“
I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
“
The human body is the best work of art.
”
”
Jess C. Scott
“
A fit, healthy body—that is the best fashion statement
”
”
Jess C. Scott
“
I felt like an animal, and animals don’t know sin, do they?
”
”
Jess C. Scott (Wicked Lovely)
“
V-Day…if you need this one day in a year to show everyone else you truly care for “your loved one” I think it’s quite stupid. I hate this commercialism. It’s all artificial, and has nothing to do with real love.
”
”
Jess C. Scott (EyeLeash: A Blog Novel)
“
My head’ll explode if I continue with this escapism.
”
”
Jess C. Scott (EyeLeash: A Blog Novel)
“
Many of my movies have strong female leads- brave, self-sufficient girls that don't think twice about fighting for what they believe with all their heart. They'll need a friend, or a supporter, but never a savior. Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.
”
”
Hayao Miyazaki
“
Please, touch me, I pray.
”
”
Jess C. Scott (The Intern)
“
Sometimes you want to say, “I love you, but…”
Yet the “but” takes away the ‘I love you’. In love their are no ‘buts’ or ‘if’s’ or ‘when’. It’s just there, and always. No beginning, no end. It’s the condition-less state of the heart. Not a feeling that comes and goes at the whim of the emotions. It is there in our heart, a part of our heart…eventually grafting itself into each limb and cell of our bodies. Love changes our brain, the way we move and talk. Love lives in our spirit and graces us with its presence each day, until death.
To say “I love you, but….” is to say, “I did not love you at all”.
I say this to you now: I love you, with no beginning, no end. I love you as you have become an extra necessary organ in my body. I love you as only a girl could love a boy. Without fear. Without expectations. Wanting nothing in return, except that you allow me to keep you here in my heart, that I may always know your strength, your eyes, and your spirit that gave me freedom and let me fly.
”
”
Coco J. Ginger
“
What is a Wanderess? Bound by no boundaries, contained by no countries, tamed by no time, she is the force of nature’s course.
”
”
Roman Payne (The Wanderess)
“
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
--from "Mad Girl's Love Song: A Villanelle", written 1954
”
”
Sylvia Plath
“
Behind these eyes
there is a girl trapped within
her pain – a girl feeling all the emotions
of anger and sadness.
She’s fighting for a way out.” (In her eyes, p. 39)
”
”
Chimnese Davids (Muses of Wandering Passions)
“
Like a child who saves their favourite food on the plate for last, I try to save all thoughts of you for the end of the day so I can dream with the taste of you on my tongue.
”
”
Kamand Kojouri
“
As for you girls, you must risk everything for Freedom, and give everything for Passion, loving everything that your hearts and your bodies love. The only thing higher for a girl and more sacred for a young woman than her freedom and her passion should be her desire to make her life into poetry, surrendering everything she has to create a life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in her imagination.
”
”
Roman Payne
“
... People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds, people who possess strong feelings, even people with great minds and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls.
”
”
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky
“
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.
”
”
Melina Marchetta (Saving Francesca)
“
We don’t know yet if this girl is going to have sex tonight or not?”
“She will for sure. I can smell the desire. And it is getting stronger as the time is passing.
”
”
Rebecca Harlem (The Pink Cadillac)
“
When she does not find love, she may find poetry. Because she does not act, she observes, she feels, she records; a color, a smile awakens profound echoes within her; her destiny is outside her, scattered in cities already built, on the faces of men already marked by life, she makes contact, she relishes with passion and yet in a manner more detached, more free, than that of a young man. Being poorly integrated in the universe of humanity and hardly able to adapt herself therein, she, like the child, is able to see it objectively; instead of being interested solely in her grasp on things, she looks for their significance; she catches their special outlines, their unexpected metamorphoses. She rarely feels a bold creativeness, and usually she lacks the technique of self-expression; but in her conversation, her letters, her literary essays, her sketches, she manifests an original sensitivity. The young girl throws herself into things with ardor, because she is not yet deprived of her transcendence; and the fact that she accomplishes nothing, that she is nothing, will make her impulses only the more passionate. Empty and unlimited, she seeks from within her nothingness to attain All.
”
”
Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex)
“
I was flipping channels, watching this cheerleading program on MTV. They took a field hockey girl and “transformed” her into a cheerleader by the end of the show. I was just wondering: what if she liked field hockey better?
”
”
Jess C. Scott (EyeLeash: A Blog Novel)
“
Real love ought to be more like a tree and less like a flower. That's the kind of love my parents had. Not so consuming and more everlasting. And you see that tree over there? Now it's only showing green leaves, but during the spring it's covered in flowers. Because as reliable as trees are, they can also speak of beauty and passion.
”
”
Mya Robarts (The V Girl: A Coming of Age Story)
“
She told me to find a girl worth fighting for. The one that doesn’t come easy.
”
”
Jamie McGuire (A Beautiful Wedding (Beautiful, #2.5))
“
Never has it felt more important for me to tell stories of joy and abandon, passion and recklessness. Life is short and difficult, people. We must take our pleasures where we can find them. Let us not become so cautious that we forget to live.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (City of Girls)
“
Lately I can't help wanting us
to be like other people.
For example, if I were a smoker,
you'd lift a match to the cigarette
just as I put it between my lips.
It's never been like that
between us: none of that
easy chemistry, no quick, half automatic
flares. Everything between us
had to be learned.
Saturday finds me brooding
behind my book, all my fantasies
of seduction run up
against the rocks.
Tell me again
why you don't like
sex in the afternoon?
No, don't tell me--
I'll never understand you
never understand us, America's strangest
loving couple: they never
drink a bottle of wine together
and rarely look at each other.
Into each other's eyes, I mean.
