Penny Reid > Penny's Quotes

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer

“The truth will make you odd.”
― Judy Blume

“The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”
― Elizabeth Taylor

“Friendship ... is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself . . .”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Don’t threaten me with your eyebrows.
I’m not. I’m interrogating you with my one raised eyebrow. If I was threatening you, I’d use both eyebrows. Like this.”
― Shelly Laurenston, Wolf with Benefits

“And, when it was time for Meg to give her statement, I punched her in the face.”
― Penny Reid, Friends Without Benefits

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

“Do your thing and don't care if they like it.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“I set off, off to kill the man I love.”
― Richelle Mead, Shadow Kiss

“With you there are only two distances that matter:  Here. Not here. You are not here.”
― Penny Reid, Beauty and the Mustache

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“I simply regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world created therein has different rules than my regular human world.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“Is a chameleon a coward because it can change its color? No. It’s evolved and awesome. I like to think of myself in a similar fashion.”
― Penny Reid, Attraction

“Greg’s eyes narrowed on me, but this mouth curved to one side. “I don’t know . . . that feels like something Hitler would say.”
― Penny Reid, Happily Ever Ninja

“He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him, seemed to thrill him through and through,—to melt away every resolution, all power of self-control, as if it were wax before a fire.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“I wanted to see the place where Margaret grew to what she is, even at the worst time of all, when I had no hope of ever calling her mine.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to be
loved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannot
cleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have never
loved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughts
too much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love.
But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“He shrank from hearing Margaret's very name mentioned; he, while he blamed her – while he was jealous of her – while he renounced her – he loved her sorely, in spite of himself.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“He loved her, and would love her; and defy her, and this miserable bodily pain.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“If you hate your parents, the man or the establishment, don't show them up by getting wasted and wrapping your car around a tree. If you really want to rebel against your parents, out-learn them, outlive them, and know more than they do.”
― Henry Rollins

“No one expects an eighty-five-year-old Navy SEAL stripper. No one. And that was the beauty of George.”
― Penny Reid, Beard Science

“I changed my mind.”

“You changed—”

“My. Mind.” I stopped short and faced him, placing my hands on my hips. “It’s like underpants, Jethro.”

“Dirty and dark?” He smirked.

“No.” I scowled at his facial expression. “A mind is like underpants because people change them all the time.”

“But you don’t.”

“I do change my underpants all the time, Jethro. And, for the record, I think it’s mighty rude of you to assume I don’t.”

He almost rolled his eyes, but caught the urge. “I meant your mind, Cletus. You don’t change your mind.”
― Penny Reid, Beard Science

“It’s seductive, to live in a virtual space, especially when the real world isn’t what you want it to be.”
― Penny Reid, Dating-ish

“Life is a struggle for relevancy.”
― Penny Reid, Dating-ish

“you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn't you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can't make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.”
― Warsan Shire

“Stephen kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Stephen’s kiss was lost in jest,
Robin’s lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin’s eyes
Haunts me night and day.”
― Sara Teasdale, The Collected Poems

“Love isn’t the words you use to say it, but the actions you take to prove it’s true.”
― Adriana Locke, Switch

“How you treat others defines you more than how others treat you.”
― Penny Reid, Totally Folked

“A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society