Genevieve Valentine Quotes

Lou had been a blur of red in Jo's memories of this
room, the bright spot of color in the endless waiting white.

Lou was last, and she stopped next to Jo long enough to pluck her cigarette holder out of her mouth.
"You meet the nicest people in the clink, Jo. I should have figured something was up. Were you planning to hit the road with him in your fancy frock after the party?"
"Oh, I don't think he'd look very good in my fancy frock," said Jo, and moved to catch up with the rest.

The girls were wild for dancing, and nothing else. No hearts beat underneath those thin, bright dresses. They laughed like glass.

Tenderly, as only monsters are tender, he asks, "Are you afraid to be like us, Ying?"

"No," Ying says. (How can she be afraid of anything, when he is so beautiful?)

She turns her head. Her breath fogs over the copper petals, until nothing is left of her but a dim reflection in his wings.

Then you are the bird, and the bird, and the bird.

She sighs, breathing smoke through her lips. "Might as well dance.

When are you going to get a fella?" Lily asks Rose after a year or two of dancing. "I have one who wants to take me kissing, but I think I should wait for you to have one."
Rose flushes. "I don't think I'll ever have a fella."
"Why not?" Lily bristles. "We're plenty pretty."
"I don't like the look of them," Rose says.
Lily purses her lips at the dance floor, appraising.
After a moment long, Rose says, "Any of them."
Lily looks at her a long time, as Rose tries not to hyperventilate.
Then Lily shrugs and says, "Well, then it's you who should have learned to lead, isn't it?" and when Rose clasps Lily's hand, she clasps it back.
It's the closest they've ever been.

Then she set it aside.
(She set everything aside. There was some hollow place inside her that few and grew.)

It was for Alec she made the wings.

It was the only gift she ever gave him; it was the only gift she has ever given to someone without a new name attached, the only gift she's ever given without killing someone first.

Most of my writing takes place at a cramped desk in a cramped apartment, so whenever I get to write on a train or make notes on a road trip, it has an entirely different cadence. And I can remember specific writing sessions while on a train through beautiful countryside in a way I can remember almost nothing else.

This is what happens when you take a step: you are moving closer to what you want.

With so many trapped in the upper floors, it hardly surprised Jo how often they fought, or how fiercely. When you didn't have one room to yourself in the whole world, you laid claim to every inch of whatever you could.

I felt sorry for her. Insects were easy to love. It's always easier to find a thing and love it without hoping for a reason.

He was like a song she'd heard years back, played again in a quiet room; there was no telling if the song was any good, or if she only remembered it fondly because of the person she'd been long ago, when she heard it first.

You can't expect people to give you the things you love, unless you know how to ask.

It frightened her how deep her sobs could reach, as if someone was pulling sorrow from her bones.

She falls in love every night for a while. Then she learns that if you're quiet, they talk, and you can find something to dislike about anyone.

No need to worry about loving one when all of them would be back tomorrow night.

I promise not to step on you - I only look like a clodhopper," he was saying when Jo reached them. He winked at Ella, who glanced away and blinked, as if surprised that he'd come so close to guessing what she thought.
Jo slid up to the bar behind her sister, planted a stiff arm on the ledge, and raised an eyebrow at him.
He glanced up and saw her.
She expected him to blanche, or bristle, or pretend he'd just forgotten someplace else he had to be. A lot of men did that, when they realized that the girl they thought was alone had brought friends to look out for her.
But instead he only said, "Oh," softly, his smile so wide and earnest that crows'-feet appeared at the edges of his eyes; he smiled as though she was an old friend, as though he had been waiting for Jo a long time and was delighted to see her at last.