”
”
Deborah Garrison (A Working Girl Can't Win)
“
The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.
”
”
Marcel Proust (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower)
“
Kaitlyn is that kind of girl that might be too interesting, might tempt you to get involved... A girl who challenged him, who could be my equal... Her mind was a place of blue pools and blazing meteors... She stood slim and proud as some medival witch princess against dawn."
-Gabriel
”
”
L.J. Smith (The Passion (Dark Visions, #3))
“
I like Dancing of Indian girls more than my parents’ prayers . Because they dance with love and passion . But my parents just say their prayers because they got used to it .
”
”
Ali Shariati
“
Desires are what can most easily ruin us, lovely.
”
”
Simona Panova (Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew))
“
What shall we do? All of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth, our mushrooming brains, and watermelon hearts?
”
”
Francesca Lia Block (Blood Roses)
“
I later discovered that in order to be a good athlete one must care intensely what is happening with a ball, even if one doesn't have possession of it. This was ultimately my failure: my inability to work up a passion for the location of balls.
”
”
Haven Kimmel (A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small In Mooreland, Indiana)
“
A woman must prefer her liberty over a man. To be happy, she must.
A man to be happy, however, must yearn for his woman more than his liberty.
This is the rightful order.
”
”
Roman Payne (Hope and Despair)
“
Oooh!" Bill squealed. "Very rococo."
"So, I'm really doing this? I'm just going to go down there and pretend--" (Luce)
"No pretending." Bill shook his head. "Own it. Own that cleavage, girl, you know you want to.
”
”
Lauren Kate (Passion (Fallen, #3))
“
[novan]: bassists are very good with their fingers
[novan]: and some of us sing backup vocals, so that means we're good with our mouths too...
(~ IM chat with Novan Chang, 18, bassist)
”
”
Jess C. Scott (EyeLeash: A Blog Novel)
“
I am now convinced that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards her. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this.
”
”
Jane Austen
“
Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love.
”
”
Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels, #9))
“
Love and hate, despite their polar opposites, are both feelings that are induced by passion. I can handle that. It’s the indifference I don’t know how to process.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (This Girl (Slammed, #3))
“
What makes the perfect kiss? Closing your eyes when you kiss is important. Or lifting up the leg, but that's more of a girl thing, I'm manly. Passion is good! She brings out the best in me. (Selena)
”
”
Justin Bieber
“
I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between...I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
“
but curiosity is a restless and scrupulous passion, and no one girl can endure, with patience, that hers should be baffled by another.
”
”
J. Sheridan Le Fanu (Carmilla)
“
She threw the door open. The room seemed to be a sort of library, the walls lined with books. It was brightly lit, light streaming through a tall picture window. In the middle of the room stood Jace. He wasn't alone, though-not by a long shot. There was a dark-haired girl with him, a girl Clary had never seen before, and the two of them were locked together in a passionate embrace
”
”
Cassandra Clare (City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments, #3))
“
The answers to making it, to me, are a lot more universal than anyone's race or gender, and center on having a tolerance for delayed gratification, a passion for the craft, and a willingness to fail.
”
”
Ali Wong (Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, & Advice for Living Your Best Life)
“
When a Wanderess has been caged,
or perched with her wings clipped,
She lives like a Stoic,
She lives most heroic,
smiling with ruby, moistened lips
once her cup of Death is welcome sipped.
”
”
Roman Payne
“
I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains. You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn't any brains.
”
”
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
“
Your mother and I had always been secretly pleased that you were so headstrong and passionate about your causes. Once you were gone, we understood that these were the qualities that painted young men as smart and ambitious and young women as trouble.
”
”
Karin Slaughter (Pretty Girls)
“
Most girls prefer flowers over trees.' I brush my fingers on the petals." These orange flowers blossom quickly. They speak of passion. Of beauty." I take a witheting flower that had dropped to the ground and worry it between my fingers. "But they don't last; they wither so easily. Flowers have limited growth. A tree might not speak of passion but sturdiness. Yet it grows higher and lasts more. Some of these trees have been here before I was born and they'll be here once I'm gone.
”
”
Mya Robarts (The V Girl: A Coming of Age Story)
“
When no possessions keep us, when no countries contain us, and no time detains us, man becomes a heroic wanderer, and woman, a wanderess.
”
”
Roman Payne (The Wanderess)
“
I love the way she seems to feel things with her entire body. I wonder why a girl who is so obviously passionate is so adamantly against passion.
”
”
Nicola Yoon (The Sun Is Also a Star)
“
Purpose and passion - purpose is what will guide you to your best self and the passion will keep you there.
”
”
Nikki Rowe
“
She was far too busy living out a passionate romance with Jesus Christ to be pining after an earthly prince.
”
”
Leslie Ludy (The Lost Art of True Beauty: The Set-Apart Girl's Guide to Feminine Grace)
“
I want so obviously, so desperately to be loved, and to be capable of love. I am still so naive; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don't ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?
”
”
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
“
... Clara was a teenage girl like any other; the object of her passion was only an accessory to the passion itself, a passion that through its long suppression was now asserting itself with volcanic necessity.
”
”
Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
“
Ô, the wine of a woman from heaven is sent,
more perfect than all that a man can invent.
”
”
Roman Payne (The Love of Europa: Limited Time Edition (Only the First Chapters))
“
Straight guys only feel three ways about girls . . . First, either they love you, and they show it by writing a song about you, like Gabriel, and asking you out, and everything is nice and fun like it should be. Second, they love you, but they’re scared of their passion for you because it’s so strong, like your boy Christopher, so they stuff it way, way down and ignore you, or do stupid things like make fun of you because they don’t know how to express it any other way, because they’re immature little babies and are too shy to, say, write a song about you. Or third, there’s something wrong with them, and they start out nice and loving and then turn around and do stupid things like sleep with other girls behind your back, like Justin Bay. But we’ll never figure out what went wrong with them, and neither will they, so it’s not worth thinking about. Okay? That’s it. The end.”
