Frankie Quotes

She will not be simple and sweet. She will not be what people tell her she should be.

Secrets are more powerful when people know you've got them.

It is better to be alone, she figures, than to be with someone who can't see who you are. It is better to lead than to follow. It is better to speak up than stay silent. It is better to open doors than to shut them on people. She will not be simple and sweet. She will not be what people tell her to be. That Bunny Rabbit is dead.

Oh God, Frankie, I breathe in rhythm with that man. You think that's not my flesh and blood after all these years?

I miss the Stella girls telling me what I am. That I'm sweet and placid and accommodating and loyal and nonthreatening and good to have around. And Mia. I want her to say, "Frankie, you're silly, you're lazy, you're talented, you're passionate, you're restrained, you're blossoming, you're contrary." I want to be an adjective again. But I'm a noun. A nothing. A nobody. A no one.

I say, Billy, what’s the use in playing croquet when you’re doomed? He says, Frankie, what’s the use of not playing croquet when you’re doomed?

Conversation between a princess and an outlaw: "If I stand for fairy-tale balls and dragon bait--dragon bait--what do you stand for?" "Me? I stand for uncertainty, insecurity, bad taste, fun, and things that go boom in the night." "Franky, it seems to me that you've turned yourself into a stereotype." "You may be right. I don't care. As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even if they aren't the most efficient. People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve." "Well, you may get off on being a beautiful stereotype, regardless of the social consequences, but my conscience won't allow it." "And I goddamn refuse to be dragon bait. I'm as capable of rescuing you as you are of rescuing me." "I'm an outlaw, not a hero. I never intended to rescue you. We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.

I just want it to go back to the way it was." "It'll never go back to the way it was, Frankie. But you have to make sure it goes forward.

All humans are musical. Why else would the Lord give you a beating heart?

Frankie appreciated both the accolades and the rejections equally, because both meant she'd had an impact. She wasn't a person who needed to be liked so much as she was a person who liked to be notorious.

Everyone joins a band in this life. And what you play always affects someone. Sometimes, it affects the world.

The secret is not to make your music louder, but to make the world quieter.

This is life. Things get taken away. You will learn to start over many times -- or you will be useless.

When I kissed Sam, I was so scared of erasing Matt. But now I know that I could never erase him. He'll always be a part of me - just in a different way. Like Sam, making smoothies on the beach two thousand miles away. Like Frankie, my voodoo magic butterfly finding her way back home in the dark. Like the stars, fading with the halo of the vanishing moon. Like the ocean, falling and whispering against the shore. Nothing ever really goes away - it just changes into something else. Something beautiful.

For 3 million you could give everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we could dig a hole so deep we could hand her over to Satan in person. (on Margaret Thatcher)

Matthew had called her harmless. Harmless. And being with him made Frankie feel squashed into a box - a box where she was expected to be sweet and sensitive (but not oversensitive); a box for young and pretty girls who were not as bright or as powerful as their boyfriends. A box for people who were not forces to be reckoned with. Frankie wanted to be a force.

Frankie and Estella want your sperm for their baby,” I began. He blinked , then bent down and kissed me on the nose. “Will they buy me dinner first?

Sometimes looking at Frankie is like seeing Matt through a glass of water - a distorted composition of him with all the right parts, but mixed up and i the wrong order. As I watch her sing his old song, I can't shake the feeling that he just stopped by to say hello.

If I did something to hurt Frankie and she said that I was never getting near her heart again, I’d spent the rest of my life trying anyway. That’s the difference between you and me, Tom. I’d go back to the moment it all fell apart and I’d start there.

Inside her head, Frankie had the map to my entire life, and I to hers. I hated that my feelings for Matt were uncharted and unmapped like a secret buried treasure.

Hands that never touch. Lips that never meet. The Almost Lovers, never to be.

These guys, they were so sure of their places in life--so deeply confident of their merit and their future--they didn't need any kind of front at all.

If Frankie and I hadn't wanted ice cream that stupid day, he'd still be alive. If I hadn't gotten his heart all worked up kissing him every night since my birthday, he'd still be alive. If I'd never been born, he'd still be alive. If I could find the butterfly that flapped its wings before we got into the car that day, I would crush it.

You cannot write if you do not read,” the blind man said. “You cannot eat if you do not chew. And you cannot play if you do not”—he grabbed for the boy’s hand—“listen.

...a box where she was expected to be sweet and sensitive (but not oversensitive); a box for young and pretty girls who were not as bright or powerful as their boyfriends. A box for people who were not forces to be reckoned with.

Mat - Red and Jayne's Matt, Frankie's Matt, my Matt - died of a broken heart.

You have some balls." Frankie hated that expression, ever since Zada had pointed out to her that it equates courage with the male equipment...

But you cannot change your past, no matter how you craft your future.

She might, in fact, go crazy, as has happened to a lot of people who break rules. Not the people who play at rebellion but really only solidify their already dominant positions in society...but those who take some larger action that disrupts the social order. Who try to push through the doors that are usually closed to them. They do sometimes go crazy, these people, because the world is telling them not to want the things they want. It can seem saner to give up--but then one goes insane from giving up.

I think it was the institution...I was trying to master it.

Sometimes I think the greatest talent of all is perseverance.

As my son Frankie put it, Humanism has changed the Twenty-third Psalm: They began - I am my shepherd. Then - Sheep are my shepherd. Then - Everything is my shepherd. Finally - Nothing is my shepherd.

Dig deep into that cold, callous heart of yours, Frankie.

They do sometimes go crazy, these people, because the world is telling them not to want the things they want. It can seem saner to give up-But then one goes insane from giving up.

The bed reminded me of a lifestyle. It reminded me of Frankie. “It was Frankie and James, wasn’t it? Did those kinky fucks bring you over to the dark side?

They didn’t hold Frankie as she sobbed for hours at a time without talking. They didn’t make sure she ate even when she wasn’t hungry. They didn’t do her homework when she couldn’t concentrate, or explain to our teachers why she was late to every class.

After each dream, Frankie woke with a start, soaked in tears. But she found no relief in the peaceful silence of her room, because there everything was real. And the guilt was too immense to bear. Each time she opened her eyes, she'd quickly shut them. And wish that she had woken up for the very last time.

There is a reason you glance up when you first hear a melody, or tap your foot to the sound of a drum. All humans are musical. Why else would the Lord give you a beating heart?

The guilt of not telling Frankie about Matt and me is overwhelming, but it's a pale second to the violation I feel that she read my most private, raw thoughts and destroyed them. She broke into my carefully guarded heart, stole the only remaining connection I had to Matt, and turned it into a monstrosity.

I loved Frank...I loved him alot. But by that time, Jamie was my heart and the breath of my body. I couldn't leave him. I couldn't.

She wasn't a person who needed to be liked so much as she was a person who liked to be notorious.

It happened that green and crazy summer when Frankie was twelve years old. This was the summer when for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and was a member of nothing in the world. Frankie had become an unjoined person and hung around in doorways, and she was afraid.

Music is in the connection of human souls, speaking a language that needs no words. Everyone joins a band in this life. And what you play always affects someone. Sometimes, it affects the world. Frankie’s

Every loss leaves a hole in your heart.

You cannot ask things to do what they are not meant to do. Eventually, they will break.

Doreen is dissolving, Lenny Shepherd is dissolving, Frankie is dissolving, New York is dissolving, they are all dissolving away and none of them matter anymore.I don't know them. I have never known them and I am very pure.

A tomato may be a fruit, but it is a singular fruit. A savory fruit. A fruit that has ambitions far beyond the ambitions of other fruits.

Run, sweetheart, run.

You cannot unplay your notes. Time, like music, is indelible that way.

Someone is watching you. Or, someone is probably watching you. Or, you feel like someone’s watching you. So you follow the rules whether someone’s watching you or not.

Truth is light. Lies are shadows. Music is both.

Secrets are more powerful when people know you've got them," said Mr. Sutton. "You show them the tiniest edge of your secret, but the rest you keep under wraps.

