β
Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.
β
β
Nora Ephron
β
The plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.
β
β
Nick Hornby (How to Be Good)
β
The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
β
β
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
β
She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.
β
β
Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
β
Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] - 'I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger.' What a sexy little paradox.
β
β
Russell Brand (My Booky Wook)
β
A man's sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions.... He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer--because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement.
β
β
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
β
Edward Cullen can take his stupid heroine and OD on it. Kate is my own personal brand of Viagra.
β
β
Emma Chase (Tangled (Tangled, #1))
β
It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.
β
β
Nick Hornby (How to Be Good)
β
When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.
β
β
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Ain't She Sweet?)
β
What is a Gallagher Girl?
She's a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy... a Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be.
β
β
Ally Carter (United We Spy (Gallagher Girls, #6))
β
Roland gave her a courtierβs smile. βAnd what sort of work do you do for my uncle?
β
Dorian shifted on his feet and Chaol went very still, but Celaena returned Rolandβs smile and said, βI bury the kingβs opponents where nobody will ever find them.
β
β
Sarah J. Maas (Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2))
β
So what you're saying is, I'm your brand of heroin?" I teased, trying to lighten the mood.
He smiled swiftly, seeming to appreciate my effort. "Yes, you are exactly my brand of heroin.
β
β
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
β
What if I forgave myself? I thought. What if I forgave myself even though I'd done something I shouldn't have? What if I was a liar and a cheat and there was no excuse for what I'd done other than because it was what I wanted and needed to do? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time I wouldn't do anything differently than I had done? What if I'd actually wanted to fuck every one of those men? What if heroin taught me something? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?
β
β
Cheryl Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail)
β
Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality -- for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.
β
β
Terri Windling
β
I can't imagine a romance novel published today where the hero rapes the heroine and she falls in love with him.
β
β
Julia Quinn
β
People are sheep. TV is the shepherd.
β
β
Jess C. Scott (Literary Heroin (Gluttony): A Twilight Parody)
β
All my life I thought that the story was over when the hero and heroine were safely engaged -- after all, what's good enough for Jane Austen ought to be good enough for anyone. But it's a lie. The story is about to begin, and every day will be a new piece of the plot.
β
β
Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)
β
Who are your favorite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi as their ideal feminine model.
β
β
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
β
It's a good thing most people bleed on the inside or this would be a gory, blood-smeared earth.
β
β
Beatrice Sparks (Go Ask Alice)
β
I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like
β
β
Jane Austen (Emma)
β
Weβre all searching for something to fill up what I like to call that big, God-shaped hole in our souls. Some people use alcohol, or sex, or their children, or food, or money, or music, or heroin. A lot of people even use the concept of God itself. I could go on and on. I used to know a girl who used shoes. She had over two-hundred pairs. But itβs all the same thing, really. People, for some stupid reason, think they can escape their sorrows.
β
β
Tiffanie DeBartolo (God-Shaped Hole)
β
She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague βsheβ of all the poetry books.
β
β
Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary)
β
He was like chocolate-covered heroin, and I was an addict through and through.
β
β
Darynda Jones (Second Grave on the Left (Charley Davidson, #2))
β
We all need something to help us unwind at the end of the day. You might have a glass of wine, or a joint, or a big delicious blob of heroin to silence your silly brainbox of its witterings but there has to be some form of punctuation, or life just seems utterly relentless.
β
β
Russell Brand (My Booky Wook)
β
I strongly believe that love is the answer and that it can mend even the deepest unseen wounds. Love can heal, love can console, love can strengthen, and yes, love can make change.
β
β
Somaly Mam (The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine)
β
Find out what your hero or heroine wants, and when he or she wakes up in the morning, just follow him or her all day..
β
β
Ray Bradbury
β
Fuck,β Zane murmured, pulling Ty closer. βYouβre worse than heroin.
β
β
Abigail Roux (Cut & Run (Cut & Run, #1))
β
I never go to movies where the hero's tits are bigger than the heroine's.
β
β
Groucho Marx
β
But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.
β
β
Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey: a play in two acts, based upon the novel)
β
Can you enter a house uninvited?"
"No."
"Why?"
"That would be rude.
β
β
Abigail Gibbs (Dinner with a Vampire (The Dark Heroine, #1))
β
His touch was like heroin in my veins, and I was a grateful addict.
β
β
Kitty Thomas (Comfort Food)
β
Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market.
β
β
Eric J. Hobsbawm
β
Among our egocentric sad-sacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation.
β
β
Tom Robbins (Wild Ducks Flying Backward)
β
There is something about spending Christmas alone, naked, sitting by the Christmas tree gripping a shotgun, that lets you know your life is spinning dangerously outta control.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
Now there is apparently a causal link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism.
β
β
Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting)
β
Hereβs what I know: death abducts the dying, but grief steals from those left behind.
β
β
Katherine Owen (Seeing Julia)
β
A woman has but two loves in life: the one who broke her heart and the one she spends the rest of her life with."
- Carolyn Chase, former Broadcast Journalist and heroine Kate Theodore's mother
β
β
Liz Newman
β
I know something about dread myself, and appreciate the elaborate systems with which some people fill the void, appreciate all the opiates of the people, whether they are as accessible as alcohol and heroin and promiscuity or as hard to come by as faith in God or History.
β
β
Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem)
β
Life is like a long ride to nowhere in particular.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
Every time I get nervous or scared, I remind myself that every good story needs twists and turns. Every heroine needs an adventure.
β
β
Victoria E. Schwab (City of Ghosts (Cassidy Blake, #1))
β
A Short Alternative Medical Dictionary
Definitions courtesy of Dr Lemuel Pillmeister (also known as Lemmy)
Addiction - When you can give up something any time, as long as it's next Tuesday.
Cocaine - Peruvian Marching Powder. A stimulant that has the extraordinary effect that the more you do, the more you laugh out of context.
Depression - When everything you laugh at is miserable and you can't seem to stop.
Heroin - A drug that helps you to escape reality, while making it much harder to cope when you are recaptured.
Psychosis - When everybody turns into tiny dolls and they have needles in their mouths and they hate you and you don't care because you have THE KNIFE! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
I've done nothing for the past five years but try to be the hero who protects her. The problem? Heroines don't need protecting.
β
β
Colleen Hoover (Maybe Someday (Maybe, #1))
β
He had even read Pride and Prejudice--although he had thought that many of the heroine's problems would have been solved if someone had simply strangled her mother.
β
β
Lynn Viehl (Private Demon (Darkyn #2))
β
Aren't most romance heros, or heros in fiction of any kind, generally superior to real men? Same goes for heroines and real women.
β
β
Nora Roberts
β
He was depressed. He was addicted to heroin. And I think there comes a time when all the beauty in the world just isnβt enough.
β
β
Antony John (Five Flavors of Dumb)
β
Single moms: You are a doctor, a teacher, a nurse, a maid, a cook, a referee, a heroine, a provider, a defender, a protector, a true Superwoman. Wear your cape proudly.
β
β
Mandy Hale (The Single WomanβLife, Love, and a Dash of Sass: Embracing Singleness with Confidence)
β
Really?" she drawled. "You'd rather take your chances with her?"
"At least I know when she's manipulating me."
"News flash: I have never manipulated you. And I hope I never have to. But you aren't the only one with responsibilities and an entire country of people who are relying on you. So I'm sorry, your majesty, but you are coming with me, and you're just going to have to figure out whether or not you can trust me when we're not so pressed for time."
Then she raised her hand and shot him.
β
β
Marissa Meyer (Cress (The Lunar Chronicles, #3))
β
Our heroine knew that the mother would always leave the window open for her children to fly back by; so they stayed away for years and had a lovely time...
β
β
J.M. Barrie
β
I may be in pain, but I am not weak.
β
β
Veronica Roth (Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark, #1))
β
when you canβt climb your way out of such a hole, you tend to crouch down and call it homeβ¦
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
There's nothin like a trail of ΓlooΓ to finΓ your way Γack home
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
Where did this come from? Do you know what this is? Luca is going to sneak out of bed in the middle of the night and squirt it on his tongue. It's like drugs for ten-year-olds. Today it's Ice Magic. Tomorrow, heroin.
β
β
Melina Marchetta (Saving Francesca)
β
For [Jane Austen and the readers of Pride and Prejudice], as for Mr. Darcy, [Elizabeth Bennett's] solitary walks express the independence that literally takes the heroine out of the social sphere of the houses and their inhabitants, into a larger, lonelier world where she is free to think: walking articulates both physical and mental freedom.
β
β
Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust: A History of Walking)
β
All the "not readies," all the "I need time," are understandable, but only for a short while. The truth is that there is never a "completely ready," there is never a really "right time."
As with any descent to the unconscious, there comes a time when one simply hopes for the best, pinches one's nose, and jumps into the abyss. If this were not so, we would not have needed to create the words heroine, hero, or courage.
β
β
Clarissa Pinkola EstΓ©s (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
β
The frailest woman will become a heroine when the life of her own child is at stake. And only the will to save the race and native land or the State, which offers protection to the race, has in all ages been the urge which has forced men to face the weapons of their enemies.
β
β
Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)
β
I'm not telling you what I look like in any detail. I hate those endless descriptions of a heroine's physical attributes... First of all, it's boring. You should be able to imagine me without all the gory details of my hairstyle or the size of my thighs. And second, it really bothers me how in books it seems like the only two choices are perfection or self-hatred. As if readers will only like a character who's ideal - or completely shattered. Give me a break. People have got to be smarter than that.
β
β
E. Lockhart (The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver (Ruby Oliver, #1))
β
Sometimes you can learn, even from a bad experience. By coping you become stronger. The pain does not go away, but it becomes manageable.
β
β
Somaly Mam (The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine)
β
Beating heroin is child's play compared to beating your childhood.
β
β
Stephen King (The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, #3))
β
Ah, youth. It's like heroin you've smoked instead of snorted. Gone so fast you can't believe you still have to pay for it.
β
β
Josh Bazell (Beat the Reaper (Peter Brown, #1))
β
Your scent is like a drug to me like my own personal brand of heroin.
β
β
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
β
No one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine... But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine...
β
β
Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)
β
Who lives longer? The man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or a man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes 'till 95? One passes his 24 months in eternity. All the years of the beefeater are lived only in time.
β
β
Aldous Huxley
β
Journalism is "a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world of misfits and drunkards and failures.
β
β
Hunter S. Thompson
β
California is like a beautiful wild kid on heroin, high as a kite and thinking she's on top of the world, not knowing she's dying, not believing it even if you show her the marks.
β
β
S.E. Hinton (Rumble Fish)
β
If I told you that Iβm trying to save the world, would you believe me?
β
β
Leigh Bardugo (Shadow and Bone (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #1))
β
Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose lifeβ¦ But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethinβ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when youβve got heroin?
β
β
Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting)
β
It would be too much for me to deal with to be sitting up there next to God, Bon Scott, Sid Vicious, and Jimi Hendrix, and hear somebody read my obituary from below:
NIKKI SIXX DIED TODAY...FUCKING GOLFING
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
What is a Gallagher Girl?" Liz asked one final time. "She's a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy. And now we are at the end of our time at school, and the one thing I know for certain is this: a Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be.
β
β
Ally Carter (United We Spy (Gallagher Girls, #6))
β
Kidnapped by a vampire, death by a squid. How tragic.
β
β
Abigail Gibbs (Dinner with a Vampire (The Dark Heroine, #1))
β
I'll let you in on a secret, honey. The knight who has serious chinks in his armor but never falls is the true hero. That means he's won battles and doesn't waste time polishing his armor so he can look good while he rides in parades that are tributes to his glory. He just drags himself back on his steed and keeps right on battling. And if he's the right kind of knight, he never rides alone. The best heroes inspire loyalty. The best heroes keep fighting the good fight, tirelessly, quietly. The best heroes always have scars. If they didn't, the heroine would have nothing to do. It's her job to help the hero let all that stuff go in order that her man can be strong enough to fight on but when he's with her he's free to just 'breathe'.
β
β
Kristen Ashley (Breathe (Colorado Mountain, #4))
β
A great character needs trials to overcomeβexperiences to give them depth, to make them vulnerable, relatable, and likable. Good characters need hardships to make them strong. The idea makes sense, but it still sucks if youβre the heroine.
β
β
Kelly Oram (Cinder & Ella (Cinder & Ella, #1))
β
And worse, far worse β he wasn't just kissing me. He was making me like it! And he was somehow, by some nefarious chauvinistic manly trick managing to make me kiss him back!
β
β
Robert Thier (Storm and Silence (Storm and Silence, #1))
β
Anything worth doing, is worth overdoing.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
Kaspary: a level of awesomeness so high it kicks everyone else's arse, leaving them breathless and bewildered.
β
β
Abigail Gibbs (Dinner with a Vampire (The Dark Heroine, #1))
β
I was so happy every morning when I woke up that I was pissing smiley faces.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
As it happened, I didn't grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I want to hear.
β
β
Joan Didion
β
My dick didn't seem to be aware that she was there. She kept asking me what was wrong, and I was so out of it that I thought she meant what was wrong with the world, so I started talking about global poverty and shit. I'm not surprised she left. I suspect she won't be coming back.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
We're nothing if we're not loved. When you meet somebody who is more important to you than yourself, that has to be the most important thing in life, really. And I think we are all striving for it in different ways. I also believe very, very strongly that everybody is the hero/heroine of his/her own life. I try to make my characters kind of ordinary, somebody that anybody could be. Because we've all had loves, perhaps love and loss, people can relate to my characters
β
β
Maeve Binchy
β
Claire: Dear Claire, "What" and "If" are two words as non-threatening as words can be. But put them together side-by-side and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life: What if? What if? What if? I don't know how your story ended but if what you felt then was true love, then it's never too late. If it was true then, why wouldn't it be true now? You need only the courage to follow your heart. I don't know what a love like Juliet's feels like - love to leave loved ones for, love to cross oceans for but I'd like to believe if I ever were to feel it, that I will have the courage to seize it. And, Claire, if you didn't, I hope one day that you will. All my love, Juliet
β
β
Lise Friedman (Letters to Juliet: Celebrating Shakespeare's Greatest Heroine, the Magical City of Verona, and the Power of Love)
β
Sometimes I think I should just buy a blow-up party doll. Same level of intelligence, plastic, and full of air.
The problem is, I'd probably fall in love.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
You donβt need princes to save you. I donβt have a lot of patience for stories in which women are rescued by men.
β
β
Neil Gaiman (The Sleeper and the Spindle)
β
To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dreamworld in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times β The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.
β
β
Eleanor Roosevelt (This is My Story)
β
And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotuslands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. I could hear an indescribable seething roar which wasn't in my ear but everywhere and had nothing to do with sounds. I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it. I realized it was only because of the stability of the intrinsic Mind that these ripples of birth and death took place, like the action of the wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water. I felt sweet, swinging bliss, like a big shot of heroin in the mainline vein; like a gulp of wine late in the afternoon and it makes you shudder; my feet tingled. I thought I was going to die the very next moment. But I didn't die...
β
β
Jack Kerouac (On the Road (The Viking Critical Library))
β
When You've lost it all....that's when you realize that Life is Beautiful.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
Once upon a time, when I was a child reading fairy tales, I'd ached to have my own adventures. Not that I'd wanted to be some dippy heroine languishing in a tower, awaiting rescue. No, I'd wanted to be the knight, charging into battle against overwhelming odds, or the plucky country lass who gets taken on as an apprentice to a great wizard. As I got older, I'd found out the hard way that adventures are rarely anything like the books say. Half the time you are scared out of your mind, and the rest you're bored and your feet hurt. I was beginning to believe that maybe I wasn't the adventurous type.
β
β
Karen Chance (Touch the Dark (Cassandra Palmer, #1))
β
People want to see the car crash instead of the race. But, when you're the one in the car that's crashing, it's not much fun. I'm enjoying the race.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
You know, it's pretty easy reading this book to see why I was angry and confused for all those years. I lived my life being told different stories: some true, some lies and I still don't know which is which. Children are born innocent. At birth we are very much like a new hard drive - no viruses, no bad information, no crap that's been downloaded into it yet. It's what we feed into that hard drive, or in my case "head drive" that starts the corruption of the files.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
I used to think the only way to be truly alive is to confront your mortality.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
I am not the heroine of this story.
And I'm not trying to be cute. It's the truth. I'm diagnosed borderline and seriously fucked-up. I hold grudges. I bottle my hate until it ferments into poison, and then I get high off the fumes. I'm completely dysfunctional and that's the way I like it, so don't expect a character arc where I finally find Redemption, Growth, and Change, or learn How to Forgive Myself and Others.
β
β
Leah Raeder (Black Iris)
β
When you die, every single muscle in your body hurts. Your body has closed down because it thinks it's done, and when it gets rebooted, every inch of you hurts. Plus I'd had the shit beaten out of me with a baseball bat.