Lulu Collins
”
”
Meg Cabot (Airhead (Airhead, #1))
“
I knew liking girls could be hard when you're also a girl. It usually was, at least for a while. But it was beautiful too. So fucking beautiful.
Liking girls when you're a girl was power. It was light. Hope. Joy. Passion.
Sometimes it took girls who liked girls a little while to find that. But when they found it, they flew.
”
”
Alice Oseman (Loveless)
“
When I was very young and in the cave of Trophonius I forgot to laugh. Then, when I got older, when I opened my eyes and saw the real world, I began to laugh and I haven’t stopped since. I saw that the meaning of life was to get a livelihood, that the goal of life was to be a High Court judge, that the bright joy of love was to marry a well-off girl, that the blessing of friendship was to help each other out of a financial tight spot, that wisdom was what the majority said it was, that passion was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined 10 rix-dollars, that cordiality was to say ‘You’re welcome’ after a meal, and that the fear of God was to go to communion once a year. That’s what I saw. And I laughed.
”
”
Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: A Fragment of Life)
“
If he decided to pursue Sienna...Sucking in a breath Indigo promised herself she'd warn the girl if and when the time came-because no woman should have to face that campaign unprepared.
”
”
Nalini Singh (Play of Passion (Psy-Changeling, #9))
“
The horror of knowing someone and living with them and even thinking you're lucky and then wham and now you know that every person is really two people and how can you ever know what the other half is up to.
”
”
Michelle Tea (The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America)
“
We're going to right the world and live. I mean live our lives the way lives were meant to be lived. With the throat and wrists. With rage and desire, and joy and grief, and love till it hurts, maybe. But goddamn, girl. Live.
”
”
Sandra Cisneros
“
What?"
"That's sweet."
I am sweet. My heart flip-flops and I bite my lip a little bit. Sweet as in a lollipop, or sweet as in a girl you wold like to kiss passionately in the stacks? That's the question.
”
”
Carrie Jones (Need (Need, #1))
“
A POCKET-SIZED GIRL
He keeps me in his pocket
for a rainy day;
he swears I'm not an object
as he yo-yo's me away.
A friend is what we'll call it,
but my friend, he does not know,
each time it rains I love him—
so to his pocket, I must go.
He thinks he's being clever,
but I am not a fool;
his love ain't worth a penny,
so to my heart I must be cruel.
”
”
Coco J. Ginger
“
A brave girl! And a unique one. The best that I have ever met in my life.
”
”
Olga Goa (Fateful Italian Passion)
“
You can’t be friends with someone you have feelings for. It’ll just be a constant reminder of what you can’t have. It’s like putting boiling water in an ice cold glass. It’s gonna bust and make a mess.
”
”
Jaime Reed (Keep Me In Mind)
“
Scent is such a powerful tool of attraction, that if a woman has this tool perfectly tuned, she needs no other. I will forgive her a large nose, a cleft lip, even crossed-eyes; and I’ll bathe in the jouissance of her intoxicating odour.
”
”
Roman Payne
“
People are motivated to break their moral compasses for a variety of primal reasons: survival, hate, love, envy, passion. And money.
”
”
Greer Hendricks (An Anonymous Girl)
“
...and the most intense desire gave force to her passionate words as the girl glanced despairingly about the dreary room like a caged creature on the point of breaking loose.
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (A Long Fatal Love Chase)
“
It was like trying to break up with the color orange, or Wednesday, or silent e. It was the most passionate and tumultuous relationship I'd ever known.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Talking to Girls About Duran Duran)
“
As for girls, they must risk everything for freedom, and give everything for passion... loving everything that their hearts and their bodies love. The only thing higher for a girl and more sacred for a young woman than her freedom and her passion should be her desire to make her life into poetry, surrendering everything she has to create a life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in her imagination.
”
”
Roman Payne
“
Remember me as the girl who married you, the woman who had your babies, who kept your house, weeded your garden, your soul mate and best friend. I was the woman who could make you laugh and cry. I could calm you when you were upset but yet infuriate you also like no other. For the passion and the love we shared, I thank-you. I could read your mind and finish your sentences. I knew everything you loved and hated and we had no secrets from one another. I knew what to say when you were upset to make things alright again. I felt your pain and I shared your joy. I embraced your strengths and celebrated your differences. I love you and everything about you and the physical limitations of worlds will not change that”.
”
”
Annette J. Dunlea
“
She is often the broken-winged one, who does everything all wrong until people realize she's been doing it... pretty right all along. She's the poor girl who never dressed right, who had torn hose, and they were all baggy around her ankles. She's the Raggedy Ann of the sophisticated world, who pulls it out at the last minute, flies by the seat of her pants, cackling all the way home. She is the late bloomer, the late start, the autumn bush, the winter holly. She is Baubo, all the classical Greek goddesses. She is the old girl who still blushes, and laughs, and dances. She's the truth teller, maybe that people hate to hear, but they learn to listen to. She is not dumb and in some ways is not shrewd. She works on passion, and the doll in her pocket, and the intuition that leads her into and through all the world.
”
”
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Women Who Run With the Wolves)
“
The fiery tickle of outrage burned up her throat. “How the hell would you know that when you never gave me a chance?”
Something dark and scorching flickered behind his eyes. “Because no other girl has ever made me want to forget all my own rules for them.
