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S Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with S. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All S Quotes

“She will save herself by proving that she is loyal, obedient, useful, even fanatic in the service of the men around her. She is the happy hooker, the happy homemaker, the exemplary Christian, the pure academic, the perfect comrade, the terrorist par excellence. Whatever the values, she will embody them with a perfect fidelity. The males rarely keep their part of the bargain as she understands it: protection from male violence against her person. But the militant conformist has given so much of herself […] that this betrayal is akin to nailing the coffin shut; the corpse is beyond caring.”

“She will try to find the nice way to exercise intelligence. But intelligence is not ladylike. Intelligence is full of excesses. Rigorous intelligene abhors sentimentality, and women must be sentimental to value the dreadful silliness of the men around them. Morbid intelligence abhors the cheery sunlight of positive thinking and eternal sweetness; and women must be sunlight and cheery and sweet, or the woman could not bribe her way with smiles through a day. Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized. Any vital intelligence has passionate questions, aggressive answers; but women cannot be explorers; there can be no Lewis or Clark of the female mind.”

“She winced and covered her ears as Eric,onstage, wrestled with his microphone. "Sorry about that, guys!" he yelled. "All right. I'm Eric, and this is my homeboy Matt on the drums. My first poem is called 'Untitled.'" He screwed up his face as if in pain, and wailed into the mike. "Come my faux juggernaut, my nefarious loins! Slather every protuberance with arid zeal!" Simon slid down in his seat. "Please don't tell anyone I know him." Clary giggled. "Who uses the word 'loins'?" "Eric," Simon said grimly. "All his poems have loins in them." 'Turgid is my torment!" Eric wailed. "Agony swells within!" "You bet it does," Clary said.”

“She winced at the rush of pain that shuddered through the base of her skull. “Holy balls, my head hurts.” “God, your mouth.” The way he said it almost sounded like a groan. “I think you like my mouth.” The instant the words were out she wished she could reel them back in. Oh yeah, clearly she had a concussion. Or freaking brain damage. To her surprise, his lips pulled up in the first honest to God smile she’d ever seen from him. It completely transformed his constantly gruff expression into something that should be considered illegal. “You wouldn’t be wrong about that,” he murmured. Wait…what?”

“She wipes her forehead with her wrist She's just back from a double shift Esther's a carer doing nights Behind her on the kitchen wall is a black and white picture of swallows in flight Her eyes are sore her muscles ache she cracks a beer and swigs it She holds it to her thirsty lips and necks it till it's finished. It's 4:18 a.m. again. Her brain is full of all she's done that day She knows that she won't sleep a wink before the sun is on it's way. She's worried about the world tonight. She's worried all the time. She don't know how she's supposed to put it from her mind . . . - Europe is Lost”

“She wished Jimena were here. Normally, they were inseparable, but this evening Jimena had to do community service at Children's Hospital. She worked with children undergoing rehabilitation for gunshot wounds. She read to them, played checkers, and showed them how to macramé. Jimena had been in a gangland sentenced twice to a Youth Authority Camp for jacking cars. She would be there now, if a lenient judge hadn't sentenced her to do commission service work instead. Jimena had been one badass homegirl before she understood her destiny.”

“She wished she could talk as he did. His speech was so quick and easy. It sounded as if he liked her and was not the least afraid she would not like him, though he was only a common moor boy, in patched clothes and with a funny face and a rough, rusty-red head.”

“She wished she had cancer instead. She'd trade Alzheimer's for cancer in a heartbeat. She felt ashamed for wishing this, and it was certainly a pointless bargaining, but she permitted herself the fantasy anyway. With cancer, she'd have something to fight. There was surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. There was the chance that she could win. Her family and the community at Harvard would rally behind her battle and consider it noble. And even if it defeated her in the end, she'd be able to look them knowingly in the eye and say good-bye before she left.”

“She wished she hadn't succumbed to irritation. Because she wanted to know about his inner feelings. She always thought people were like pieces of art glass-- strong enough to handle and use, delicate enough to shatter under a strong blow, and filled with swirls of color that fascinated the eye. But while most people--and most glass--allowed light through, she could discern nothing of Devlin's heart and soul through the smoke and mirrors he held before him.”

“She wished she were not so aware of the vast gulf between what the men in her life thought she was worth and her actual value. She had, it seemed to her, always asked and expected too much and given too little. She seemed almost to have a perverse impulse to make anyone who cared about her regret it, to find the thing that would most appall those people and then do that until they had to run away as a matter of self-preservation.”

“She wished some help would come from outside. But in the whole world there was no help. Society was terrible because it was insane. Civilized society is insane. Money and so-called love are its two great manias; money a long way first. The individual asserts himself in his disconnected insanity in these two modes: money and love.”

“She wishes her grandmother had not been so protective, and that she understood better what passes between a man and woman. As it is, she simply enjoys the feelings and wonders if they are what lightning is made of, for everything comes back to the weather. Tears like rain. Smiles like the sun. Hair as dry as sand and fear like the dark ocean.”

“She woke to the sound of the sea, the sound of home. A cool breeze floated through the open window, carrying a dandelion seed inside with it. Jinny-Joes as she called them, although Nana Martha insisted they were called fairies in Yorkshire, and if you caught one you had to make a wish. Olivia watched it dance in a shaft of sunlight before it settled onto the pillow beside her. She picked it up and twirled it around between her thumb and finger. Something about its fragility spoke to her of letting go, of being blown on the wind to some unknown place. She closed her eyes and made a wish.”

“She woke up from a bad dream, her breath coming in quick, shallow gasps. The room was dimly lit by the early morning light seeping through the curtains. As she sat up, rubbing her eyes, she reached for her phone to call him. "Sorry for bothering you in your dream," he whispered softly, his voice a gentle balm to her frazzled nerves. Her fear slowly dissipated. "How did you know?" she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper. He gave a small, knowing smile. "I could sense it in your voice. I just wanted to let you know I'm here." She nodded, feeling the warmth of his love wrap around her like a protective shield. "Thank you," she murmured, lying back down and letting the comfort of his words soothe her back into a peaceful sleep.”

“She wondered how Cole, or Lottie, or anybody could join her family--could ever be a aprt of the years that formed so many jokes and feuds and scars. All this talk of diamonds and futures, and it occured to her for the very first time that the person of Rachel Eklund was a fragile and wasting thing. Another evening with Cole, another less with Mama and Harold and Dalton and Mildred; another less of sharing together a single, secret personhood no one else could understand. A little less and a little less, and then she'd be another person--Rachel Windham, most likely, molding this piece of herself with that piece of Cole, augmented mostly by their each others': this joke he made, this fight she started; the two of them making the way for other breakable people. And Rachel thought, 'this is the way families go.”