Jenn E. > Jenn's Quotes

“I cannot live without books.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“laughter is cathartic and cleansing, that it's good for the body and the soul, and when it's real it's better than sex.”
― Patricia Gaffney, The Saving Graces

“I love everything about motels. I can't help myself. I still get excited every time I slip a key into a motel room door and fling it open.”
― Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away

“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.”
― Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away

“It's pitiful to have a life in which junk food is awarded the same high status as sex.”
― Sue Grafton

“I was small enough to mind that Rudy had a good friend other than me.”
― Patricia Gaffney, The Saving Graces

“Imagine me maintaining anybody's equilibrium.”
― Patricia Gaffney, The Saving Graces

“I was thinking in a Scottish brogue, because I'd just heard this guy interviewed on NPR, Lonnie McSomething.”
― Patricia Gaffney, The Saving Graces

“I hate jealousy. At least it's its own punishment; it makes me feel like hell.”
― Patricia Gaffney, The Saving Graces

“I love the slow, warming sensation of my body going numb when I drink.”
― Patricia Gaffney, The Saving Graces

“I just tried to put myself in her place and figure out what would be the scariest thing. If I thought I might be dying. And it was being alone' ... 'To me,' she said, 'the scariest thing is oblivion. Being, and then not being.”
― Patricia Gaffney, The Saving Graces

“Marilyn, for her part, focused on what was driving Arthur away. She spoke of the monster inside her. By that she seems to have meant the rage that was in sharp contrast to the shyness and sweetness she tended to project. In the beginning, Marilyn said, Arthur had perceived her as a victim, beautiful and innocent. She tried to be those things for him. When inevitably the monster disclosed itself, Miller was shocked and disappointed. He started to pull back.”
― Barbara Leaming, Marilyn Monroe: A Biography

“You were the best thing in my life … I did love you. I do. As much as I’ve ever loved anyone, as much as I can. It feels like a lot – it takes up my whole heart.”
― Patricia Gaffney, The Saving Graces

“On the dashboard of our family car is a shallow indentation about the size of a paperback book. If you are looking for somewhere to put your sunglasses or spare change, it is the obvious place, and it works extremely well, I must say, so long as the car is not actually moving. However, as soon as you put the car in motion ... everything slides off ... It can hold nothing that has not been nailed to it. So I ask you: what then is it for?”
― Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away

“... it occurred to me that never again would he be seven years, one month and six days old, so we had better catch these moments while we can.”
― Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away

“She believed, of course ... because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.”
― Rosamunde Pilcher, The Shell Seekers

“Confronted with people who have power, and who enjoy using it, I turn into a different person, a baser and meaner one.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow

“As far as I'm concerned, you could send all the cars in the world through a compactor and shoot them out through the stratosphere and put them in orbit around Mars. Except, of course, the taxis that have to be at my disposal when I need them.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow

“There's a look of mischief in his eyes. 'Smilla. Why is it that such an elegant and petite girl like you has such a rough voice.'
I'm sorry,' I say, 'if I give you the impression that it is only my mouth that's rough. I do my best to be rough all over.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla's Sense of Snow

“There's a part of me that knows that I'll never die. There's a part of me that knows better.”
― David B. Feinberg, Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone

“How can there possibly be a God, with leukemia and AIDS?”
― David B. Feinberg, Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone

“Has anyone ever in recorded history kept a box of Pepperidge Farm cookies for longer than three days?”
― David B. Feinberg, Queer and Loathing: Rants and Raves of a Raging AIDS Clone

“I look placid, you see, that's why people think I'm fine. Inside I worry a lot.”
― Maeve Binchy, Tara Road

“I don't exactly know who I thought I'd be by now, but I know I'm not that person.”
― Elizabeth Dewberry, Sacrament of Lies

“... she's sad a lot. She's sad in the way Laura wears glasses and Max has freckles and Beth is retarded. There's no reason, it's just the way it is.”
― Rachel Simon, Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey

“As she brought prospective buyers through, the realtor said it was an oil stain, but it was me, seeping out of the bag.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“Just when you think life is a bitch, it has puppies.”
― Lois Battle, The Florabama Ladies' Auxiliary & Sewing Circle

“After you get stung, you can't get unstung
no matter how much you whine about it.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“There was nothing I hated worse than clumps of whispering girls who got quiet when I passed. I started picking scabs off my body and, when I didn't have any, gnawing the flesh around my fingernails until I was a bleeding wreck. I worried so much about how I looked and whether I was doing things right, I felt half the time I was impersonating a girl instead of really being me.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

“Whenever I talk to anyone I care about, I am always seeking approval. There is always a pleading lilt in my voice that demands love. Even the people I work with, the ones I am supposed to have a professional relationship with, all business, get pulled into my need. I can't help it. I want to be adored.”
― Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation