Brenna Yovanoff Quotes

I had only to remember that centuries before, men fell in battle for the daughter of Troy, that passions carried greater weight than decorum. It took so little to prove that human life and property are devastatingly temporary. All she had to do was lie down for a prince. They burned the city to the ground. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

You're terribly selfish, you know. I've loved you so long, and it was never dear or precious to you. I might as well have not loved you at all. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

You asked me about love. I don't know about love, Daphne. I just know I don't want anything but you. I don't want to be anywhere but with you. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Thinking of this friend I had. This friend I loved and keep loving
dead, but never really gone. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Our whole lives, it was like we were always trying so hard to be perfect - for our families and our friends, for each other - when the funny thing was, we didn't have to. In the end, we were better than that. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

What's up?' he said, like the church was always burning down and I always called him on a school night, telling him to come over after dark and bring a shovel. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Sometimes it doesn't matter how dark the world gets. You can be saved by the smallest thing. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I was too little to think a miracle could be anything but good. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

We lay on the grass beside the cemetery fence, kissing and shivering. Her teeth started to chatter and I pulled her against me, which made me feel like a superhero for no apparent reason. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

She was so much better than normal life," I say. "She made me better."
Autumn glances over and shakes her head. "Don't. That's not how it works. Nobody makes you be anything. You just are that, whether you like it or not."
She doesn't sound angry, but like she's explaining the world.
"That, then," I say, looking at the empty baseball diamond. "That's what I meant. Just that when I was with her, I was allowed to be better. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

The new mythology of love was that it bent to the fashion of the day, obligated to take the shape of doves, lilies, jewels. This is a lie. Love is sometimes as passionate as war. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

There are all kinds of things that can scare you every day. What if someone you know gets cancer? What if something happens to you sister or your friends or your parents? And what if you get hit by a car crossing the street or the kids at school find out what an unnatural freak you are and what if you go too far out in the lake and the water is over your head and what if there's a fire or a war?
And you can lie awake at night and worry about these things because it's scary and unpredictable, but it's REAL. It's possible.
-Mackie Doyle, The Replacement ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I'm not about love, but in this moment, I wish that I were. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

The Cutter leaned toward me, resting his forehead against mine. 'Fool me once,' he whispered, 'shame on you.' He pressed the bridge of his nose against mine, his breath burning the back of my throat. His voice was rough and furious. 'Fool me twice, and I will cut out your fucking throat. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I walk the three blocks to the school slowly, like if I'm not careful of every step, every tiny movement, I will lose my grip on gravity and go flying up into the stratosphere. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I don't do anything I'm not good at. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

It's nice being around someone without always having to think about who you're supposed to be and what you're supposed to do and think and say. It's nice to just concentrate on being the person you are - whoever you are. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

The world is full of unused corners. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

They?" he said, sounding apprehensive.
"Me. They're like me."
"Don't be a jackass," Roswell said, but not meanly. "No one's like you. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

When I press my forehead to his back, the shape of his pain is alluring, almost visible. It forms him, tells him to protect himself, makes him everything he is. He needs to keep it. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Did you ever think about boys?' I say, staring up into the dark.
'There wasn't room,' she whispers, and her voice is unbelievably sad. 'At first, after Connor, I was just waiting. I was going to get a new boyfriend soon- as soon as I was prettier or better, more perfect. But after a while there was no room for anything else. If I though about kissing or sex, I just started feeling ugly, too awful for anything good. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Let me tell you a little bit about demons. They love pain and other people's misery. They lie when it suits them and don't see anything wrong with it. They corrupt and kill and destroy, all without conscience. You just don't have the capacity for something as honorable as loving another person. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Tender," she said again. "Tender is kind and gentle. It's also sore, like the skin around an injury. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I'm so fucking real that it hurts. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

If we were having this conversation, that meant something was either wrong with me, or it was wrong with everybody else, and I had a basic enough understanding of probability to know that the odds did not rest with an entire planet. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Truman Flynn is a piece of paper in my coat pocket. He is a memory of water and of loss, his hand sliding free from mine, no way to hold on. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I just want that, the way I feel when you kiss me. Just having it makes all the bad things better. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I'd laughed this high-pitched, witchy laugh, and looked right at him. Mostly, I remember feeling vital and untouchable, like I was free and separate from him. I would never be him, and because of that, I would never be lonely or laughed at, and I would never have to worry about anything. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

My father's answer was revenge-has always been revenge-and the outcome was just, but not better. Nothing is fixed. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Why?" I say, so quietly that it comes out sounding like a tiny, tired sigh.
"Nobody wants to be mediocre." Her shadow on the ceiling is monstrous, a witch in profile. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Their lead guitar sounded like what would happen if someone wedged a traffic accident into a blender. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

All I want is for you to stand here and watch the people you love be horribly mutilated. Is that too much to ask? ~ Brenna Yovanoff

The things I had were mine and some of them were broken, but they were real. They were so very far from nothing. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

how awful to never be allowed to fail ~ Brenna Yovanoff

History was a tangled thing, people were resilient, and the one constant law of the world was that it would heal. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

We sat on the picnic bench, not talking, not looking at each other, but being quiet and okay. The rain was almost gone, nothing but a thin chilly fog. For now, I just wanted to sit on the picnic bench with him and not be anything but fine and uncomplicated. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I'm thinking that my best friend killed herself so slow it was almost like a magic trick, and other people let her do it. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

On the opposite page, there was a poem. It described how beauty and truth mattered more than anything else. They were the same thing.
But it didn't matter how pretty you painted the world. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

