Kelly > Kelly's Quotes

“And this note was a jittery time bomb, ticking beneath my normal life, in my pocket all day firecely reread, in my purse all week until I was afraid it would get crushed or snooped, in my drawer between two dull books to escape my mother and then in the box and now thunked back to you. A note, who writes a note like that? Who were you to write one to me? It boomed inside me the whole time, an explosion over and over, the joy of what you wrote to me jumpy shrapnel in my bloodstream. I can't have it near me anymore, I'm grenading it back to you, as soon as I unfold it and read it and cry one more time. Because me too, and fuck you. Even now.


I can’t stop thinking about you.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“So this, Harriet thought, gazing at her black-clad reflection, was what bearing up looked like. The eyes in the mirror stared at her, somehow, while fixing themselves far away.

Bearing up, then, must be this: the feeling of perfect frozen stillness, so that to raise your hand was a wrenching and unnatural event. It was not being able to sleep or eat, and the small placid tone in which she heard herself decline the food. It was the presentiment that there must be a crack or a hole somewhere at hand down which she was to throw and extinguish herself, since there must surely be something provided to make this bearable.”
― Jude Morgan

“She simply cannot let go of love- and who can blame that? Is it not the hardest thing in the world to relinquish, once you have it?”
― Jude Morgan, Indiscretion

“We shall live, love and be happy as mortals can be”
― Jude Morgan, Indiscretion

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park

“Probably no purer incitement to hatred existed, Lydia had found, than being told of anyone or anything: you will love him, her or it. The spirit immediately rose up like a fanged cobra.”
― Jude Morgan, An Accomplished Woman

“What did she love Shelley for? His reckless spontaneity -- like this. His helpless generous nature -- like this. His treatment of her as a reasonable human being and not a trembling little rose -- and so on. If she loved him for these things, could she hate him for them? Could she?”
― Jude Morgan, Passion: A Novel of the Romantic Poets

“Emily’s world fascinates and disturbs: in it you can touch thick Yorkshire speech, and moorland rain slants across your mind with a smell of mossy limestone and yet you are not at home, you might almost be in Gondal or Angria except the towers and the dungeons are of the spirit, the dungeons especially; and sometimes when Emily reads out in her low, almost guttural voice Charlotte wants to run but can’t think why or where she would run to.”
― Jude Morgan, The Taste of Sorrow

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“I think you still love me, but we can’t escape the fact that I’m not enough for you. I knew this was going to happen. So I’m not blaming you for falling in love with another woman. I’m not angry, either. I should be, but I’m not. I just feel pain. A lot of pain. I thought I could imagine how much this would hurt, but I was wrong.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

“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?

“I scoffed. “Why would I fall in love with you? You’re just a hot, closet-nerd vampire with a bazillion dollars and a Harley. There’s absolutely nothing attractive about you.”
“I’m repulsive, I know.”
― Temple West, Velvet

“You’re cute when you do that,” he called to me.
“When I do what?”
“Turn in a circle like that. It’s kind of penguin-y.”
“Great,” I called back. “Just what every girl dreams of being told by their inhumanly attractive, immortal vampire protector: they look kind of ‘penguin-y.”
― Temple West, Velvet

“What is it with you and running away from me?” he asked quizzically, slinging an arm over my shoulder.
“Maybe you’re hideous, and I can’t stand the sight of your face,” I offered casually.
He looked thoughtful. “Mmm, no, that’s not it.”
― Temple West, Velvet

“Oh my gosh, you totally have a Gryffindor scarf, don’t you? And an Elder wand and a Goblet of Fire. Tell me you have a Goblet of Fire.”
He blushed,and it was adorable. “No Goblet of Fire…I might have the wand.”
― Temple West, Velvet

“So you’re a vampire, eh?”
“’Eh’?” he asked.
“I’ve decided to turn Canadian.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“They don’t have Canadians in heaven?”
“I’ve never met any.”
― Temple West, Velvet

“I settled back into his arm. “If you produce a flannel graph out of somewhere, you will make me very happy.”
He smiled. He was smiling a lot these days. “No flannel graph. I do a mean shadow puppet, though.”
― Temple West, Velvet

“And the truth is that I'm not, Ed, is what I wanted to tell you. I'm not arty like everyone says who doesn't know me, I don't paint, I can't draw, I play no instrument, I can't sing. I'm not in plays, I wanted to say, I don't write poems. I can't dance except tipsy at dances. I'm not athletic, I'm not a goth or a cheerleader, I'm not treasurer or co-captain. I'm not gay and out and proud, I'm not that kid from Sri Lanka, not a triplet, a prep, a drunk, a genius, a hippie, a Christian, a slut, not even one of those super-Jewish girls with a yarmulke gang wishing everyone a happy Sukkoth. I'm not anything, this is what I realized ... I like movies, everyone knows I do -- I love them -- but I will never be in charge of one because my ideas are stupid and wrong in my head. There's nothing different about that, nothing fascinating, interesting, worth looking at.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“I’d ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you, and I did.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“Ed, it was everything, those nights on the phone, everything we said until late became later and then later and very late and finally to go to bed with my ear warm and worn and red from holding the phone close close close so as not to miss a word of what it was, because who cared how tired I was in the humdrum slave drive of our days without each other. I’d ruin any day, all my days, for those long nights with you, and I did. But that’s why right there it was doomed. We couldn’t only have the magic nights buzzing through the wires. We had to have the days, too, the bright impatient days spoiling everything with their unavoidable schedules, their mandatory times that don’t overlap, their loyal friends who don’t get along, the unforgiven travesties torn from the wall no matter what promises are uttered past midnight, and that's why we broke up.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“I’m not a romantic, I’m a half-wit. Only stupid people would think I’m smart. I’m not something anyone should know. I’m a lunatic wandering around for scraps, I’m like every single miserable moron I’ve scorned and pretended I didn’t recognize. I’m all of them, every last ugly thing in a bad last-minute costume. I’m not different, not at all, not different from any other speck of a thing. I’m a blemished blemish, a ruined ruin, a stained wreck so failed I can’t see what I used to be.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“Stop saying no offense,” I said, “when you say offensive things. It’s not a free pass.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“The thing with your heart's desire is that your heart doesn't even know what it desires until it turns up.”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“Either you have the feeling or you don't. Hawk Davies”
― Daniel Handler, Why We Broke Up

“The way I feel about him is like a heartbeat -- soft and persistent, underlying everything.”
― Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

“It’s just so strange.
You used to love me,
and now you’re a stranger
who happens to know all
of my secrets.”
― Clementine von Radics

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t bring my extensive mask collection to London in my trunk. I had to make do. And you said nothing about my dress.”

“That should have been self-evident. Instead of blending in, you will be the center of attention.”

“Well, it can’t be changed now. Do you want to pull out your copy of She Walks in Beauty and spend the next hour acting moody?”
― Tarun Shanker, These Vicious Masks

“Rose.It was her. Not some copy, not some actress. I knew it with every beat of my frantic heart. Then terror filled her eyes.

“Evelyn,” she gasped. “He’s in here—”

A hand appeared out of the shadows and clamped over her mouth. And she vanished.”
― Tarun Shanker, These Vicious Masks

“You've come all the way from London just for a joke, then?" I asked. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

"No, no, my reason is of much greater importance. The entire city is in chaos. Buildings collapsing, streets flooding, the population plague-stricken, the Thames ablaze. But it was when an orphan boy I rescued from the rubble asked me, with his dying breath, 'Why did this all have to happen, sir? Why did Miss Wyndham leave?' that I solemnly promised to bring you back and restore peace.”
― Tarun Shanker, These Vicious Masks