance of solitude can be ever so much more delicious and intense.”
― Tom Robbins

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway

“She wasn't a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings.”
― Muriel Spark, Aiding and Abetting

“I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! -- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short.”
― Jane Austen

“I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.

I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.”
― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“He is a gentleman, and I am a gentleman's daughter. So far we are equal.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”
― Langston Hughes

“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”
― Mo Willems, Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs

“We are made of stardust; why not take a few moments to look up at the family album?”
― Natalie Angier, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science

“We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“I am not a person to say the words out loud / I think them strongly, or let them hunger from the page.”
― Keri Hulme

“It is the very mark of the spirit of rebellion to crave for happiness in this life”
― Henrik Ibsen, Ghosts

“Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.”
― Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic

“I am content; that is a blessing greater than riches; and he to whom that is given need ask no more.”
― Henry Fielding

“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.”
― John Updike, My Father's Tears and Other Stories