Holly Smale Quotes

Have you been sniffing glitter again?

Tortoises are incredible creatures," Dad says earnestly. "What they lack in elegance and beauty they more than make up for in the ability to curl up and defend themselves from predators."
"What, like me?

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.

If you don't make yourself irreplaceable, somebody will replace you. Being different is being remembered. Being the same is being forgotten.

Nobody really metamorphoses. Cinderella is always Cinderella, just in a nicer dress. The Ugly Duckling was always a swan, just a smaller version. And I bet the tadpole and the caterpillar still feel the same, even when they're jumping and flying, swimming and floating.
Just like I am now.

Because that's the truth about people with obsessively organised plans: we're not trying to control everything in our lives. We're trying to block everything we can't.

Why do you always rescue me?" - "Every Cinderella needs a fairy godmother. But sometimes your fairy godmother needs you right back.

They say fiction is the closest well ever get from magic. Open a book and an entire world will pop out and it doesn't matter if it's dragons or Victorian children or wizards. You are immediately someone else and somewhere else

My Best Friend and I have spent plenty of time together, despite me being in my First Ever Relationship. This is because friends should always come first.

My name," I tell Wilbur in the most dignified voice I can find, "Was inspired by Harriet Quimby, the first female American pilot and the first woman ever to cross the Channel in an aeroplane. My mother chose it to represent freedom and bravery and independence, and she gave it to me just before she died."
There's a short pause while Wilbur looks appropriately moved. Then Dad says, "Who told you that?"
"Annabel did."
"Well, it's not true at all. You were named after Harriet the tortoise, the second longest living tortoise in the world."
There's a silence while I stare at Dad and Annabel puts her head in her hands so abruptly that the pen starts to leak into her collar. "Richard," she moans quietly.
"A tortoise?" I repeat in dismay. "I'm named after a tortoise? What the hell is a tortoise supposed to represent?"
"Longevity?

They say that life is just a blank chain, and precious moments are the beads we hang off it to make it beautiful.

There are 7,123,024,873 people in the world, and nick keeps choosing me

Never underestimate the power of a well-placed apostrophe.

People like their high-fashion models to look as deeply unhappy as physically possible You can't have beauty and contentment: it would just be unfair.

That's the thing about love.
You can plan it, and schedule it, and map it out. You can tell it how you want it to be, and where you want it to go, and what it's supposed to do. You can try to make it fit you.
But it won't listen to any of it.
Love puts itself first, and makes its own plans. It maps you out instead.
Maybe that's what makes it perfect.

Scientist say that music can change the speed of a heartbeat. They failed to add: so can a text message.

Mr Bott sits down and gestures gracefully to the board. "As you are clearly both fascinated by this text, would you like to explain the significance of Laertes in Hamlet?" He looks at Alexa. "Please go first, Miss Roberts."
"Well ... " Alexa says hesitantly. "He's Ophelia's brother, right?"
"I didn't ask for his family tree, Alexa. I want to know his literary significance as a fictional character."
Alexa looks uncomfortable. "Well then, his literary significance is in being Ophelia's brother, isn't it? So she has someone to hang out with."
"How very kind of Shakespeare to give fictional Ophelia a fictional playmate so that she doesn't get fictionally bored. Your analytical skills astound me, Alexa. Perhaps I should send you to Set Seven with Mrs White and you can spend the rest of the lesson studying Thomas the Tank Engine. I believe he has lots of buddies too.

They say fiction is the closest we ever get to magic. Forget top hats and rabbits: open a book and an entire world will pop out. And it doesn't matter if it's dragons or Victorian orphans or wizards. You are immediately somewhere else and someone else. Transported. It's not like that with textbooks.

It's 4:40am and i'm standing in the middle of a Quentin Tarantino version of Finding Nemo

And insufficient

Your daughter is adorable. I've never seen such an alien duck in my entire life.

If I tell you, you'll panic."

"I won't."

"You will. You'll panic, and then I'll panic, and then you'll panic again, and she'll be able to tell we're weak and she'll eat both of us.

A slug has its bottom in its head.

Our future selves are only as good as our past selves believe we can be

That's the truth about people with obsessively organised plans: we're not trying to control everything in our lives. We're trying to block out the things we can't.

The internet lied to me?

I can change my plans. But I can't change my family.

Don't you get it yet,Harriet?" Nick says in total exasperation. "i like that you know about the stars in the rain and the shapes of the clouds and the heartbeat rate of the hummingbird. I like that you know that giraffes don't have vocal cords and the sharks can't stop moving. I like the way you stick your little nose in the air ...

You know, I've worked out that if I lived on Mercury I'd be sixty-six years old tomorrow. I'd be twenty-six on Venus, and half a year old on Saturn. I'm only sixteen because I'm on this planet.

We don't unfold ourselves like pieces of paper for everyone to see: that's not how humans work. There are always parts of us we shut away or hide. Bits of ourselves we can't touch because they're too precious and buried too deep. Fragments of truth we barely admit to ourselves. Because sometimes editing our own story is the only way to get through it.

a) not thinking about Nick and b)

She's ... having an affair with a strawberry jam manufacturer?

What are you doing here?" "Obviously I'm doing laundry, Harriet." I raise my eyebrow. He looks completely at ease with this terrible excuse, which - considering the fact that he has no laundry with him - is a little worrying.

Because falling in love doesn't have to mean dropping your best friend in the process.

Adults almost never like doing their jobs from what I can tell.

Nick grinned, swooping in for another kiss and then leaning back and scruffing his hair up. "Harriet Manners, I'm about to give you six stamps. Then I'm going to write something on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope with your address on it."
"OK …" "Then I'm going to put the envelope on the floor and spin us as fast as I can. As soon as either of us manage to stick a stamp on it, I'm going to race to the postbox and post it unless you can catch me first. If you win, you can read it."
Nick was obviously faster than me, but he didn't know where the nearest postbox was. "Deal," I agreed, yawning and rubbing my eyes.
"But why six stamps?"
"Just wait and see."
A few seconds later, I understood.
As we spun in circles with our hands stretched out, one of my stamps got stuck to the ground at least a metre away from the envelope. Another ended up on a daisy. A third somehow got stuck to the roundabout.
One of Nick's ended up on his nose.
And every time we both missed, we laughed harder and harder and our kisses got dizzier and dizzier until the whole world was a giggling, kissing, spinning blur.
Finally, when we both had one stamp left, I stopped giggling. I had to win this.
So I swallowed, wiped my eyes and took a few deep breaths.
Then I reached out my hand.
"Too late!" Nick yelled as I opened my eyes again. "Got it, Manners!" And he jumped off the still-spinning roundabout with the envelope held high over

Because here's the thing about a book: when you pick up a story, you put down your own

Well?" Nat says after a few seconds. "I'm surprised you're here again, Harriet. I thought you'd be busy auditioning for A Midsummer Night's Dream."
I blink a few times in surprise. "No. I'm not."
"You should be. I heard they're looking for an ass."
Oh. Now why can't I think of quips like that when I need them?

That one teaspoon of a neutron star weighs billions of tonnes,

I can only conclude that her feelings toward me are very similar to what I've read about love: passionate, random, inexplicable, and totally uncontrollable. She can't help hating me any more than Heathcliff could help loving Cathy. It's simply written in the stars. Which would be quite sweet if she wasn't such a cow all the time.

Apparently humans share fifty per cent of their DNA with bananas. My father is a constant reminder of that.

Also," Bunty adds cheerfully, "how many cats did you have when you left?"
"One," Annabel says, putting her hand over her face.
"You have three now." Bunty swings hrt bag over her shoulder. "See you at Christmas, lovelies!"
And my grandmother disappears as abruptly as she arrived.

The rest of my Thursday can be summarised thus:
- Nat tells me to bite her.
- I don't.
- I am forced to sit next to Toby for the entire two-and-a-half-hour return coach journey.
- He tells me that water is not blue because it reflects the sky, but actually because the molecular structure of the water itself reflects the colour blue and therefore our art teacher is wrong and the authorities should be alerted.
- I pull my jumper over my head.
- I stay under my jumper for the next two hours.

Oh." Dad frowns. "Why hasn't Annabel been teaching you how to walk in heels? I thought we had an agreement: I teach you how to be cool and she trains you how to be a girl."
I stare at him in silence. This explains so much.

I suddenly realise that it doesn't matter how far I go, or how lost I am, or how lonely I feel. I fit in here. I always will.
That's how I know I'm home.

Czar Nicholas the Second was overthrown by Lenin in 1917."
I blink in surprise. "Yes," I say, "he was."
"And do you think I want to know that? IT's not even on your exam syllabus. I never had to know that. So now it's your turn to pick up a few pairs of shoes and make ooh and aah sounds for me becuase Jo ate prawns and she's allergic and she got sick and couldn't come and I'm not sitting on a bus on my own for five hours, OK?"
Nat takes a deep breath and I look at my hands in shame. I am a selfish, selfish person. I am also a very sparkly person; my hands are covered in gold glitter.

Nobody hopped into a wardrobe to find Narnia; they hopped in, thinking it was just a wardrobe. They didn't climb up the Faraway Tree, knowing it was a Faraway Tree; they thought it was just a really big tree. Harry Potter thought he was a normal boy; Mary Poppins was supposed to be a regular nanny. It's the first and only rule. Magic comes when you're not looking for it.

I didn't need to transform after all.
My name is Harriet Manners and I am a geek.
And maybe that's not so bad after all.

The sad fact is, there are 7.220.400.641 people on the planet, but right now I haven't got a single one to talk to.

Our stories are drive by who we are and what we do, and not by the events that happens to us.