Shelby > Shelby'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

“Break my heart. Break it a thousand times if you like. It was only ever yours to break anyway.”
― Kiera Cass, The One

“It's always the fear of looking stupid that stops you from being awesome.”
― Kiera Cass, The Selection

“Love is beautiful fear”
― Kiera Cass, The Elite

“America, my love, you are sunlight falling through trees. You are laughter that breaks through sadness. You are the breeze on a too-war day. You are clarity in the midst of confusion.

You are not the world, but you are everything that makes the world good. Without you, my life would still exist, but that's all it would manage to do.

You said that to get things right one of us would have to take a leap of faith. I think I've discovered the canyon that must be leaped, and I hope to find you waiting for me on the other side.

I love you, America.

Yours forever,
Maxon”
― Kiera Cass, The One

“I'll love you until my very last breath. Every beat of my heart is yours. I don't want to die without you knowing that.”
― Kiera Cass, The One

“And so the lion fell in love with the lamb…" he murmured. I looked away, hiding my eyes as I thrilled to the word.
"What a stupid lamb," I sighed.
"What a sick, masochistic lion.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

“Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.”
― Stephen King

“I decided as long as I'm going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

“Hey, Rosalie? Do you know how to drown a blonde? Stick a mirror to the bottom of a pool.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Breaking Dawn

“After all the thousand times I’ve told you I love you, how could you let one word break your faith in me?...I could see it in your eyes, that you honestly believed that I didn’t want you anymore. The most absurd, ridiculous concept—as if there were any way that I could exist without needing you!”
― Stephenie Meyer, New Moon

“We need hope, or else we cannot endure.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“She's mine. And if any of you lay a hand on her, you lose that hand. And then lose your head. And once Feyre is done killing you, then I'll grind your bones to dust.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“When Rhys came back, after Amarantha, he was a ghost. He pretended he wasn't, but he was. You made him come alive again.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“I want you to know … ” His lips trembled, and I brushed away the tear that escaped down his cheek. “I want you to know,” I whispered, “that I am broken and healing, but every piece of my heart belongs to you. And I am honored—honored to be your mate.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“Because your human joy fascinates me—the way you experience things, in your life span, so wildly and deeply and all at once, is … entrancing. I’m drawn to it, even when I know I shouldn’t be, even when I try not to be.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“I believe you. And I believe in peace. I believe in a better world.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“Aware of every breath, every movement, I sat in his lap. His hands gently braced my hips as I studied his face. “And now I want you to know, Rhysand, that I love you. I want you to know … ” His lips trembled, and I brushed away the tear that escaped down his cheek. “I want you to know,” I whispered, “that I am broken and healing, but every piece of my heart belongs to you. And I am honored—honored to be your mate.”
His arms wrapped around me and he pressed his forehead to my shoulder, his body shaking. I stroked a hand through his silken hair.
“I love you,” I said again. I hadn’t dared say the words in my head. “And I’d endure every second of it over again so I could find you. And if war comes, we’ll face it. Together. I won’t let them take me from you. And I won’t let them take you from me, either.”
Rhys looked up, his face gleaming with tears. He went still as I leaned in, kissing away one tear. Then the other. As he had once kissed away mine.
When my lips were wet and salty with them, I pulled back far enough to see his eyes. “You’re mine,” I breathed.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“Not consort, not wife. Feyre is High Lady of the Night Court. My equal in every way; she would wear my crown, sit on a throne beside mine. Never sidelined, never designated to breeding and parties and child rearing. My queen.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“You belong to all of us, and we belong to you.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin

“One must always be careful of books," said Tessa, "and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“Life is a book and there are a thousand pages I have not yet read.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Princess

“Will looked horrified. "What kind of monster could possibly hate chocolate?”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“You know," Gabriel said, "there was a time I thought we could be friends, Will."

"There was a time I thought I was a ferret," Will said, "but that turned out to be the opium haze. Did you know it had that effect? Because I didn't.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“It's all right to love someone who doesn't love you back, as long as they're worth you loving them. As long as they deserve it.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

“Ah,” said a voice from the doorway, “having your annual ‘everyone thinks Will is a lunatic’ meeting, are you?
“It’s biannual,” said Jem. “And no, this is not that meeting.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“Must you go? I was rather hoping you'd stay and be a ministering angel, but if you must go, you must."

"I'll stay," Will said a bit crossly, and threw himself down in the armchair Tessa had just vacated. "I can minister angelically."

"None too convincingly. And you're not as pretty to look at as Tessa is," Jem said, closing his eyes as he leaned back against the pillow.

"How rude. Many who have gazed upon me have compared the experience to gazing at the radiance of the sun."

Jem still had his eyes closed. "If they mean it gives you a headache, they aren't wrong.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel