Darla Obrien > Darla's Quotes

“The face you give the world tells the world how to treat you.”
― Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.”
― Thor Heyerdahl

“Pleasure to me is wonder—the unexplored, the unexpected, the thing that is hidden and the changeless thing that lurks behind superficial mutability.”
― H.P. Lovecraft

“Hustlers of the world, there is one mark you cannot beat: the mark inside.”
― William S. Burroughs

“Charm is the ability to make someone else think that both of you are pretty wonderful.”
― Kathleen Winsor

“It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree.”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
― Steve Jobs

“Day and night I always dream with open eyes.”
― Jose Marti

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read with My Eyes Shut!

“But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.”
― Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony

“We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“There is a wilderness we walk alone
However well-companioned”
― Stephen Vincent Benét, Western Star

“In the summer
I stretch out on the shore
And think of you. Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“I write to discover what I know.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Where did feelings go when they disappeared? Did they leave a chemical trace somewhere in our minds, so that if we could look inside ourselves we would see via the patterns of neurons some of the important things that had happened to us in our lifetimes?”
― Evelyn Lau, Inside Out: Reflections on a life so far

“Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.”
― Jean de La Fontaine

“Very few of us are what we seem.”
― Agatha Christie, The Man in the Mist

“We never know the quality of someone else's life, though we seldom resist the temptation to assume and pass judgement.”
― Tami Hoag, Dark Horse

“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”
― Langston Hughes

“We are made of stardust; why not take a few moments to look up at the family album?”
― Natalie Angier, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science