”
”
Airicka Phoenix (Games of Fire)
“
He reached for her and kissed her. It was all at once passionate, as if there was too much in him to contain. He was immediately swept up in it. It took no effort, the difference between swimming on your own and being washed away in a flood.
”
”
Sarah Addison Allen (The Girl Who Chased the Moon)
“
When we heard about the hippies, the barely more than boys and girls who decided to try something different ... we laughed at them. We condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives
”
”
June Jordan (Passion)
“
As soon as the words presented themselves, Gabriel knew that they were perfect for him. Perfect for what he was contemplating doing to her. Perfect for his own self-justification.
Tasting. Taking. Sucking. Sinning. Draining. Abandoning.
She was pure. She was innocent. He wanted her.
Facilis descensus Averni.
But he would not be the one to make her bleed. He could not, would not, make another girl bleed for the rest of his life. All thoughts of seduction and mad, passionate f*cking on desks and chairs, against walls and bookshelves and windows, immediately gave way. He would not take her. He would not mark her and claim what he had no right to claim.
”
”
Sylvain Reynard (Gabriel's Inferno (Gabriel's Inferno, #1))
“
I KNEW IT WAS OVER
when tonight you couldn't make the phone ring
when you used to make the sun rise
when trees used to throw themselves
in front of you
to be paper for love letters
that was how i knew i had to do it
swaddle the kids we never had
against january's cold slice
bundle them in winter
clothes they never needed
so i could drop them off at my mom's
even though she lives on the other side of the country
and at this late west coast hour is
assuredly east coast sleeping
peacefully
her house was lit like a candle
the way homes should be
warm and golden
and home
and the kids ran in
and jumped at the bichon frise
named lucky
that she never had
they hugged the dog
it wriggled
and the kids were happy
yours and mine
the ones we never had
and my mom was
grand maternal, which is to say, with style
that only comes when you've seen
enough to know grace
like when to pretend it's christmas or
a birthday so
she lit her voice with tiny
lights and pretended
she didn't see me crying
as i drove away
to the hotel connected to the bar
where i ordered the cheapest whisky they had
just because it shares your first name
because they don't make a whisky
called baby
and i only thought what i got
was what
i ordered
i toasted the hangover
inevitable as sun
that used to rise
in your name
i toasted the carnivals
we never went to
and the things you never won
for me
the ferris wheels we never
kissed on and all the dreams
between us
that sat there
like balloons on a carney's board
waiting to explode with passion
but slowly deflated
hung slave
under the pin-
prick of a tack
hung
heads down
like lovers
when it doesn't
work, like me
at last call
after too many cheap
too many sweet
too much
whisky makes me
sick, like the smell of cheap,
like the smell of
the dead
like the cheap, dead flowers
you never sent
that i never threw
out of the window
of a car
i never
really
owned
”
”
Daphne Gottlieb (Final Girl)
“
Used to be he
was my heart's desire.
His forthright gaze,
his expert hands:
I'd lie on the couch with my eyes
closed just thinking about it.
Never about the fact
that everything changes,
that even this,
my best passion,
would not be immune.
No, I would bask on in an
eternal daydream of the hands
finding me, the gaze like a winding
stair coaxing me down. . . .
Until I caught a glimpse
of something in the mirror:
silly girl in her lingerie,
dancing with the furniture--
a hot little bundle, flush with
cliches. Into that pair
of too-bright eyes I looked
and saw myself. And something else:
he would never look that way.
”
”
Deborah Garrison (A Working Girl Can't Win)
“
But what I kept wondering about is this: that first second when she felt her skirt burning, what did she think? Before she knew it was candles, did she think she'd done it herself? With the amazing turns of her hips, and the warmth of the music inside her, did she believe, for even one glorious second, that her passion had arrived?
”
”
Aimee Bender (The Girl in the Flammable Skirt)
“
Feelings, she learned, were hard to fight. She treasured his smiles and compliments and tried not to dwell on the fact that he gave this things to his friend Kel.
His dreamy-eyed gazes, poems, and fits of passionate melancholy were for Uline. It was hard not to resent the older girl.
”
”
Tamora Pierce (Page (Protector of the Small, #2))
“
Beginning when we are girls, most of us are taught to deflect praise. We apologize for our accomplishments. We try to level the field with our family and friends by downplaying our brilliance. We settle for the passenger’s seat when we long to drive. That’s why so many of us have been willing to hide our light as adults. Instead of being filled with all the passion and purpose that enable us to offer our best to the world, we empty ourselves in an effort to silence our critics. The truth is that the naysayers in your life can never be fully satisfied. Whether you hide or shine, they’ll always feel threatened because they don’t believe they are enough. So stop paying attention to them. Every time you suppress some part of yourself or allow others to play you small, you are ignoring the owner’s manual your Creator gave you. What I know for sure is this: You are built not to shrink down to less but to blossom into more. To be more splendid. To be more extraordinary. To use every moment to fill yourself up.
”
”
Oprah Winfrey (What I Know For Sure)
“
I had meant my promise to George. I had said that I was, before anything else, a Boleyn and a Howard through and through; but now, sitting in th shadowy room, looking out over the gray slates of the city, and up at the dark clouds leaning on the roof of Westminster Palace, I suddenly realized that George was wrong, and that my family was wrong, and that I had been wrong-- for all my life. I was not a Howard before anything else. Before anything else I was a woman who was capable of passion and who had a great need and a great desire for love, I didn't want the rewards for which Anne had surrendered her youth. I didn' want the arid glamour of George's life, I wanted the heat and the sweat and the passion of a man that I could love and trust. And I wanted to give myself to him: not for advantage, but for desire.
”
”
Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl (The Plantagenet and Tudor Novels))
“
She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the ballad: faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that disaster could not shake; love that, in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer. The words were set to a fine old air -- in themselves they were simple and sweet: perhaps, when read, they wanted force; when well sung, they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well: she breathed into the feeling, softness, she poured round the passion, force: her voice was fine that evening; its expression dramatic: she impressed all, and charmed one.
On leaving the instrument, she went to the fire, and sat down on a seat -- semi-stool, semi-cushion: the ladies were round her -- none of them spoke. The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely looked upon her, as quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. What made her sing so? They never sang so. Was it proper to sing with such expression, with such originality -- so unlike a school girl? Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged.
”
”
Charlotte Brontë (Shirley)
“
Politics
How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics?
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms!
”
”
W.B. Yeats (The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume 1: The Poems)
“
my final piece
We’re born into the world
As just one small piece to the puzzle
That makes up an entire life.
It’s up to us throughout our years,
to find all of our pieces that fit.
The pieces that connect who we are
To who we were
To who we’ll one day be.
Sometimes pieces will almost fit.
They’ll feel right.
We’ll carry them around for a while,
Hoping they’ll change shape.
Hoping they’ll conform to our puzzle.
But they won’t.
We’ll eventually have to let them go.
To find the puzzle that is their home.
Sometimes pieces won’t fit at all.
No matter how much we want them to.
We’ll shove them.
We’ll bend them.
We’ll break them.
But what isn’t meant to be,
won’t be.
Those are the hardest pieces of all to
accept.
The pieces of our puzzle
That just don’t belong.
But occasionally . . .
Not very often at all,
If we’re lucky,
If we pay enough attention,
We’ll find a
perfect match.
The pieces of the puzzle that slide right in
The pieces that hug the contours of our own
pieces.
The pieces that lock to us.
The pieces that we lock to.
The pieces that fit so well, we can’t tell
where our piece begins
And that piece ends.
Those pieces we call
Friends.
True loves.
Dreams.
Passions.
Beliefs.
Talents.
They’re all the pieces that complete our
puzzles.
They line the edges,
Frame the corners,
Fill the centers,
Those pieces are the pieces that make us
who we are.
Who we were.
Who we’ll one day be.
Up until today,
When I looked at my own puzzle,
I would see a finished piece.
I had the edges lined,
The corners framed,
The center filled.
It felt like it was complete.
All the pieces were there.
I had everything I wanted.
Everything I needed.
Everything I dreamt of.
But up until today,
I realized I had collected all
but one piece.
The most vital piece.
The piece that completes the picture.
The piece that completes my whole life.
I held this girl in my arms
She wrapped her tiny fingers around mine.
It was then that I realized
She was the fusion.
The glue.
The cement that bound all my pieces
together.
The piece that seals my puzzle.
The piece that completes my life.
The element that makes me who I am.
Who I was.
Who I’ll one day be.
You, baby girl.
You’re my final piece.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (This Girl (Slammed, #3))
“
I was born free, and that I might live in freedom I chose the solitude of the fields; in the trees of the mountains I find society, the clear waters of the brooks are my mirrors, and to the trees and waters I make known my thoughts and charms. I am a fire afar off, a sword laid aside. Those whom I have inspired with love by letting them see me, I have by words undeceived, and if their longings live on hope—and I have given none to Chrysostom or to any other—it cannot justly be said that the death of any is my doing, for it was rather his own obstinacy than my cruelty that killed him; and if it be made a charge against me that his wishes were honourable, and that therefore I was bound to yield to them, I answer that when on this very spot where now his grave is made he declared to me his purity of purpose, I told him that mine was to live in perpetual solitude, and that the earth alone should enjoy the fruits of my retirement and the spoils of my beauty; and if, after this open avowal, he chose to persist against hope and steer against the wind, what wonder is it that he should sink in the depths of his infatuation? If I had encouraged him, I should be false; if I had gratified him, I should have acted against my own better resolution and purpose. He was persistent in spite of warning, he despaired without being hated. Bethink you now if it be reasonable that his suffering should be laid to my charge. Let him who has been deceived complain, let him give way to despair whose encouraged hopes have proved vain, let him flatter himself whom I shall entice, let him boast whom I shall receive; but let not him call me cruel or homicide to whom I make no promise, upon whom I practise no deception, whom I neither entice nor receive. It has not been so far the will of Heaven that I should love by fate, and to expect me to love by choice is idle. Let this general declaration serve for each of my suitors on his own account, and let it be understood from this time forth that if anyone dies for me it is not of jealousy or misery he dies, for she who loves no one can give no cause for jealousy to any, and candour is not to be confounded with scorn. Let him who calls me wild beast and basilisk, leave me alone as something noxious and evil; let him who calls me ungrateful, withhold his service; who calls me wayward, seek not my acquaintance; who calls me cruel, pursue me not; for this wild beast, this basilisk, this ungrateful, cruel, wayward being has no kind of desire to seek, serve, know, or follow them. If Chrysostom's impatience and violent passion killed him, why should my modest behaviour and circumspection be blamed? If I preserve my purity in the society of the trees, why should he who would have me preserve it among men, seek to rob me of it? I have, as you know, wealth of my own, and I covet not that of others; my taste is for freedom, and I have no relish for constraint; I neither love nor hate anyone; I do not deceive this one or court that, or trifle with one or play with another. The modest converse of the shepherd girls of these hamlets and the care of my goats are my recreations; my desires are bounded by these mountains, and if they ever wander hence it is to contemplate the beauty of the heavens, steps by which the soul travels to its primeval abode.
”
”
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
“
Out of the starless night that covers me,
(O tribulation of the wind that rolls!)
Black as the cloud of some tremendous spell,
The susurration of the sighing sea
Sounds like the sobbing whisper of two souls
That tremble in a passion of farewell.
To the desires that trebled life in me,
(O melancholy of the wind that rolls!)
The dreams that seemed the future to foretell,
The hopes that mounted herward like the sea,
To all the sweet things sent on happy souls,
I cannot choose but bid a mute farewell.
And to the girl who was so much to me
(O lamentation of this wind that rolls!)
Since I may not the life of her compel,
Out of the night, beside the sounding sea,
Full of the love that might have blent our souls,
A sad, a last, a long, supreme farewell.
”
”
William Ernest Henley (A Selection of Poems)
“
Ô, the wine of a woman
from heaven is sent,
more perfect than all
that a man can invent.
When she came to my bed and begged me with sighs
not to tempt her towards passion nor actions unwise,
I told her I’d spare her and kissed her closed eyes,
then unbraided her body of its clothing disguise.
While our bodies were nude bathed in candlelight fine
I devoured her mouth, tender lips divine;
and I drank through her thighs her feminine wine.
Ô, the wine of a woman
from heaven is sent,
more perfect than all
that a man can invent.
”
”
Roman Payne
“
Wherever in this city, screens flicker
with pornography, with science-fiction vampires,
victimized hirelings bending to the lash,
we also have to walk . . . if simply as we walk
through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties
of our own neighborhoods.
We need to grasp our lives inseperable
from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces,
and the red begonia perilously flashing
from a tenement sill six stories high,
or the long-legged young girls playing ball
in the junior highschool playground.
No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,
sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air,
dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding,
our animal passion rooted in the city.
”
”
Adrienne Rich (Twenty-One Love Poems.)
“
I’m saying this because it’s said breaths are stolen during a passionate kiss. That’s not true, Gavin, because I literally can’t breathe before your lips even touch mine. I try, but I’m unable to. I can’t think when you look at me. You strip my mind bare. You always have, and it’s beautiful and consuming. It’s magical and everything a girl is supposed to feel. It’s said you’re truly in love with someone if your skin tingles from their touch. Mine tingles when I hear your voice; I don’t need you to touch me. I can feel you when you’re not near me. I feel you in my dreams. I felt you when you were a thousand miles away.
”
”
Gail McHugh (Pulse (Collide, #2))
“
I do not suppose she had ever really cared for her husband, and what I had taken for love was no more than the feminine response to caresses and comfort which in the minds of most women passes for it. It is a passive feeling capable of being roused for any object, as the vine can grow on any tree; and the wisdom of the world recognises its strength when it urges a girl to marry the man who wants her with the assurance that love will follow. It is an emotion made up of the satisfaction of security, pride of property, the pleasure of being desired, the gratification of a household, and it is only by an amiable vanity that women ascribe to it spiritual value. It is an emotion which is defenceless against passion.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (The Moon and Sixpence)
“
I wish to feel something much, much larger than I am, the girl’s heart replies. I wish to stand on the edge of ruination and defeat, to leap into a chasm full of danger. I wish to feel my blood turn cold with fear and my cheeks burn bright with shame; I wish to feel joy that fills my lungs, and sadness that swells within me like a current. I wish to feel so much and so deeply that it washes over me in waves. I wish to drag myself towards something; I wish to lose pieces of myself along the way. I wish for hunger that drives me, for passion that fulfills me, for sensations of taking and having and losing and wanting, and I wish for all of it to come with a price, and a steep one—and then I wish for the courage to pay. Isn’t it all good because it’s something? she asks. Isn’t it all bad because beneath it—any of it, her wish sighs—I may collapse? Mayra
”
”
Olivie Blake (Masters of Death)
“
When the middle classes get passionate about politics, they're arguing about their treats—their tax breaks and their investments. When the poor get passionate about politics, they're fighting for their lives.
Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, more animalistic. No classical music for us—no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in means, and slums, without literacy, or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor—that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now—for our instant, hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio.
You must never, never forget when you talk to someone poor, that it takes ten times the effort to get anywhere from a bad post code. It's a miracle when someone from a bad post code gets anywhere, son. A miracle they do anything at all.
”
”
Caitlin Moran (How to Build a Girl (How to Build a Girl, #1))
“
one night, they went down to the Village for dinner at an italian restaurant. most of the band had picked up young girls and had them hanging on their arms. janis was feeling lonesome and said, "goddamn, you guys have all these groupies and i don't have anybody."
turning to mark, the youngest person in the crowd, she ordered, "go out on the street there and find the first pretty boy you see and bring him to me."
aw, i dunno," mark said.
go ahead," janis said.
after a while, mark returned with a handsome, long-haired youth with a british accent. he was wearing a floor-length embroidered afghan wool coat. looking him over, janis nodded approvingly and said, "he's cute, mark!" turning to the young man, she said, "well! hi, honey! sit down! my name's janis joplin. have you ever heard of me?"
yeah," he said, "i've heard of you."
oh," she said, "what's your name?"
eric clapton.
”
”
Ellis Amburn (Pearl: The Obsessions and Passions of Janis Joplin)
“
The little girl’s sense of secrecy that developed at prepuberty only grows in importance. She closes herself up in fierce solitude: she refuses to reveal to those around her the hidden self that she considers to be her real self and that is in fact an imaginary character: she plays at being a dancer like Tolstoy’s Natasha, or a saint like Marie Leneru, or simply the singular wonder that is herself. There is still an enormous difference between this heroine and the objective face that her parents and friends recognise in her. She is also convinced that she is misunderstood: her relationship with herself becomes even more passionate: she becomes intoxicated with her isolation, feels different, superior, exceptional: she promises that the future will take revenge on the mediocrity of her present life. From this narrow and petty existence she escapes by dreams.
”
”
Simone de Beauvoir (The Second Sex)
“
You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and sacrifices, and then you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds and no sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and wireless. And whoever wants more and has got it in him--the heroic and the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the saints--is a fool and a Don Quixote. Good. And it has been just the same for me, my friend. I was a gifted girl. I was meant to live up to a high standard, to expect much of myself and do great things. I could have played a great part. I could have been the wife of a king, the beloved of a revolutionary, the sister of a genius, the mother of a martyr. And life has allowed me just this, to be a courtesan of fairly good taste, and even that has been hard enough. That is how things have gone with me. For a while I was inconsolable and for a long time I put the blame on myself. Life, thought I, must in the end be in the right, and if life scorned my beautiful dreams, so I argued, it was my dreams that were stupid and wrong headed. But that did not help me at all. And as I had good eyes and ears and was a little inquisitive too, I took a good look at this so-called life and at my neighbors and acquaintances, fifty or so of them and their destinies, and then I saw you. And I knew that my dreams had been right a thousand times over, just as yours had been. It was life and reality that were wrong. It was as little right that a woman like me should have no other choice than to grow old in poverty and in a senseless way at a typewriter in the pay of a money-maker, or to marry such a man for his money's sake, or to become some kind of drudge, as for a man like you to be forced in his loneliness and despair to have recourse to a razor. Perhaps the trouble with me was more material and moral and with you more spiritual--but it was the same road. Do you think I can't understand your horror of the fox trot, your dislike of bars and dancing floors, your loathing of jazz and the rest of it? I understand it only too well, and your dislike of politics as well, your despondence over the chatter and irresponsible antics of the parties and the press, your despair over the war, the one that has been and the one that is to be, over all that people nowadays think, read and build, over the music they play, the celebrations they hold, the education they carry on. You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours--
”
”
Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf)
“
Of course they lived at 14 [their house number on their street], and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one. She was a lovely lady, with a romantic mind and such a sweet mocking mouth. Her romantic mind was like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East, however many you discover there is always one more; and her sweet mocking mouth had one kiss on it that Wendy could never get, though there it was, perfectly conspicuous in the right-hand corner.
The way Mr. Darling won her was this: the many gentlemen who had been boys when she was a girl discovered simultaneously that they loved her, and they all ran to her house to propose to her except Mr. Darling, who took a cab and nipped in first, and so he got her. He got all of her, except the innermost box and the kiss. He never knew about the box, and in time he gave up trying for the kiss. Wendy thought Napoleon could have got it, but I can picture him trying, and then going off in a passion, slamming the door.
”
”
J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)
“
He saw her as the passionate spirit of innocent youth, now beleaguered by the trick which is played on youth - the trick of treachery in the body, which turns flesh into green bones. Her stupid finery was not vulgar to him, but touching. The girl was still there, still appealing from behind the breaking barricade of rouge. She had made the brave protest: I will not be vanquished. Under the clumsy coquetry, the undignified clothes, there was the human cry for help. The young eyes were puzzled, saying: It is I, inside here - what have they done to me? I will not submit. Some part of her spirit knew that the powder was making a guy of her, and hated it, and tried to hold her lover with the eyes alone. They said: Don't look at all this. Look at me. I am still here, in the eyes. Look at me, here in the prison, and help me out. Another part said: I am not old, it is illusion. I am beautifully made-up. See, I will perform the movements of youth. I will defy the enormous army of age.
”
”
T.H. White (The Once and Future King)
“
Poets represent love as sculptors design beauty, as musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature. There lived, it is said, at Athens a great number of beautiful girls; Praxiteles drew them all one after another; then from these diverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus. The man who first created a musical instrument, and who gave to harmony its rules and its laws, had for a long time listened to the murmuring of reeds and the singing of birds. Thus the poets, who understand life, after knowing much of love, more or less transitory, after feeling that sublime exaltation which real passion can for the moment inspire, eliminating from human nature all that degrades it, created the mysterious names which through the ages fly from lip to lip: Daphnis and Chloe, Hero and Leander, Pyramus and Thisbe.
To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is but to seek on public squares a woman such as Venus, or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.
”
”
Alfred de Musset (The Confession of a Child of the Century)
“
I read a book one day and my whole life was changed” starts Orhan Pamuk to his famous and brilliantly written book: The New Life. Some books just strike you with the very first sentence, and generally those are the ones that leave a mark in your memory and soul, the ones that make you read, come back many years later and read again, and have the same pleasure each time. I was lucky enough to have a father who was passionate about literature, so passionate that he would teach me how to read at the age of five. The very first book he bought for me was “The Little Black Fish” by Samad Behrangi. After that I started reading his other books, and at that age I had already owned a small Behrangi collection. Recently I was talking with a Persian friend about how Behrangi and his books changed my life. A girl, from another country, from kilometeters away, around the same time was also reading Behrangi’s books, and creating her own imaginary worlds with his rich and deep characters, and intense stories.
”
”
Samad Behrangi (The Little Black Fish)
“
Somehow I cannot help
being reminded of a frail, consumptive girl, at whom one sometimes looks
with compassion, sometimes with sympathetic love, whom sometimes one
simply does not notice; though suddenly in one instant she becomes, as
though by chance, inexplicably lovely and exquisite, and, impressed and
intoxicated, one cannot help asking oneself what power made those sad,
pensive eyes flash with such fire? What summoned the blood to those
pale, wan cheeks? What bathed with passion those soft features? What set
that bosom heaving? What so suddenly called strength, life and beauty
into the poor girl's face, making it gleam with such a smile, kindle
with such bright, sparkling laughter? You look round, you seek for some
one, you conjecture.... But the moment passes, and next day you meet,
maybe, the same pensive and preoccupied look as before, the same pale
face, the same meek and timid movements, and even signs of remorse,
traces of a mortal anguish and regret for the fleeting distraction....