β
β
Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
β
If they want to flirt or initiate a friendship, they should carefully avoid giving the impression they are taking the initiative; men do not like tomboys, nor bluestockings, nor thinking women; too much audacity, culture, intelligence, or character frightens them.
In most novels, as George Eliot observes, it is the dumb, blond heroine who outshines the virile brunette; and in The Mill on the Floss, Maggie tries in vain to reverse the roles; in the end she dies and it is blond Lucy who marries Stephen. In The Last of the Mohicans, vapid Alice wins the heroβs heart and not valiant Cora; in Little Women kindly Jo is only a childhood friend for Laurie; he vows his love to curly-haired and insipid Amy.
To be feminine is to show oneself as weak, futile, passive, and docile. The girl is supposed not only to primp and dress herself up but also to repress her spontaneity and substitute for it the grace and charm she has been taught by her elder sisters. Any self-assertion will take away from her femininity and her seductiveness.
β
β
Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex)
β
There is one province in which, sooner or later, virtually everyone gets dealt a leading role--hero, heroine, or villain.... Unlike the slight implications of quotidian dilemmas that confront the average citizen in other areas of life ... the stakes in this realm could not be higher. For chances are that at some point along the line you will hold in your hands another person's heart. There is no greater responsibility on the planet. However you contend with this fragile organ, which pounds or seizes in accordance with your caprice, will take your full measure.
β
β
Lionel Shriver (The Post-Birthday World)
β
Elinor had read countless stories in which the main characters fell sick at some point because they were so unhappy. She had always thought that a very romantic idea, but sheβd dismissed it as a pure invention of the world of books. All those wilting heroes and heroines who suddenly gave up the ghost just because of unrequited love or longing for something theyβd lost! Elinor had always enjoyed their sufferingsβas a reader will. After all, that was what you wanted from books: great emotions youβd never felt yourself, pain you could leave behind by closing the book if it got too bad. Death and destruction felt deliciously real conjured up with the right words, and you could leave them behind between the pages as you pleased, at no cost or risk to yourself.
β
β
Cornelia Funke (Inkdeath (Inkworld, #3))
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Well, it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths... The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy endings and all that... But the second kind, they show you life more like it is... The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up.
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Jennifer Donnelly (A Northern Light)
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Iβve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains β good, potent female villains. Not ill-tempered women who scheme about landing good men and better shoes (as if we had nothing more interesting to war over), not chilly WASP mothers (emotionally distant isnβt necessarily evil), not soapy vixens (merely bitchy doesnβt qualify either). Iβm talking violent, wicked women. Scary women. Donβt tell me you donβt know some. The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves β to the point of almost parodic encouragement β weβve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.
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Gillian Flynn
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when youβre sitting on a plane 40, 000 feet up in the air, looking out the window, dreaming of your future and how bright it appears to be, or maybe just watching the drops of rain being pushed into different designs from the force of air at 400 mph, well, life feels good. it feels safe, your seat belt is on and your feet are up. then the oxygen masks fall, the plane jumps, snaps and jolts. people start to scream, babies burst out crying, people start praying all in time to the overhead announcement that weβre gonna crash. right then, as your life flashes before your eyes, you hear yourself say, βgod, if you get me outta this one, iβll stop [insert lie here] forever.β right then the nose of the plane pulls up and the captain says, βwow, that was a close one, folks. weβre ok, weβll be landing in thirty minutes and weβre all safe and sound, sorry for the scareβ¦β thatβs how getting hooked on junk is, and when the kick is over you canβt believe you ever got on that plane in the first place. the question is, will you ever fly again?
