Bridget Gould > Bridget's Quotes

“You see,” said Tony, her voice still soft so as not to be overheard, but somehow fierce and angry, “it frightens me when people try to grab at us like that. I can’t sit still and just let people watch me and talk to me and ask me questions. You see,” she said again, as though trying to moderate her words and explain, “they want to pull us back, and start us all over again just like them and doing the things they want to do and acting the way they want to act and saying and thinking and wanting all the things they live with every day.”
― Shirley Jackson, Hangsaman

“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“I’m all through as a human being,” she said. “All you’re looking at is the lingering memory of what I used to be. The most important part of me, what used to be inside, died years ago, and I’m just functioning by rote memory.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“If I could have broken his neck I would have, just for the pleasure of the silence after the snap.”
― Kathe Koja, The Cipher

“He had spent a lot of time thinking about himself, and had come to the conclusion that he was definitely not self-absorbed.”
― Scott Meyer, Off to Be the Wizard

“Men! Armchair heroes the lot of them, while women were sent out to do the dirty work.”
― Michel Faber, Under the Skin

“People were infected with the concept that happiness was something outside themselves, and a new and powerful form of loneliness was born.”
― Ryū Murakami, Audition: A Novel

“I'll belong to libraries wherever I go. Maybe eventually I'll belong to libraries on other planets.”
― Jo Walton, Among Others

“Josephine didn't mean to be so dismissive, but it came surprisingly easily. Then, almost as quickly, she questioned many of the judgments she'd made in her life. Mental patients can't be intelligent, junkies can't be articulate, and so on. But really, honestly, how many did she actually know?”
― Victor LaValle, The Devil in Silver

“Eleanor looked up, surprised; the little girl was sliding back in her chair, sullenly refusing her milk, while her father frowned and her brother giggled and her mother said calmly, 'She wants her cup of stars.'

Indeed yes, Eleanor thought; indeed, so do I; a cup of stars, of course.

'Her little cup,' the mother was explaining, smiling apologetically at the waitress, who was thunderstruck at the thought that the mill's good country milk was not rich enough for the little girl. 'It has stars in the bottom, and she always drinks her milk from it at home. She calls it her cup of stars because she can see the stars while she drinks her milk.' The waitress nodded, unconvinced, and the mother told the little girl, 'You'll have your milk from your cup of stars tonight when we get home. But just for now, just to be a very good little girl, will you take a little milk from this glass?'

Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“If I grab a bunch of matter, anywhere, and I organize it in exactly the same way, I get…you. You, my friend, are a very complex, awe-inspiring configuration of matter. What you’re made of isn’t really important. Everything in the universe is made of the same thing. You’re a configuration. Your essence, as you call it, is information. It doesn’t matter where the material comes from. Do you think it matters when it comes from?”
― Sylvain Neuvel, Waking Gods

“At the end of each day, he used to ask me, “what have you done today to deserve your eyes?”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“Not long ago, we could barely spend five minutes together. Her double-edged questions, her benevolent campaigns to control my life. You can’t wish so intensely for someone else’s well-being. It’s monstrous; aggressive, even.”
― Fernanda Trías, Pink Slime