Well, we're friends. In that weird way where you're eternally mad at me, and I'm eternally imagining what you look like naked.

Because whipping an atlas at Jackson's head while he was flirt-touching that Frankie girl in geography would have been very satisfying. And beating him with the Eiffel Tower snowglobe while he kissed Cleo in French would have been tres cathartic. But she hadn't. Instead she'd been egg-like: a hard shell on the outside, and a runny mess on the inside.

She doesn't feel like crying anymore.

As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private vocabulary. Maybe you will flop on couches backstage, or share a boardroom table, or crowd around a galley inside a ship. But in each band you join, you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it.

There are moments on earth when the Lord smiles at the unexpected sweetness of His creation.

Welcome to Glasgow - the city where we punch people who are on fire.

It’s not like I want to be friends with you now, Frankie. Don’t even talk to me, I seriously can’t deal with you. I’m just writing to say I underestimated you. I significantly underestimated you. I don’t actually think it is possible to overestimate you. Although you are not a nice person.

He just loved her in a limited way. Loved her best when she needed help. Loved her best when he could set the boundaries and make the rules. Loved her best when she was a smaller, younger person than he was, with no social power.

At a certain point, your life is more about your legacy to your kids than anything else.

The only thing that will ever be real, is this moment,' I turned to the statue, 'when you made me feel alive, when you made me feel real, when I felt like you really love me. Now? I'm just your monster, Frankie. I will always be a monster.

There will be all these fifty-year-old women wearing hot pants and squeezing themselves into pretzel shapes and then there will be me. Just reaching for my toes like they're China. 'Hello there! You're so far away, I can't get to you! Can you even hear me?

You’re never in love with anyone the way you are when you’re eighteen,

Live, die, something else lives. The very soil humanity walks upon is built up from death. Digging into a flowerbed means digging into bones.

We all of us somehow caught. We born this way or that way and we don't know why. But we caught any how. I was born Berenice. You Born Franky. John Henry born John Henry. And maybe we wants to widen and bust free. But no matter what we do we still caught. Me is me and you is you and he is he. We each one of us somehow caught all by ourself. I'm caught worse than you is. Because I'm Black, because I'm colored.

although she went home that night feeling happier than she had ever been in her short life, she did not confuse the golf course party with a good party, and she did not tell herself she had a pleasant time. it had been, she felt, a dumb event preceded by excellent invitations. what frankie did that was unusual was to imagine herself in control. the drinks, the clothes, the instructions, the food (there had been none), the location, everything. she asked herself: if i were in charge, how could i have done it better?

It was part of their mission as a secret society--as it is part of the mission of most secret societies, actually--to not be entirely secret.

She had been nobody and he had been golden.

That is often why you come to music, isn't it? To feel that you are not alone?

See, we don't got liberty, we don't got property, but you better believe we've got the Great American Right to die for a country that doesn't want us.

In every artist’s life, there comes a person who lifts the curtain on creativity. It is the closest you come to seeing me again. The first time, when you emerge from the womb, I am a brilliant color in the rainbow of human talents from which you choose. Later, when a special someone lifts the curtain, you feel that chosen talent stirring inside you, a bursting passion to sing, paint, dance, bang on drums. And you are never the same.

She decided to donate blood to the Red Cross; she wanted to donate a quart a week and her blood would be in the veins of Australians and Fighting French and Chinese, all over the whole world, and it would be as though she were close kin to all of these people. She could hear the army doctors saying that the blood of Frankie Addams was the reddest and the strongest blood that they had ever known.

You humans are always locking each other away. Cells. Dungeons. Some of your earliest jails were sewers, where men sloshed in their own waste. No other creature has this arrogance—to confine its own. Could you imagine a bird imprisoning another bird? A horse jailing a horse? As a free form of expression, I will never understand it. I can only say that some of my saddest sounds have been heard in such places. A song inside a cage is never a song. It is a plea.

Talent is a piece of God's shadow. And under that shadow, human stories intersect.

You are my girlfriend," whispered Matthew. " You're my girl and I'm your guy, and you're my girl and I'm your guy. Let's not fight.

Come on, there's no one there. You want coffee?" Tess asked. "Yeah, sure, why not? I'm only on the brink of a nervous breakdown. I don't imagine why caffeine wouldn't help this situation.

What would you give to remember everything? I have this power. I absorb your memories; when you hear me, you relive them. A first dance. A wedding. The song that played when you got the big news. No other talent gives your

It is better to be alone, she figures, than to be with someone who can’t see who you are. It is better to lead than to follow. It is better to speak up than stay silent. It is better to open doors than to shut them on people.

Man searches for courage in drink, but it is not courage that he finds, it is fear that he loses. A drunken man may step off a cliff. That does not make him brave, just forgetful.

A teacher’s shadow can hover for life.

Inside all humans is the entirety of your memories, the ones you can access and the ones you cannot.

Don't call me Alessandro, or this could get ugly. Oh, then may I call you Alice?

Don't be sorry. You're alive.

I can feel like a hag some days if I want! And I can tell everybody how insecure I am if I want! Or I can be pretty and pretend to think I'm a hag out of fake modesty –- I can do that if I want, too. Because you, Livingston, are not the boss of me and what kind of girl I become.

Promise not to kill me?" A razor smile spread across his face. "Will you at least try?" He arched an eyebrow. "I can try.

He's convinced most human adults do not know how to play anymore and that playing is one of the best ways to think. Franky finds children, by far, much more pleasant and intelligent than most adults, but they are easily ruined by their families, schools, and society. He says one of the ways they are ruined is by being forced to think of all the tasks that need to be done as work, not as play. It takes the joy out of living.

Why did you do all that, Frankie?" asked Porter. "I mean, it was brilliant, what you did, what you made us do - but why would you bother? That's what I can't figure out." Frankie sighed. "Have you ever heard of the panopticon?" she asked him. Porter shook his head. "Have you ever been in love?" He shook his head again. "Then I can't explain it," Frankie said. They went inside and took the geometry test.

I dunno." She sat on the bench and hugged the robe like a pillow. "I still think that Brett guy is cute." "Good luck getting him away from Bekka." Cleo gathered her silky black hair into a high pony and pink-dabbed Smith's Rosebud Salve on her lips. "She's got more grip than Crazy Glue." "More cling than Saran Wrap," Lala added. "More hold than Final Net." Cleo giggled. "More possession than The Exorcist," Lala managed. "More clench than butt cheeks," Blue chimed in. "More competition than American Idol," Frankie stuck out her chest and showed them her diva booty roll. The girls burst out laughing. "Nice!" Blue lifted her purple gloved hand. Frankie slapped it without a single spark. "I hate to be a downer..." Claudine shuffled back into the conversation wearing her slippers and robe. "But that girl will destroy you if she catches you with Brett." "I'm not worried," Frankie tossed her hair back. "I've seen all the teen movies, and the nice girl gets the boy in the end.

Viktor was swinging a leather duffle and wearing a black Adidas tracksuit and his favorite brown UGG slippers with a hole in the toe. "Worn and old, just like Viv," he'd say when Frankie made fun of them, and then his wife would swat him on the arm. But Frankie knew he was just joking, because Viveka was the type of woman you wished was in a magazine just so you could stare at her violet-colored eyes and shiny black hair without being called a stalker or a freak.

The truth is that when you kill a man it doesn't matter if he's your enemy and if he's trying to kill you. That moment of his death will eat at you for the rest of your life. It'll dig into bone so deep inside you that not even the hand of God is going to be able to pull it out, I don't care how much you pray. And you multiply that feeling by several years and too many doomed engagements and more horror, Frankie, than you can possibly imagine. And the utter senselessness and the total hopelessness become your enemy as much as any man pointing a rifle at you.

I turn around and start walking, careful to keep my head down so no one sees the moment when the huge smile I was fighting finally breaks free. It takes every ounce of self-control not to look back and see if he's watching.

