Anna Gavalda Quotes

For how much longer will we have the strength to tear ourselves away from everyday life and resist? How often will life give us the chance to play hooky? To thumb our noises at it? Or make our little honorarium on the side? When will we lose one another and in what way will the ties be stretched beyond repair?
How much longer until we become too old?
And I know we were all aware of this. I know what we're like.
We're too shy to talk about it, but at that precise moment on our journey, we knew. ~ Anna Gavalda

He went down a step and sat with his back against his sweetheart's legs.

She put her notebook on his head. ~ Anna Gavalda

She was sound asleep when he came to curl up next to her. She grunted.
"Don't worry. I'm too drunk, I won't do anything," he murmered.
As she had her back to him, he placed his nose on her neck and slid his arm underneath her to be as close to her as possible. Short strands of her hair tickled his nostrils.
"Camille?"
Was she asleep? Was she pretending? No answer either way.
"I like being with you."
A little smile.
Was she dreaming? Was she asleep? Who knows ... ~ Anna Gavalda

Life is stronger than you are, even when you deny it, even when you neglect it, even when you refuse to admit it. ~ Anna Gavalda

So ... It's just that I have a problem with voltage. I don't know how to explain it ... I often get the feeling I've got a button missing, you know, some knob for adjusting the volume. I always go too far to one extreme or the other. I can never find the right balance and whatever I take a fancy to - well, it always ends badly." She was surprised at herself. Why was she confiding in him like this? Slightly tipsy, maybe? "When I drink, I drink too much, when I smoke, I fuck myself up, when I love, I go out of my mind and when I work, it's into the ground. Dead. I don't know how to do things normally, quietly, I - ~ Anna Gavalda

But you're not as stupid as they say!... Or are you? ~ Anna Gavalda

How could you let yourself be sidetracked while I was waiting for your breath on my back? ~ Anna Gavalda

At the end of the afternoon she tore herself away from the story to go and buy some tobacco. This would be tricky on a holiday, but never mind, it was mainly a pretext so the story could settle and she'd have the pleasure of meeting up with her new friend again a bit later on. ~ Anna Gavalda

I never knew a sorrow that an hour of reading could not assuage, a great man had once said. Let's put it to the test. ~ Anna Gavalda

You think they're like your pencils? That they get worn down if you use them?"
"What?"
"Feelings. ~ Anna Gavalda

A pen, you see, you hold it between your thumb and your index finger. No, wait, you hold it however you want. After that, it's not hard, you don't even think about it. Your hands don't exist anymore. The important thing happens elsewhere. No, this won't do, it's still too pretty. You're not being asked to come up with something pretty, you know. No one gives a damn about pretty. There are children's drawings and glossy magazines for that. So put on your mittens, little genius, little empty shell, yes, go on, put them on, I tell you, and maybe at last you'll see, you'll draw an almost perfect failed circle. ~ Anna Gavalda

I think we go well together. I like being with you because I'm never bored. Even when we're not talking, even when we're not touching, even when we're not in the same room, I'm not bored. I'm never bored. I think it's because I have confidence in you, in your thoughts. Do you understand? I love everything I see in you, and everything I don't see. I know your faults, but as it turns out, I feel as though your faults go well with my qualities. We're not afraid of the same things. Even our inner demons go well together! You, you're worth more than you show ... ~ Anna Gavalda

What keeps people from living together is their stupidity, not their differences. ~ Anna Gavalda

Our certainties never really hold water. One day you feel like dying and the next you realize all you had to do was go down a few stairs to find the light switch so you could see things a bit more clearly. ~ Anna Gavalda

Perhaps it's because it's incredible to meet someone and say: with this person, I'm happy. ~ Anna Gavalda

But, you see, if being an intellectual means you like to learn, that you're curious and attentive and can admire things and be moved by them and try to understand how it all hangs together, and try to go to bed a bit less stupid than the day before, well, then yes: not only am I an intellectual but I'm proud to be one. Really proud, even. ~ Anna Gavalda

You'd try to look elsewhere but you wouldn't be able to help yourself, and you'd look back again. Because there was something going on. There was some sort of special air around this person. Or a special light?
Yes. That was it.
If you just came in this crummy Lavomatic on the avenue de La Bourdonnais on December twenty-ninth at five o'clock in the afternoon and you saw this figure in the dreary neon lights, this is exactly what you would say to yourself: Holy shit. An angel.

