And You Can Quote Me: Pride and Prejudice; Jane Austen

And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's genius, such an opening for wit, to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually abusive without saying any thing just; but one cannot be always always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.

At any rate, she cannot grow many degrees worse, without authorizing us to lock her up for the rest of her life.

And You Can Quote Me: Mansfield Park; Jane Austen

If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way—but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.

'It is as a dream, a pleasant dream!' he exclaimed, breaking forth again, after a few minutes' musing. 'I shall always look back on our theatricals with exquisite pleasure. There was such an interest, such an animation, such a spirit diffused. Everybody felt it. We were alive. There was employment, hope, solicitude, bustle for every hour of the day. Always some little objection, some little doubt, some little anxiety to be got over. I never was happier.'

But tell me about it. Talk to me forever.

The impossibility of not doing everything in the world to make Fanny Price happy, or of ceasing to love Fanny Price, was of course the groundwork of his eloquent answer.

If I had the power of recalling any one week of my existence, it should be that week, that acting week.

Nay, in sober sadness, I believe I now love you all.

When I think of this being the last time of seeing you for I do not know how long, I feel it quite impossible to do anything but love you.

But were I to attempt to tell you of all the women whom I have known to be in love with him, I should never have done.

And You Can Quote Me: The Perks of Being a Wallflower; Stephen Chbosky

I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist.

I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.

And I wonder if anyone is really happy. I hope they are. I really hope they are.

Then, I turned around and walked to my room and closed my door and put my head under my pillow and let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be.

Patrick actually used to be popular before Sam brought him some good music.

I really think that everyone should have watercolors, magnetic poetry, and a harmonica.

The outside lights were on, and it was snowing, and it looked like magic. Like we were somewhere else. Like we were someplace better.

And I thought that all those little kids are going to grow up someday. And all of those little kids are going to do the things that we do. And they will all kiss someone someday. But for now, sledding is enough. I think it would be great if sledding were always enough, but it isn't.

...I was looking at the old photographs, I started thinking that there was a time when these weren't memories. That someone actually took that photograph, and the people in the photograph had just eaten lunch or something.

I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life, and then make the choice to share it with other people.

...even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have. Good and bad.

And You Can Quote Me: Persuasion; Jane Austen

She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.

And You Can Quote Me: The Catcher in the Rye; J.D. Salinger

“I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to help you, if I can.”
He really was, too. You could see that. But it was just that we were too much on opposite sides of the pole, that’s all.

When I really worry about something, I don’t just fool around.

The only reason I didn’t do it was because I wasn’t in the mood. If you’re not in the mood, you can’t do that stuff right.

That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you half fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are.

The goddam movies. They can ruin you. I’m not kidding.

I used to think she was quite intelligent, in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about those things, it takes you quite awhile to figure out if they’re really stupid or not.

Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell.

Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that’s impossible, but its too bad anyway.

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.

It’s not too bad when the sun’s out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.

“I don’t want to scare you.” he said, “but I can very clearly see you dying, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause.”

Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

And You Can Quote Me: Anna Karenina; Leo Tolstoy

All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.

“..what am I to do?”
There was no answer, except life’s usual answer to the most complex and insoluble questions. The answer is this: live from day to day; in other words, forget.

Perhaps it’s our strong point really—this faculty for seeing our own shortcomings; but we overdo it, we comfort ourselves with irony to which we always give ready tongue.

It was my last effort. And I put my whole heart into it. I can’t. I’m no good at it.

His whole heart was filled with memories.

The future is yours and the present is mine- and the present is not all that it might be.

But it could not be helped. What must be must be.

By the mark of your steed
I can tell his fine breed
And a young man in love by his eyes

He felt himself and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted was to be better than he had been before.

However often one sees her, every day she’s different. you only get that with the French.

They ought to find a way of being inoculated against love, like being vaccinated for smallpox.

Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.

Spring is the time of plans and projects.

Woman, don’t you know, is the sort of subject that study it as much as you will it is always quite new.

Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves and we do not complain…no, they must needs teach us how to live. They haven’t the remotest idea of what happiness is; they don’t know that without our love, for us there is neither happiness nor unhappiness- there would be no life at all.

There are times when one would give a whole month for a six pence and others when you wouldn’t sell half-an-hour at any price.

She was studying his face, making up for the time she had not seen him, comparing, as she did every time they met, the picture of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality) with him as he actually was.

He looked at her as a man might look at some faded flower he had picked, in which it was difficult to trace the beauty that had made him pick and so destroy it.

I’ve always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be…

He who advocates war- off with him in a special advance legion to lead the first onslaught, the first attack!

And You Can Quote Me: The Boxcar Children #3: The Yellow House Mystery; Gertrude Chandler Warner

But he was too late. The [fish] hook caught fast in her hair and pulled it down over her face.

"Oh Alice, your pretty smooth hair!" cried Violet.

"O.K." said Benny. "Then I suppose we'll really starve without any breakfast at all."

"Let's call this Potato Camp, because we didn't eat anything here but potatoes." After that, the children always called it Potato Camp.

And You Can Quote Me: The Boxcar Children #5: Mike's Mystery; Gertrude Chandler Warner

(in which more things are named, gender roles are further enforced and washing machines are incredibly exciting)

Jessie nodded at her older brother. "Yes, we will get off at Yellow Sands now. I think that is a beautiful name. Our uranium fields look just like yellow sand."

"[The horse] is taking it easy these days," said Maggie. "He stays out in the field all the time eating grass. This car goes faster."

"You mean you can drive it, Maggie?" asked Jessie.

"Yes," said Maggie smiling. "Sam says I drive alright."

"Remember Pat? My big brother?"

"Oh, yes, " said Henry. "He was the one who almost got drowned at the picnic."

"I'm glad," said Mrs. Wood very quietly. " I love to bake pies the best of anything. I wish I had time."

"Haven't you time?" asked Jessie, puzzled.

"No, dear," said Mrs. Wood. Her voice sounded sad. "I was all day to earn money to help keep us. I'm lucky to have a washing machine."

He showed them the door of the super market which opened all by itself.

"I'm afraid it is," said Jessie, trying to read. "That lovely new, pink house, and the washing machine and the electric stove!"

(Note: What Jessie is reacting to is a friend's house being burnt to the ground, the main plot point of the story)

"Well, well, Mr. Carter!" cried Henry. "We are so glad to see you again. You always seem to pop up when there is trouble."

"I try to," said John Carter with a twinkle in his eye.

"So when the place cools off, the pink house will be built again," replied the man.

"How about the things inside? The washing machine?" asked Jessie.

(Note: At this point, the children decide to set Mrs. Wood, Mike's mother, up with a pie shop)

"Sign?" cried Benny. "Did you say a sign? I'll tell you a good sign. Mike's Mother's Place."

..."Wonderful!" said Jessie. "And what a wonderful name for this place!"

"Oh, I remember," said Mr. Alden. "He had a brother who almost drowned."

Jessie wanted t wash dishes first. She filled the dish pan with hot soap suds. Then one by one, she slid the plates in, and washed them with a sponge. "I just love to do this," she said.

And You Can Quote Me: The Boxcar Children #1: The Boxcar Children; Gertrude Chandler Warner

Now the baker's wife did not like children. She did not like boys at all.

"Come, Benny," he said. "You must wake up and walk now."

"Go away!" said Benny.

"Good morning, Benny. Time to get up. Today you must build something for me out of stones."

"What is it?" Benny asked eagerly.

"I'm not going to tell you," said Henry, laughing.

"A runaway hen!" said Jessie. "She wanted to hide her nest so she would have some chickens. We'll have the eggs for supper. I know how to cook eggs."

(Note: Is anyone else disturbed how easily Jessie segues from "how cute, she wanted babies" to "let's eat them"?)

Now J. H. Alden liked boys. He liked to see them running and jumping and playing.

Jessie laughed and laughed until she almost cried. Violet laughed until she did cry.

Then she could not stop crying. She cried and cried. At last Jessie made up her mind that Violet was really sick.

"Well, if you don't find him, maybe you can have me, " remarked Benny. "I like you."

"You do? cried the man. "Come and get up in my lap."

Five Passages from The Boxcar Children #6: Blue Bay Mystery

Because why not?

1. "Can Watch go?" asked Benny.
"Sorry, my boy. Let me tell you about Watch," began Mr. Alen.
"And now I know he can't," said Benny.

2. "I never saw such a lovely blue bay!" cried Jessie.
"You never will," said Lars. "They say this is the bluest bay in the world. We call it Blue Bay."

3. "..Sit on the big rocks. I'll give you each a fish line in a minute."
But it turned out that Lars had only four fish lines.
"It's just as well, " said Mr. Alden. "You girls sit on the rock and watch."

4. "Sounds good," said Peter. "My mother used to cook good things. I hope we can find her."

(Note: By "find her" Peter means "I hope she didn't die in that horrible shipwreck")

5. Mr. Alden went on. "Another thing, Captain, have you your secret camera?"
"Oh yes, I always have that."

...and one more!

BONUS: "I hope I can live till tomorrow," said Benny.
They all lived till "tomorrow."

And You Can Quote Me: Reality Bites

Lelaina: I was really going to be somebody by the time I was 23.
Troy: Honey, all you have to be by the time you're 23 is yourself.
Lelaina: I don't know who that is anymore.
Troy: I do. And we all love her. I love her. She breaks my heart again and again, but I love her.

All Day, Every Day

"Shhhhhhhhh. shhhhhhhhh. I'm telling you: your voice, my ears. A bad combination."
- Sleep Talking Man

And You Can Quote Me: Rock 'n' Roll; Tom Stoppard

Max: ...I'm down to one belief, that between theory and practice there's a decent fit — not perfect but decent: ideology and a sensible fair society, it's my double helix and I won't be talked out of it or done out of it or shamed out of it. We just have to be better. (pg. 22)

Interrogator: ... You're not clever, you're simple. And if you're not simple you're complicated. We're supposed to know what's going on inside people. That's why it's the Ministry of the Interior. Are you simple or complicated? Have a biscuit. (pg. 27)

Jan: ..last year, they lost their license — undesirable elements, you know. . .

Max: Undesirable how?

Jan: Their songs are morbid, they dress weird, they look like their on drugs, and one time they sacrificed a chicken on stage, but otherwise it's a mystery. (pg. 33)

Jan: If I were English I wouldn't care if Communism in Czechoslovakia reformed itself into a pile of pig shit. To be English would be my luck. I would be moderately enthusiastic and moderately philistine, and a good sport. I would be kind to foreigners in a moderately superior way and also to animals except the ones I kill, ad I would live a decent life, like most English people, and behave decently in the English way. (pg. 38)

Lenka: What you like about brains, Max, is that they all work in the same way. What you don't like about minds is that they don't. (pg. 58)

Esme: ...Is this all where we're going if we're lucky? A windy corner by a supermarket, with a plastic bag on the handlebars full of, I don't know, ready-meals and loo paper. . .lumpy faces and thickening bodies in forgettable clothes, going home with the shopping? But we were all beautiful then, blazing with beauty... (pg. 70)

Jan: ..We have an arrangement with ourselves not to disturb the appearances. We aim for inertia. We mass-produce banality. (pg. 82)

Jan: ?! (pg. 107)

This Time Last Year...

Disgruntled usher: I swear by every god of Jupiter that these are your seats.

--The Ambassador Theatre, 49th & Broadway

(via Overheard in New York)

And You Can Quote Me - Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie (Peter Breaks Through)

"All children, except one, grow up."

"You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end."

"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 was one of those deep ones who knew about stocks and shares. Of course, no one really knows, but he quite seemed to know, and he often said stocks were up and shares were down in a way that would have made any woman respect him."

"When you wake in the morning, the naughtiness and evil passions with which you went to bed have been folded up small and placed at the bottom of your mind; and on the top, beautifully aired, are spread out your prettier thoughts, ready for you to put on."

"Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was still very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy in a house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Michael had friends at night, Wendy had a wolf cub forsaken by its parents; but on the whole Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood in a row you could say of them they have each other's nose and so forth. On these magic shores children at play are forever breaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more."

Freedom Of

Citizens assemble with the sole goal of declaring that they disapprove of the course of government. To meddle in the government of society and to speak about it is the greatest business and, so to speak, the only pleasure America knows...
- Alexis de Tocqueville

As I continue to follow the news out of Iran, I am more and more grateful to our country and its founders for providing us with the freedom, security and relative stability that allows us to assemble and disapprove without the fear of beatings, shootings or arrests. I think we all take it for granted...I know I do. We are such a young country, and it took us awhile to get to a place where it's at least commonly held that all men (and women) are created equal, but that we did? That, for all the work we have yet to do, we have done so much? I think it's extraordinary.

But in the wake of all of this new found appreciation, there is also disappointment. We have the means to change our government. We have the opportunity to make our voices heard. And yet, we still turn to violence. To shoot an abortion doctor, an army recruiter, a museum crowd because that somehow seems like a better idea than any other alternative. Than using any of the vast freedom given to us or living up to the responsibility that comes with that freedom. It's abuse in the negative. Right now, in Iran, people are risking their lives so that they can have a voice, and yet, here, people would still prefer to silence the voice of others than make their own heard. It's a slap in the face of our Constiution, in my mind, besides being a horrifying display of hate.

Violence isn't the only abuse, though. We were given freedom of speech to air our greivances and engage each other in open debate, so that we could hold the government accountable as well as each other. So it saddens me when media pundits purposefully fan the flames of outrage and divisiveness for ratings. Besides lowering the tone of discussion on an issue and inciting people to the aformentioned violence, it ignores the higher and better purposes that can be achieved by sharing opinion. It's irresponsible, to say the least. But, however much I disagree with how it's used, it is their right, just as it is my right to talk about it here. It's not up to me to determine what is or is not fair game beyond voicing my thoughts on any given matter, and I think that's how it should be.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
-Evelyn Beatrice Hall

And You Can Quote Me: Housekeeping vs. The Dirt; Nick Hornby

...this could have been my moment to start a salon. I could have bought that bread and said to people, "Have you read the new Roth?" as they were taking off their coats. And they'd have gone, like, "What the fuck?" if they were my friends, or "Yes, isn't it marvelous?," if they were people I didn't know.

I'm sure that's an error in my thinking, and that my unwillingness to engage with sensitive first novels about coming out on a sheep farm in North Dakota in the 1950s—I made this book up, by the way, and if you wrote it, I mean no offense—proves that the terrorists have won...

Sometimes it feels as though we are being asked to imagine cultural judgments as a whole bunch of concentric circles. On the outside, we have the wrong ones, made by the people who read The DaVinci Code and listen to Celine Dion; right at the center we have the correct ones, made by the snootier critics, very often people who have vowed never to laugh again until Aristophanes produces a follow-up to The Frogs.

And You Can Quote Me: The Polysyllabic Spree; Nick Hornby

It should always be clear why someone gets shot. If I ever shoot you, I promise you there will be a really good explanation, one you will grasp immediately, should you live.

I just wish I had friends who could recommend books like Mystic River, too. Are you that person? Do you have any vacancies for a pal? If you can't be bothered with a full-on friendship,with all the tearful, drunken late-night phone calls and bitter accusations and occasional acts of violence thus entailed (the violence is always immediately followed by an apology; I hasten to add), then maybe you could just tell me he titles of the books.

And You Can Quote Me: The Woman in White; Wilkie Collins

This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve.

Are we, I wonder, quite such genuine boys and girls now as our seniors were in their time?

"You will be kinder than ever, if you will walk on fast, and not speak to me. I sadly want to quiet myself, if I can."

"...no woman does think much of her own sex, although few of them confess it as freely as I do."

...sensations...crowded on me...familiar sensations which we all know, which spring to life in most of our hearts, die again in so many, and renew their bright existence in so few...

Something wanting, something wanting– and where it was, and what it was, I could not say.

We go to Nature for comfort in trouble, and sympathy in joy, only in books.

Peaceful, fast-flowing, happy time ! my story glides by you now as swiftly as you once glided by me. Of all the treasure that you poured so freely into my heart, how much is left me that has purpose and value enough to be written on this page?

I loved her.
Ah ! how well I know all the sadness and all the mockery that is contained in those three words. I can sigh over my mournful confession with the tenderest woman who reads it and pities me. I can laugh at it as bitterly as the hardest man who tosses it from him in contempt. I loved her! Feel for me, or despise me, I confess it with the same immovable resolution to own the truth.

I must lose her soon, and love her the more unchangeably for the loss.

"And your mother?"
"I don't get on well with her. We are a trouble and a fear to each other."

"Don't speak of tomorrow...Let the music speak to us tonight, in a happier language than ours."

"I left yesterday to decide, and yesterday has decided. It is too late to go back."

"Are you to break your heart to set his mind at ease? No man under heaven deserves these sacrifices from us women. Men! They are the enemies of our innocence and our peace..."

Is this the end to all that sad story? Oh, not the end– surely not the end!

"Keep me always doing something...keep me always in company with somebody. Don't let me think– that is all I ask now...don't let me think."

The last day has been all confusion and wretchedness. How can I write about it? – and yet, I must write. Anything is better than brooding over my own gloomy thoughts.

"..if you are upset trust the devil to save his own."

I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.

Women can resist a man's love, a man's fame, a man's personal appearance, and a man's money, but they cannot resist a man's tongue when he knows how to talk to them.

"I am still walking on the dark road which leads me...to the unknown Retribution and the inevitable End. Wait and look. The Pestilence which touches the rest will pass me...Another step... on the dark road. Wait and look. The arrows that strike the rest will spare me...Another step on the journey. Wait and look. The Sea which drowns the rest will spare me...Darker and darker...farther and farther yet. Death takes the good, the beautiful, and the young– and spares me. The Pestilence that wastes, the Arrow that strikes, the Sea that drowns, the Grave that closes over Love and Hope, are steps on my journey, and take me nearer and nearer to the End."

"I feel my inborn admiration of all that is noble, and great, and good, purified by the breath of heaven on an evening like this."

"Listen!...There will be a change tomorrow."

The events of yesterday warned me to be ready, sooner or later, to meet the worst. Today is not yet at an end, and the worst has come.

"They are all in love with some other man. Who gets the first of a woman's heart? In all my experience I have never yet met with the man who was Number One. Number Two, sometimes. Number Three, Four, Five, often. Number One, never! He exists, of course– but I have not met with him."

I accomplish my destiny with a calmness which is terrible to myself.

It is the grand misfortune of my life that nobody will let me alone.

Conceive my situation, if you please. Is language adequate to describe it? I think not.

I had done all man could to rise after the shock, and accept my life resignedly– to let my great sorrow come in tenderness to my heart, and not in despair.

This was the story of the past– the story so far as we knew it then.

"Bless you, we are all asleep here! We don't march with the times."

The dress of Virtue, in our parts, was cotton print. I had silk.

"The best men are not consistent in good– why should the worst men be consistent in evil?"

Such is the World, such Man, such Love. What are we (I ask) but puppets in a show-box? Oh, omnipotent Destiny, pull our string gently! Dance us mercifully off our miserable stage!

Where is the Rembrandt who could depict our midnight procession? Alas for the Arts! alas for this most pictorial of all subjects! The modern Rembrandt is nowhere to be found.

Youths! I invoke your sympathy. Maidens! I claim your tears.

And You Can Quote Me: Brideshead Revisted; Evelyn Waugh

"Just the place to bury a crock of gold," said Sebastian. "I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember."

"But you can't believe things because they are a lovely idea."
"But I do. that's how I believe."

For a few happy hours of rehearsal, for a few ecstatic minutes of performance, they had played splendid parts, their own great ancestors, the famous paintings they were thought to resemble; now it was over and in the bleak light of day they must go back to their homes; to the husband who came to London too often, to the lover who lost at cards, and to the child who grew up too fast.

"I was determined to have a happy Christmas."
"Did you?"
"I think so. I don't remember it much, and that's always a good sign, isn't it?"

But as I drove away and turned back in the car to take what promised to be my last view of the house, I felt that I was leaving part of myself behind, and that wherever I went afterwards I should feel the lack of it, and search for it hopelessly, as ghosts are said to do, frequenting the spots where they buried material treasures without which they cannot pay their way to the nether world.

"They can't hurt us, can they?"
"Not to-night; not now."
"Not for how many nights?"

"If I was rex..." his mind seemed full of such suppositions: "If I was archbishop of Westminster," If I was head of the Great Western Railway," If I was an actress"-- as though it were a mere trick of fate that he was none of these things, and he might awake any morning to find the matter adjusted.

He left the sentence eloquently unfinished.

"I don't want to make it easier for you," I said; "I hope your heart may break; but I do understand."