And you grieve that the momentary beauty has faded so soon never to
return, that it flashed upon you so treacherously, so vainly, grieve
because you had not even time to love her....
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (White Nights)
“
As Harry Potter was the only other thing I was passionate about, the doctors gave consent for me to leave the hospital and collect the fifth Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, from the local book shop. I was so ecstatic to have the book and excited to begin reading it, but there was never any hint of your imminent arrival and the way you would change my life so drastically. Luna, you instantly captivated me. I didn’t know why but there was something about you with your upside-down magazine, straggly blonde hair, and the honest, abashed way you stared at people without blinking that fascinated and perplexed me at once. You laughed hysterically at one of Ron’s quips and didn’t stop to excuse yourself and feel ashamed when it became clear that everyone found you strange. Throughout the book, I found myself waiting for your brief appearances and wanting to know more about you and why you were the way you were. You baffled me, not because you were odd (though indeed you were), but because you were… perfect. But it was a different kind of perfect to the perfectly thin, smiling magazine girls I simultaneously idolised and reviled. It was the way you carried your oddness like it was the most natural thing in the world. You didn’t market your oddness as your defining feature the way some insecure teenagers do, in guise of confidence and security. And nor were you oblivious to the awkward and uncomfortable feelings your oddness provoked in others. When, unable to comprehend how you wore your oddness so honestly and unashamedly, your peers reverted to mockery and bullying, you recognized this as a reflection of their own deep-seated insecurity and calmly let them carry on, quite above your head. You weren’t trying hard to present a certain aspect of yourself that would boldly identify you in the world. And that’s when it occurred to me how bizarre and positively ridiculous it was to apply the word “weird” to describe you, when you represented the most natural and unpretentious state possible to be; you were yourself.
”
”
Evanna Lynch
“
Miss Peyton,” Lillian Bowman asked, “what kind of man would be the ideal husband for you?”
“Oh,” Annabelle said with irreverent lightness, “any peer will do.”
“Any peer?” Lillian asked skeptically. “What about good looks?”
Annabelle shrugged. “Welcome, but not necessary.”
“What about passion?” Daisy inquired.
“Decidedly unwelcome.”
“Intelligence?” Evangeline suggested.
Annabelle shrugged. “Negotiable.”
“Charm?” Lillian asked.
“Also negotiable.”
“You don’t want much,” Lillian remarked dryly. “As for me, I would have to add a few conditions. My peer would have to be dark-haired and handsome, a wonderful dancer…and he would never ask permission before he kissed me.”
“I want to marry a man who has read the entire collected works of Shakespeare,” Daisy said. “Someone quiet and romantic—better yet if he wears spectacles— and he should like poetry and nature, and I shouldn’t like him to be too experienced with women.”
Her older sister lifted her eyes heavenward. “We won’t be competing for the same men, apparently.”
Annabelle looked at Evangeline Jenner. “What kind of husband would suit you, Miss Jenner?”
“Evie,” the girl murmured, her blush deepening until it clashed with her fiery hair. She struggled with her reply, extreme bashfulness warring with a strong instinct for privacy. “I suppose…I would like s-s-someone who was kind and…” Stopping, she shook her head with a self-deprecating smile. “I don’t know. Just someone who would l-love me. Really love me.”
The words touched Annabelle, and filled her with sudden melancholy. Love was a luxury she had never allowed herself to hope for—a distinctly superfluous issue when her very survival was so much in question. However, she reached out and touched the girl’s gloved hand with her own. “I hope you find him,” she said sincerely. “Perhaps you won’t have to wait for long.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Secrets of a Summer Night (Wallflowers, #1))
“
You aren't like your mom."
"I am.But I don't want to be like that anymore,I want what I want." He turns to me again,his face anxious. "I told my father's friends that I'm studying at Berkeley next year.It worked.He's really,really angry with me,but it worked.You told me to go for his pride.You were right."
"So." I'm cautious,hardly daring to believe. "You're moving to California?"
"I have to."
"Right." I swallow hard. "Because of your mom."
"Because of you. I'll only be a twenty-minute train ride from your school,and I'll make the commute to see you every night.I'd take a commute ten times that just to be with you every night."
His words are too perfect.It must be a misunderstanding,surely I'm misunderstanding-
"You're the most incredible girl I've ever known.You're gorgeous and smart, and you make my laugh like no one else can.And I can talk to you. And I know after all this I don't deserve you,but what I'm trying to say is that I love you,Anna.Very much."
I'm holding my breath.I can't talk,but my eyes are filling with tears.
He takes it the wrong way. "Oh God.And I've mucked things up again,haven't I? I didn't mean to attack you like this.I mean I did but...all right." His voice cracks. "I'll leave.Or you can go down first,and then I'll come down,and I promise I'll never bother you again-"
He starts to stand,but I grab his arm. "No!"
His body freezes. "I'm so sorry," he says. "I never mean to hurt you."
I trail my fingers across his cheek. He stays perfectly still for me. "Please stop apologizing,Etienne."
"Say my name again," he whispers.
I close my eyes and lean forward. "Etienne."
He takes my hands into his.Those pefect hands,that fit mine just so. "Anna?"
Our foreheads touch. "Yes?"
"Will you please tell me you love me? I'm dying here."
And then we're laughing.And them I'm in his arms,and we're kissing,at first quickly-to make up for lost time-and then slowly,because we have all the time in the world.And his lips are soft and honey sweet,and the careful, passionate way he moves them against my own says that he savors the way I taste,too.
And in between kisses,I tell him I love him.
Again and again and again.
”
”
Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))