The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics Quotes

“I am tired of twisting myself into painful shapes for mere scraps of respect or consideration. Tired of bending this way and that in search of approval that will only ever be half granted.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“Women’s ideas are treated as though they sprung from nowhere, to be claimed by the first man who comes along. Every generation had women stand up and ask to be counted—and every generation of brilliant, insightful, educated men has raised a hand and wiped those women’s names from the greater historical record.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“They don’t let you have anything whole, you know. If you don’t follow the pattern. You have to find your happiness in bits and pieces instead. But it can still add up to something beautiful.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“We thought we were separate satellites, but we aren’t. We’re stars, and though we might burn separately, we’ll always be in one another’s orbit.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“Every moon, sun, comet, planet, and star is itself a center, and exerts its own force upon all the rest.
Nothing in the universe stands alone.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“Once people saw what I did, really saw it and acknowledged it, they’d believe other women were capable of thinking, of learning, of discovering the world in the same way that men are. But tonight I learned that there were other women before me. So very, very many of them. They were here all along: spotting comets, naming stars, pointing telescopes at the sky alongside their fathers and brothers and sons. And still the men they worked with scorned them. Scoffed at them. Gave the credit and the glory to the men who stole their work—or borrowed it or expanded it. Rarely cited it directly.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“It was as though someone had taken the case off the universe, and let the reader peer at the naked machinery that powered the stars.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“The point of fashion is not for the gentlemen: they call it trivial because they cannot bear the thought of women having a whole silent language between themselves.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“You could take a robin, put it in a cage, and carry it with you around the world- but if you never opened the cage door, how much of a difference would you have made to the robin's life? All it would know was the view through the bars.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“Every generation had women stand up and ask to be counted—and every generation of brilliant, insightful, educated men has raised a hand and wiped those women’s names from the greater historical record.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“How much of your innocence can I ruin in the course of one evening?'

'I’m already reasonably ruined.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“Moonlight silvered the long line of Lucy’s back as she sank to her knees—not submissively, as one conquered, but as a queen kneels at a coronation.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“The inescapable truth: women could fall in love with other women.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“Maybe an artist is simply one who does an artist’s work, over and over. A process, not a paragon.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“Truth doesn’t belong to any one scholar: it requires all of us.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“How much of your innocence can I ruin in the course of one evening?

I’m already reasonably ruined.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“Even a love in mourning still had sparks in it.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“She ought to have paid more attention to her own self before now. She ought to have allowed herself to want things.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“For a heartbeat, Catherine was too stunned to move. Then memories washed over her, of all the years Aunt Kelmarsh had spent with Mother at Ruche Abbey. Picnics in the summer. Walking together every evening at twilight. Letters flowing back and forth whenever they were separated by so much as a single day. As she watched, the light flickered and shifted, the blurred lens of a young girl’s notice sharpening into the more precise view of mature adulthood. Of course it was a love affair. It had been love the whole time.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“But tonight I learned that there were other women before me. So very, very many of them. They were here all along: spotting comets, naming stars, pointing telescopes at the sky alongside their fathers and brothers and sons. And still the men they worked with scorned them. Scoffed at them. Gave the credit and glory to the men who stole their work- or borrowed it or expanded it. Rarely cited it directly. And then those men did their best to forget where the work came from. Women's ideas are treated as though they sprung from nowhere, to be claimed by the first man who came along.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“...maybe being an artist is also really about the work. It’s not about standing up and trumpeting one’s own genius to a throng of adoring inferiors, agog with admiration. Maybe an artist is simply one who does an artist’s work, over and over. A process, not a paragon.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“The moment we raised our eyes to the heavens is the very moment we became, if something less than angels, still something more than animal.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“Why cast about for artful phrases when there were much better things to do with one’s mouth?”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“[They] passed the next two weeks orbiting one another like a double star: ever moving, never touching, never truly separating.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“[...] you had to choose the other person over and over again, every time. What's worse, you had to trust them to choose you. It was horribly frightening - as though you started every day by reminding your heart to keep beating.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“When the kiss broke, the countess laughed a little, sounding surprised, and Lucy couldn’t blame her. She was beyond words herself. She wanted to sink her hands into the lady’s hair and hold her in place and kiss her until the sun went dark and the moon went dim and the stars blew out like spent wax candles.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“Nothing in the universe stands alone. Everything is connected -- in real, mathematical, provable ways -- across the span of the entire cosmos. As long as we live, we influence one another. You and these women you've rediscovered... but also you and me. I was wrong to ask you to leave. To say there could be nothing permanent between us. We're already forever.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“You could never mistake the sound of true grief, once you had felt it yourself. It made the mettle of the soul ring in sympathy, like one bell softly chiming whenever its neighbor was struck.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“Our botanist plucked the flowers and named them after himself. And my new husband swept aside all the offerings to the dead and set up his telescope on the altar, because the offering was clear of trees and he wanted the best vantage into the skies. When one of the islanders protested, and tried to push George away, Captain Lateshaw had the man flogged. Because order had to be maintained”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics

“When she’d looked at Lucy and narrowed her eyes in that evaluating way, Lucy had gone a bit breathless. She’d felt like a book pulled down from the shelf, splayed open by a determined reader, and held firmly in place until she gave up all her secrets.”
― Olivia Waite, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics