Quotessence
Home / Authors / Holly Smale Books
Holly Smale

Holly Smale Books

Writer

Forever Geek

A source page for quotes linked to Holly Smale.

0 quotes

Model Misfit

A source page for quotes linked to Holly Smale.

0 quotes

Geek Girl

A source page for quotes linked to Holly Smale.

0 quotes

Geek Drama

A source page for quotes linked to Holly Smale.

0 quotes

Sunny Side Up

A source page for quotes linked to Holly Smale.

0 quotes

Related Quotes

“We each have our own language. Our own way of thinking, of talking to ourselves, of making sense of the world and putting it in order. A narration style that is ours and ours alone. That's why some of us connect and some of us don't. Because even though we can only live in our own heads, sometimes - every now and then - we meet a person we can talk to without speaking at all: whose story we can read, without even trying.”

LanguageIndividualityConnectionSoulmateReadConnection With People
Book:Sunny Side Up
Create image

“People are like glass. Some you can see straight through; others shine bright lights and iridescent colours everywhere they go. Some you look at and see parts of yourself reflected, and you look into some and see nothing but darkness. Some people magnify so that everything around them seems bigger anc more beautiful, while others can make even the largest things seem infinitely smaller. People can be cracked or chipped, fragile or scratched, and still stay in one piece: even more precious and loved for all of their broken parts. But sometimes ... people shatter.”

PeopleShatteredGlass
Book:Forever Geek
Create image

“Dear Nick, I Know we made this decision together. I know we both thought it would be less painful to break up before the distance did it for us. I really believed it was the right thing to do: that it wouldn't hurt as much this way. But I can't imagine anything could be harder than this. And I don't think I'm OK. I came back from New York and I was so devastated I shut myself away from my best friends, and now they've shut themselves away from me too. I've done everything I can to feel happy again. I've been to Morocco and ridden on camels and danced in the desert: I've chased my inner star. I've thrown myself into modelling and done whatever it takes to make new Friends at school so I'm not alone, even though I don't really understand them most of the time and I don't think they understand me either. I'm trying so hard to move on without you. But I'm not, Nick. I'm not moving anywhere. All the things I wrote in the last letter... they weren't true. Or they were, but it wasn't what I really meant. I was hiding behind Facts and figures because I didn't Know how to say this: Every day you're changing, you're growing, you're living, you're out there being you, and the only thing staying the same is me. I'm still here, holding on to you. Stuck in the past. Trapped in it. Burying myself in it. Drowning in it. And I don't know what to do to make it better. I miss you, Nick. I've missed you every day, every hour and every second since you've been gone. And I miss the bit of me you took with you. Harriet xxx”

LettersBreakup
Book:All That Glitters
Create image

“Because I am not a monster or a goddess; I am not a prophet or a princess, a gorgon or a priestess. I am not Aphrodite or Athena, Arachne or Medusa. I did not emerge from a seashell, or the inside of a head; I do not have to weave my story, over and over again, and it is not--and never should be--told by other people. My fate is not written in time, or sand, or stars, or in a tapestry, or a spider's web, and it never actually was. I am Cassandra: the future was always in me.”

DestinyFateFutureMythologyCreate Your FutureCreate Your Destiny
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“I'm hard work, Nick. And I'm OK with that, but you need to be OK with that too because I'm not going to change." Finally, I draw to a breathless stop. "But that's the whole point," he says slowly with a warm smile. "I don't want you to change, Harriet. You're not hard work for me." And that's when I know. As Nick laces his fingers through mine and the golden sun in my chest starts burning so brightly it feels like it's going to explode, I realise that all that time we were focusing on our three stars, the moon had been there too. Coming and going - waxing and waning - but never really leaving. Always there: always shared. Always reflecting love and light back at me. "Acceptance," Lion Boy says, kissing me gently. "Tick.”

LoveChangeAcceptanceHard WorkHigh Maintenance
Book:Forever Geek
Create image

“It suddenly hits me that I'm allowing my life to fall back into exactly the same shape it was the first time round: gravitating toward familiarity and repetition, the way I always do. Encouraging the sameness, because even when it's awful, I still like it more than change. Slipping back into time as if it's an old pair of comfy slippers I refuse to throw away, even though they're not even that comfortable anymore and my toes are sticking out and getting cold. And this wasn't the point of what it is I'm trying to do. I'm supposed to be taking risks, making changes, and if I don't--if I simply wrap myself in the comfort of a timeline I already know--I'll just end up where I was at the beginning, and I'll have wasted my time. Worse: I'll have wasted all of them.”

ChangeRoutineTime TravelFamiliarityTaking RisksSameness
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“And the complete truth of this statement shocks me, because I am mostly on my own. I am so permanently alone that I can feel it in my bones, in my eyeballs, in the roots of my hair. I feel loneliness like a physical presence, as if someone heavy is sitting on my chest. I feel it when I wake up and I feel it when I walk down the street. I feel it when I eat and when I dance; I feel it when I'm with people, and I feel it when I'm not. I feel loneliness inside me, all of the time, but I also like to be alone and I don't really like other humans much either, so where the hell does that leave me?”

LonelinessLonelyBeing Alone
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“What's strange is that small changes upset me immensely and always have done. A tree trimmed outside my house, the reorganization of a supermarket aisle, a new haircut, an updated app format. I cried for hours when they "new and improved" the recipe for the mashed potato I eat every Monday night. But the big stuff? The deaths, the tragedies, the life-changing shifts that rock everyone else to their core? That's when I'm cool, calm and collected. It's why I had to give three speeches at my own parents' funeral, and also--I'm assuming--why I heard my great-uncle Joseph call me an "empty robot" under his breath when I sat back down again. I don't understand it, but there's just something in me that knows how to stand still when the earth shatters.”

AutismChangesAutistic
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“Maybe I'm not overthinking it. Maybe I've been told I'm overthinking it so often, by so many people, I've convinced myself it's all I'm capable of. But what if they're wrong? What if I'm thinking it exactly the right amount? What if everyone else is simply underthinking it, continuously, and the deficit is actually theirs? Because something tells me I'm not in the wrong here: my instincts are spot-on.”

AutismAutisticOverthinking
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“But I find being around people so hard. Any people. There's all this noise and light and color and sensation, all the time, and I don't know how to read tone or emotions or jokes or sarcasm or flirting. It's like all the things that everyone else can do automatically, I have to do manually. And I get overwhelmed. Constantly. That's the face you're seeing. It's me, trying to process everything at once.”

AutismAutisticNeurodivergentOverstimulation
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“I mean, we should probably have worked it out for ourselves, what with the lifelong obsession with Greek mythology and the rules and regulations and the need for quiet, dark rooms and the same restaurant and food over and over again and the sensory issues and the repetitive movements and the massive meltdowns, but we all just thought she was your bog-standard academic.”

AutismAutisticSensory ProcessingRoutines
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“I return myself to the safety of my bedroom and throw myself into a loop of my own making: read a book I've already read, watch a TV show I've seen dozens of times, wear my Wednesday pajamas and eat my Wednesday dinner. I listen to a favorite song on repeat, dozens of times; bury myself in familiarity like a small, hurt animal in its den, turning in tiny circles until it can comfortably settle. I make the same small sounds to myself, over and over again. I curl up in a ball on my bed, rocking gently, losing myself in the comfort of a pattern. I soothe myself with repetition until I feel calm.”

RoutineAutismRepetitionAutisticSameness
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“I think about this offer carefully for a few seconds. Strangers, packed together in a loud, flashing room in scratchy clothes, making pointless small talk, eating food I don't like from plates that might not be properly clean, using cutlery with little bits of dried food still stuck to it. Intermittently dancing. Yeah: if Hades ever dragged me to the Underworld, that's exactly what I'd find there.”

AutismIntrovertAutisticPartiesOverstimulated
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“I realize that's how it sometimes feels to be me. As if I have to hide who I am, all of the time. As if I have to pretend to be like everyone else, just so people will love me. As if I'm constantly being asked to share, to reveal myself, to open up, and when I do--when I finally show people who I truly am--it's not what anyone wanted and they explode right in front of me. I am so fucking done with making myself smaller.”

AutismAutisticMaskingUnmaskingAutistic Masking
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“I'm on the spectrum," I say with a jolt. "Derek and Jack were right." "They were not." Artemis scowls. "That's a euphemism. They don't want to say autistic because they think it's rude. It is not rude." "It's not?" I say distantly, observing my brain shift again. "Nope. People think autism is some kind of error, and it's not. You're not broken or 'disordered,' or whatever they say on their little bits of paper. That just means 'not exactly like me.' Which--" Artemis points at the folder "--I think you'll see is one of the many things Mum wrote in the margins, along with the words go to hell, highlighted in pink. Autism is just a different wiring. You're built in alternative neurological software, from the ground up. Every single part of you. And it's..." "Colorful and loud?" I guess, and Artemis laughs. "I was going to say brilliant," she says. "But, yeah, I'd imagine that too. Although I don't know why anyone is surprised at how the world treats you. This has never really been a planet that embraces difference.”

AutismAutisticNeurodivergentAutism Acceptance
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“I should be more surprised. I should be reeling. But isn't this exactly how I've always felt? That I'm not quite made the same? That I'm some kind of alien, trying to learn how to be a human from scratch every day? That I constantly need to translate the world around me to myself, and then myself back to the world again, like speaking two completely different languages simultaneously? Wow. No wonder I'm always so bloody exhausted.”

AutismAutistic
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“This book does not represent autism, and neither I nor Cassie represent autistic people. We are simply individual voices in a choir of millions of amazing neurodivergent people, all with our own experiences, or own ways of seeing the world, our own ways of existing. I cannot speak for anyone but myself, and I would not want to try. So, whether you enjoyed this book or not, whether you see yourself represented in this story or not, I urge you to seek out other autistic voices. We are beautiful, we are unique, and we are legion.”

AutismRepresentationAutisticNeurodivergentOwn VoicesOwnvoicesAcknowledgments
Book:Cassandra in Reverse
Create image

“Because these aren't just dresses. They're portals: ways of time-travelling without moving. A little bit of me went into each of them, and it's as if I can see myself in each of them, standing there like a ghost. As if every emotion, every thought, every hope, every memory I had is still drifting visibly through them like smoke. These are all part of who I am and who I was, and they're also part of who I will be. My very own historical timeline.”

HistoryFashionDressesTimelinePortalsTime Traveling
Book:Forever Geek
Create image

“Does a caterpillar sit on the same leaf when it's a butterfly? No! It goes for a little fly and sees something of the world. Does the tadpole stay in the same pond once it's a frog? No! It stretches its legs, goes for a jump, explores other waters. Did Cinderella go back cleaning hearths once she married the prince? ... Transformation means moving forward. If a butterfly stays on the same leaf and a frog stays in the same pond, then they may as well have stayed a caterpillar or a tadpole. There was no point in metamorphosing.”

InspirationalTransformationGeek GirlHolly SmaleModel Misfit
Book:Model Misfit
Create image