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Nikki Sixx (The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star)
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Originally, he'd wanted to focus his work on the convict leasing system that had stolen years off of his great-grandpa H's life, but the deeper into the research he got, the bigger the project got. How could he talk about Great-Grandpa H's story without also talking about his grandma Willie and the millions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow? And if he mentioned the Great Migration, he'd have to talk about the cities that took that flock in. He'd have to talk about Harlem, And how could he talk about Harlem without mentioning his father's heroin addiction - the stints in prison, the criminal record? And if he was going to talk about heroin in Harlem in the '60s, wouldn't he also have to talk about crack everywhere in the '80s? And if he wrote about crack, he'd inevitably be writing, to, about the "war on drugs." And if he started talking about the war on drugs, he'd be talking about how nearly half of the black men he grew up with were on their way either into or out of what had become the harshest prison system in the world. And if he talked about why friends from his hood were doing five-year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he'd gone to college with smoked it openly every day, he'd get so angry that he'd slam the research book on the table of the beautiful but deadly silent Lane Reading Room of Green Library of Stanford University. And if he slammed the book down, then everyone in the room would stare and all they would see would be his skin and his anger, and they'd think they knew something about him, and it would be the same something that had justified putting his great-grandpa H in prison, only it would be different too, less obvious than it once was.
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Yaa Gyasi (Homegoing)
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When my husband had an affair with someone else I watched his eyes glaze over when we ate dinner together and I heard him singing to himself without me, and when he tended the garden it was not for me.
He was courteous and polite; he enjoyed being at home, but in the fantasy of his home I was not the one who sat opposite him and laughed at his jokes. He didn't want to change anything; he liked his life. The only thing he wanted to change was me.
It would have been better if he had hated me, or if he had abused me, or if he had packed his new suitcases and left.
As it was he continued to put his arm round me and talk about being a new wall to replace the rotten fence that divided our garden from his vegetable patch. I knew he would never leave our house. He had worked for it.
Day by day I felt myself disappearing. For my husband I was no longer a reality, I was one of the things around him. I was the fence which needed to be replaced. I watched myself in the mirror and saw that I was mo longer vivid and exciting. I was worn and gray like an old sweater you can't throw out but won't put on.
He admitted he was in love with her, but he said he loved me.
Translated, that means, I want everything. Translated, that means, I don't want to hurt you yet. Translated, that means, I don't know what to do, give me time.
Why, why should I give you time? What time are you giving me? I am in a cell waiting to be called for execution.
I loved him and I was in love with him. I didn't use language to make a war-zone of my heart.
'You're so simple and good,' he said, brushing the hair from my face.
He meant, Your emotions are not complex like mine. My dilemma is poetic.
But there was no dilemma. He no longer wanted me, but he wanted our life
Eventually, when he had been away with her for a few days and returned restless and conciliatory, I decided not to wait in my cell any longer. I went to where he was sleeping in another room and I asked him to leave. Very patiently he asked me to remember that the house was his home, that he couldn't be expected to make himself homeless because he was in love.
'Medea did,' I said, 'and Romeo and Juliet and Cressida, and Ruth in the Bible.'
He asked me to shut up. He wasn't a hero.
'Then why should I be a heroine?'
He didn't answer, he plucked at the blanket.
I considered my choices.
I could stay and be unhappy and humiliated.
I could leave and be unhappy and dignified.
I could Beg him to touch me again.
I could live in hope and die of bitterness.
I took some things and left. It wasn't easy, it was my home too.
I hear he's replaced the back fence.
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Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry)
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There's a peculiar thing that happens every time you get clean. You go through this sensation of rebirth. There's something intoxicating about the process of the comeback, and that becomes an element in the whole cycle of addiction. Once you've beaten yourself down with cocaine and heroin, and you manage to stop and walk out of the muck you begin to get your mind and body strong and reconnect with your spirit. The oppressive feeling of being a slave to the drugs is still in your mind, so by comparison, you feel phenomenal. You're happy to be alive, smelling the air and seeing the beauty around you...You have a choice of what to do. So you experience this jolt of joy that you're not where you came from and that in and of itself is a tricky thing to stop doing. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you know that every time you get clean, you'll have this great new feeling.
Cut to: a year later, when you've forgotten how bad it was and you don't have that pink-cloud sensation of being newly sober. When I look back, I see why these vicious cycles can develop in someone who's been sober for a long time and then relapses and doesn't want to stay out there using, doesn't want to die, but isn't taking the full measure to get well again. There's a concept in recovery that says 'Half-measures avail us nothing.' When you have a disease, you can't take half the process of getting well and think you're going to get half well; you do half the process of getting well, you're not going to get well at all, and you'll go back to where you came from. Without a thorough transformation, you're the same guy, and the same guy does the same shit. I kept half-measuring it, thinking I was going to at least get something out of this deal, and I kept getting nothing out of it
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Anthony Kiedis (Scar Tissue)