Did you hear about the recently discovered temple in the Sudan ?" I stared at him. "Yeah. I'm a regular reader of National Geographic." Ol' Frankie's brows quirked. "You wield sarcasm, madam, as well as a master swordsman does." "Gee, thanks." I smiled at him and batted my lashes. Quit flirting . Patrick flicked the command into my head. He sounded half-annoyed, half-amused. I'm not flirting. Quit being cute and likeable. An impossible request. I've always been too adorable for words.

I was always fishing for something on the radio. Just like trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life. I moved the dial up and down and Roy Orbison's voice came blasting out of the small speakers. His new song, "Running Scared," exploded into the room. Orbison, though, transcended all the genres - folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn't even been invented yet. He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, "Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, "Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him.

The articles were extremely eye-opening. Not just in Teen Vogue but in Seventeen and CosmoGirl as well. They were all about being yourself, staying natural, loving your body as is, and going green! The messages were the exact opposite of Vik and Viv's. Hmmmmm. Frankie turned to face the full-length mirror that was up against the yellow wardrobe. She opened her robe and examined her body. Fit, muscular, and exquisitely proportioned, she agreed with the magazines. So what if her skin was mint? Or her limbs were attached with seams? According to the magazines, which were - no offense! - way more in touch with the times than her parents were, she was suppose to love her body just the way it was. And she did! Therefor if the normies read magazines (which obviously they did, because they were in them), then they would love her, too. Natural was in. Besides she was Daddy's perfect little girl. And who didn't love perfect?

...Mr. Wodehouse is a prose stylist of such startling talent that Frankie nearly skipped around with glee when she first read some of his phrases. Until her discovery of Something Fresh on the top shelf of Ruth's bookshelf one bored summer morning, Frankie's leisure reading had consister primarily of paperback mysteries she found on the spinning racks at the public library down the block from her house, and the short stories of Dorothy Parker. Wodehouse's jubilant wordplay bore itself into her synapses like a worm into a fresh ear of corn.

He paused and caught her in the flash of his eyes. The term green with envy sprung to mind for some reason, though that wasn't the particular sin that burned through her when he locked her to the spot. Nope. That would be lust, her conscience whispered. She scowled. Was it possible for your own body to turn traitor on you? If it was, then hers most certainly had.

Where is Frankie, anyway?" Dad asks. "It's almost noon. I'm surprised you two can stand the separation." I take a deep breath and gulp down some orange juice. Well, Dad, first Frankie lied to me about losing her virginity to the foreign exchange student on the soccer field, and how your first time can't be special and all that. Then we decided to have this twenty boy contest but we only met, like, half, and she lied again about sleeping with one of them when really they just kind of fooled around naked and broke up. Meanwhile, when I was casting off my virginity with boy number five (or was he six?), Frankie read my journal and found out that I was in love with Matt for a million years and by the way, right after you took that picture of us with all the cake and frosting, he kissed me and started this whole long thing that we weren't allowed to tell her about. Frankie was so mad that she threw my journal into the bottom of the ocean, where it was banished for all eternity with a lovesick mermaid who cries out pieces of sea glass. Are you going to eat that bacon? ... "I'll probably see her later," I say.

You can't have 'ass' as a word." Tess declared. She picked up Farley's tiles and thrust them back into her hand."You're forgetting the rules. You're supposed to put down words that you know relate to Oliver.Like hockey. Or six pack." Farley pulled a face. "Unless you're commenting on the fact that he has a really great ass, in which case ewww, but okay.

EVERYONE JOINS A BAND IN THIS LIFE. You are born into your first one. Your mother plays the lead. She shares the stage with your father and siblings. Or perhaps your father is absent, an empty stool under a spotlight. But he is still a founding member, and if he surfaces one day, you will have to make room for him. As life goes on, you will join other bands, some through friendship, some through romance, some through neighborhoods, school, an army. Maybe you will all dress the same, or laugh at your own private vocabulary. Maybe you will flop on couches backstage, or share a boardroom table, or crowd around a galley inside a ship. But in each band you join, you will play a distinct part, and it will affect you as much as you affect it. And, as is usually the fate with bands, most of them will break up—through distance, differences, divorce, or death.