Camille raised her eyes just then, saw him, did not react right away as if she had not recognized him, then finally smiled. A very faint smile, a slight brilliance, a little sign of recognition among regulars.
"Got your wings in there?" he asked, pointing to her bag.
"Sorry?"
"Nah, nothing. ~ Anna Gavalda

She's pretty, but in her face you can see all the things she's given up on in life. ~ Anna Gavalda

Cletus takes a sizeable gulp from the bottle, then points at Arden. You'd learn something from that one, boy. She's a hard worker. A survivor. Gets things done. That girl doesn't know it, but she's going places in life. ~ Anna Banks

St. Clair waggles his eyebrows at Josh, but the moment he sees that I've caught him, his expression changes to a flirtatious grin. "Aw, mate," he says to Josh. "Admit it. You couldn't resist me."
Josh relaxes into a smile. "You're like a gorgeous little bonbon."
"Delicious in every way," St Clair says.
Anna rolls her eyes. "Wait until you try his creamy centre. ~ Stephanie Perkins

My handwriting as an angsty teen was appalling, yet somehow better than it is now. ~ Anna Kendrick

We want to christen every city that Kris has played in during his professional career. ~ Anna Benson

She had gone to a dinner party in her honor the night before the opening, and everyone had asked, with precisely the same intonation, as though it was a piece of urban Gregorian chant, Where have you been? ~ Anna Quindlen

There is a Restlessness springing from the consciousness of power not fully utilized, which must be present wherever there is unused power of whatever kind. This is the restlessness of the germ within the seed, struggling upward and downward towards its proper life.it is a striving full of pain, the cutting of tender flesh by the fetters of the captive as he struggles against their pitilessness. ~ Anna Brackett

Revenge is not sweet; it is gloomy and a waste of time. ~ Anna Bayes

Nous avons ete amies," I added. "There,that's two in French, and using past perfect, no less."
I couldn't see his expression clearly. It flet like a long time before he said anything. "Ella..." He paused, then, "What happened? Between you and Anna?"
"Other than the fact that I'm a fashion-impaired poor kid who draws doorknobs? Haven't a clue."
Alex leaned forward. Now I could see his face. He looked annoyed. "Why do you do that? Diminish yourself?"
"I don't-"
"Bullshit."
I could feel my cheeks flaming, feel my shoulders curving inward. "I don't-"
"Right.Don't.Just don't, with me, anyway. I like you better feisty."
I couldn't help it; that made me smile. "Did you really just say 'feisty'?"
"I did.It's a good word."
"It's am old word, favored by granddads and pirates."
"Yar," Alex sighed.
"Face it.You're just an old-fashioned guy."
"Whatever.Three...?"
"Three," I said, and changed my mind midthought. "I haven't been able to decide if Willing is the second best thing that ever happened to me, or the second worst."
"What are the firsts?"
"Nope.Uh-uh.It is not for you to ask, Alexander Bainbridge, but to reveal."
He drained his glass and rolled it back and forth between his hands. "I had all these funny admissions planned, but you've screwed up my plans. Hey. Don't go all wounded-wide-eyed on me. It's cute, that Bambi thing you have going, but beside the point.Now I have to rethink."
"You don ~ Melissa Jensen

You have to create your own stuff. It's really exciting to create something, sell it, and feel like I'm not just a pawn waiting to be cast. ~ Anna Faris

Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don't believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity. ~ Anna Quindlen

Right after Matt died, I was afraid to do basically everything. I couldn't even bite my nails or sniff my shirt to see if I needed deodorant without feeling like he was watching me. I willed and prayed and begged him to give me a sign that he was watching, that he was with me, so I would know.
But he never did. Time moved on. And I stopped being afraid. Until right now, vulnerable and insecure and a little bit drunk. Lying in the sand and falling in crazy love with someone I just met. Matt is watching me. Observing. Possibly judging. And the worst part of it is, I don't want to wake up under his landslide of sad rocks anymore. I don't want to taste the marzipan frosting and the clove cigarettes. I don't want to think about the blue glass necklace or the books he read to me on his bed or the piles of college stuff or some random boy in the grocery store wearing his donated clothes.
I don't want to be the dead boy's best-friend-turned-something-else.
Or the really supportive neighbor friend.
Or the lifelong keeper of broken-hearted secrets. ~ Sarah Ockler

I think too often we forget that girls can like sport; we are not biologically programmed to detest it, we are - in the main - conditioned against it. But shouldn't we try to change that? ~ Anna Kessel

This isnt the time to make hard and fast decisions, this is a time to make mistakes. Take the wrong train and get stuck somewhere. Fall in love, a lot. Major in philosophy, because theres no way to make a career out of that. Change your mind and change it again, because nothings permanent. ~ Anna Kendrick

I know very little about darkness, Mr Bowden, except that we cannot stop its coming. ~ Anna Freeman

There are some people just the thought of whom makes us behave better. ~ Anna Funder

And this tenderness was not like
That which a certain poet
At the beginning of the century called true
And, for some reason, quiet. No, not at all-
It rang out, like the first waterfall,
It crunched like the crust of bluish ice
And it prayed with a swanlike voice,
And it broke down right before our eyes. ~ Anna Akhmatova

You do not feel like
dancing and there are no
daffodils,

only walls, your bedroom door, and the quiet
of the house, tucked asleep in the night's thick cover.
You wait for dawn. You wait for your

dreams. You wait in the night, and you hunger. ~ Anna West

My head jerks up in embarassment, but he's smiling. I drop my face, so that my hair shields my cheeks. They blush more for his smile than anything else. ~ Stephanie Perkins

If a guy breaks your heart, break his arm, then go get some icecream:) ~ Fairy (Aka-Anna Diesing)

I've always had volume on my side: the big-voice-in-a-small-package thing. I surprise people. ~ Anna Kendrick

Anna Campbell and I have already done a history tour of parts of the U.K., and it would be fun to invite my fellow Word Wench Cara Elliott along, too! ~ Nicola Cornick

Whether I'm at a dinner with Anna Wintour or a listening party with Pusha T or in Rome with Virgil (Abloh, his style adviser) giving Fendi our designs and getting them knocked down ... we brought the leather jogging pants six years ago to Fendi, and they said no. How many m*****f***ers you done seen with a leather jogging pant? ~ Kanye West

Be the person you wish to be, not who you are told to be. ~ Anna Glazebrook

If I do three interviews in a day, I can be exhausted, because the process of hearing everyone requires that I empty out myself. While I'm listening, my own judgments and prejudices certainly come up. But I know I won't get anything unless I get those things out of the way. ~ Anna Deavere Smith

They were all dressed in their finest as though life really were some magical stage play in which every moment ought to be illuminated with its own bright spotlight. ~ Anna Godbersen

As Lenin put it, "Through the schools we will transform the old world... the final victory will belong to the schools... the final sketch plan of the socialist society will belong to the schools." So the Frankfurt School targeted and took control of the teachers' colleges in order to control what was being taught to children.
...young teachers are forced to go through possibly the most rigorous courses of indoctrination available in any universities. ~ Anna Sofia Botkin

Conflict, which rouses up the best and highest powers in some characters, in others not only jars the whole being, but paralyzes the faculties. ~ Anna Brownell Jameson

From her father, Anna-Sophia had inherited a love of burning down houses. Dutch remembered exactly the first words he'd said to her. 'This is somebody's home.' Anna-Sophias face had been puzzled. 'Of course it is.' And then she dropped the burning rag onto the couch. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

I've always chosen incredibly different roles and things that are quite offbeat. That way you're not limited. ~ Anna Friel

As the rolling stone gathers no moss, so the roving heart gathers no affections. ~ Anna Brownell Jameson

I'm serious! You have to promise me right now, this instant, that you won't leave me once you meet him.Most people would run."
"I'm not most people."
I smile."I know. But you still have to promise."
His eyes lock on mine."Anna, I promise that I will never leave you. ~ Stephanie Perkins

I'm moved by everything broken and crippled. Since that's how we really are. ~ Anna Kamienska