Plain Bad Heroines Quotes

“Eleanor Faderman knew many books. But never before had she read a book that seemed to know her.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“Don’t find yourself regretting this. You’re much too young to haunt your own life.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“I like it so much better when nobody expects anything from me and then I surprise them by delivering anything at all."
"That bar’s so low you’re gonna stub your toe on it.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“That version, as with so many of the stories we tell about our history, erased a woman- a plain, bad heroine- in favor of a less messy and more palatable yarn about two feuding brothers from New England.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“Too much had happened that night, too much had happened before that night, and so too much climbed into bed with them, sat heavily upon them, and kept them up and thinking, even if they did not say the things they were thinking to each other.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“I'd rather we didn´t speak anymore. Let's just wait together in unhappy silence.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“Alex saw very clearly how dangerous a book like Mary’s could become in the hands of such impressionable girls, such privileged girls: girls who kissed and fondled and laughed as they read each other passages out in the woods; girls whose parents' social standing had taught them that there was nothing at all in the world they could not subjugate, purchase, or ignore; girls who set fires only to watch as others tried, and failed, to put them out.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“I never disclose my real desires or the texture of my soul.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“Isn’t that what the swell of a crush is, after all? Recognizing the flush of truth in all the love clichés?”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“And so every day of my life I am playing a part;”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“She was a person like this: full of opinion and firm standing, she planted her flag in more topics than you could quite believe she could actually care about.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“Death was certain, but it was not imminent.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“I am a sad person who does sad things. And I am deadly, deadly tired of my unhappiness.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“My bright smile haunts no one. I shoot no opaque glances from my eyes, which are not like the sea by any means. I have never eaten any viands, and my appetite for what I do eat is most excellent. And my voice has never yet, to my knowledge, been full of tears.
No, I am not a heroine.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“To Be, Rather Than to Seem,”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“She was not unhappy. But she was alone.
Her parents had once seen so much of the world, they had lived in it. But when they'd taught her about what they'd seen and done, it had not made their child want to seek it out for herself. She was content in this cottage on her own land by the water.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“The possibilities of this life are magnificent," Audrey says.-”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“troubling are the deaths of older people submerged in deep regret.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“She couldn't admit to these people (pity or doubt on their faces) that her dreams were bigger than whatever lesser option she knew they were imagining for her. Sometimes she couldn't even admit this to herself. It felt daunting to believe in those dreams.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“What I find consistently scary is ambiguity, uncertain footing. Is the shadow on my floor my imagination, or a trick of the light, or something else, something malevolent or supernatural? How much am I willing to let myself give in to my fear, to believe?”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“Clara’s parents, on the other hand, were fourth-generation Americans shaped predominately by the conventions of their gilded social class. A few smart investments—steel and timber did the trick—and they’d watched their inherited wealth grow to numbers so high that even they could scarcely conceive of them. As such, they had a fastidious respect for the orderly following of the rules and systems from which they benefited. It all made them feel quite secure in the correctness of their position within the social order, and security was Clara’s mother’s favorite feeling, outranked only by virtuous womanhood. (She was cousin Charles’s favorite aunt, after all.)”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“You both can hear the buzzing,” Audrey asks. “Right?”
Harper and Merritt both nod. They all squeeze hands. They have to go in now. Because what else?
“I have read of women who have been strongly, grandly brave,” Harper says as they turn towards the doors.
“Sometimes I have dreamed that I might be brave,” Merritt says.
“The possibilities of this life are magnificent,” Audrey says.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“I am sad. I’m a sad person who does sad things. And I am deadly, deadly tired of my unhappiness.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“Merrit gets very uncomfortable when I talk like this,” Elaine said. “It embarrasses her.”
“No, it does not embarrass me, Lainey.”
“It does,” Elaine said. “Always has. The stories you love, you do love them, but never as the truth, only ever as containers. You want to put it all down in words and trapped in the maze of a narrative. But you don’t want to contend with it in the actual.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“That’s history for you, my darlings. When you dig it up, it always carries a whiff of rot.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“How about you don’t fight me on this, Merritt? What if, for once, you just let it be easy?”
“Not in my nature.”
“It could be,” Elaine said. “If only you’d allow it.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“She was acutely aware of the debts she owed others. She felt, sometimes, like that debt had been carved into her bones.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“It was an exquisite kind of torture, cycling through those posts. Merritt judged the clothing, the poses, the captions, the hashtags, all with a level of snark and bile that embarrassed her. She felt immensely sorry for herself, and then immediately congealed thst feeling into one of self-loathing. Why the fuck did she care? What was any of this for and why couldn’t she leave it alone and do something worth doing?
But she didn’t. She’d eat some things. Fall asleep for awhile. And the next night she’d haunt again.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“She looked in display windows and read, really read, the flyers on telephone poles: yard sales, lost pets, cash for ugly houses.
She’d pass a flooring place and imagine her life selling carpet. She’d pass a beauty salon and imagine her life doing hair. Mostly, she tried to imagine contentment: the state of being content. She didn’t think it was something she’d ever been before, so it was difficult for her to accurately imagine how it might feel. But she did try.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines

“This is a farce,” Alex said. “It’s a farce. That or I never woke up this morning. Maybe I’m still asleep on the train crossing Ohio.”
“Aren’t they funny?” Madame Verrett said to her. “They don’t match at all.”
“Aren’t what funny?” Alex said.
“The things you say aloud,” the Madame said. “Compared to the things you think, I mean.”
― Emily M. Danforth, Plain Bad Heroines