But what Davenport had been born into had taken so much from her, leaving her with just the wickedest and the worst. Her father had given her life, and then taken every scrap of joy or freedom, and even now that he was dead, all he had left her with was a deep, abiding hatred for what she was. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

This is aeons older than you or your family. Older than the town. Blood makes the sun shine and the crops grow. This is the truth of the world."
Tate stared down at her, then said in a soft, deadly voice that was almost a whisper, "Fuck the world. I just want my sister back. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Intent matters. If you believe you're charmed, capable, likable, popular, then you are. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I'd been living on dreams so long it was hard to know if any one of the fifteen things happening inside my head was real. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Kissing him is like the wildest, most thrilling thing that has ever happened to me. It's like diving into the deep end over and over. He touches the curve of my lip with his tongue, just once, so softly, and I think the whole world is ending, the sudden warmth of his mouth jolting through me like a shock. I hold on like I'm falling off the top of a tall cliff or I'm lost at sea, like he's the only thing solid in the whole tilting world. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

It seemed to me that some things were ugly enough that fixing them was worth trespassing. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Lillian is humming to herself, stretched out on top of my bookcase like she doesn't mind the heat, and of course she doesn't. Even when she was alive, she could never seem to get warm. The tune she's humming is thin and tight with anxiety. It's the opposite of carefree. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I want to be William Shakespeare and Galileo and Robert Frost. I want to be Sappho. I want to be Jane Austen. I want to be Holden Caulfield and Marilyn Monroe and Joan of Arc. I'm sad to think they came before me in history, they made their mark without me.
But they were there.
They happened. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

They've called us a lot of things-- the good neighbors, the fair folk. The gray ones, the old ones, the other ones. Spirits and haunts and demons. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

The fact is, the contest has always been invulnerability, and even when you win, you still lose. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Running is like music. It requires rhythm and focus. It requires dedication. It requires a dogged ability to shut out everything else. The herd is strung out below me, keeping time with the thump and slap of their cross-trainers. I hold the sound in my head and subtract cars, trucks, motorcycles, voices until it's nothing but a song. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

When you name something, you take away some of it's power. It becomes known ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Sometimes being who you are - whoever you are - is hard. Sometimes, you can have it all together and still drive yourself crazy. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

He smiles an honest smile for the first time, and the difference is hard to describe but easy to recognize. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

The treachery of demons is nothing compared to the betrayal of an angel. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

...the bad thing was that Ollie started crying. It was this basic rule of middle school that if someone messed with you, you were supposed to just take it like a psychopath. Only Ollie wasn't one. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

The way he's looking at me is like I'm the only beating heart in the world. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Once, my mother told a whole host of angels that she'd rather die than go back to a man she didn't love. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

All great acts are ruled by intention. What you mean is what you get. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

When you love someone, sometimes it means that they strip you down, peel you open, and you have to let them and not worry about how much it's going to hurt. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Lillian laughs and rolls her eyes. Do I look like I know the answer to that? I always just locked on to the target and then followed it all the way down. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Lillian was always so good at treating everything like a test, like some kind of game where the prize was shiny and untouchable. Perfection. She wanted me to back off, butt out, stop trying to control her life. And she wanted me to save her. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

He sighs, smiling a resigned little smile. "Waverly, you make me want to die, but it's in the best way. You have no idea. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I thought he made me a different person altogether, but maybe I was always holding those pieces inside me, waiting for a chance to use them. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

You have to think about your options, weigh the consequences before you make decisions, but the advice was so worthless when it came to the things that mattered. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Do you really want to know where we come from?" she said. "In every century, in every country, they'll call us something different. They'll say we're ghosts, angels, demons, elemental spirits, and giving us a name doesn't help anybody. When did a name change what someone is? ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Don't take this the wrong way, but all my life you've been the weirdest person I've ever met. That doesn't make you not a real person. In fact, it makes you pretty goddamn specific. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

When did a name ever change what someone is? ~ Brenna Yovanoff

And that's all it takes to make you happy? You kill little kids, then go home and wait until it's time to do it all again? What the hell kind of existence is that? ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Everything smells like mildew, and the grim commitment to filth that can only be cultivated by post-adolescent boys. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

It's not the wisest thing - love - but when it happens, there's not a lot you can do to stop it. Sometimes you just have to soldier on through. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Take your necklace off."
"Why?"
"Because if you don't, I can't kiss you. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Why does she always seem to think you drive like we're holding up a bank?"
Roswell grinned and rolled his eyes, "Because that's what teenagers do, right? They also carve swastikas into their arms, steal prescription drugs from old people, and freebase cocaine. I need to institute a policy where she stops watching 60 Minutes and pretty much all public service announcements. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I has always thought the world was good, that everyone could find the beauty in themselves. Everyone could honor, and forgive, and live a full and gorgeous life, even when the hands they'd been dealt weren't easy.
But what Davenport had been born into had taken so much from her, leaving her with just the wickedest and the worst. Her father had given her life, and then taken every scrap of joy or freedom, and even now that he was dead, all he had left her with was a deep, abiding hatred for what she was.
Her power was tremendous, working through her, but it had gone to rot, and without someone to help her and to love her, she did not know how to take it back. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

The town was its green suburban lawns, sure, but it was also its secrets. The kind of place where people double-checked the locks at night or pulled their kids closer in the grocery store. They hung horseshoes over their front doors and put up bells instead of wind chimes. They wore crosses made from stainless steel instead of gold because gold couldn't protect them from people like me. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

...and when I pretended to Portia or myself that the dark stuff couldn't touch me, that was a lie. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

He understands me- how I am. If I forget to come up for air, he reminds me. If i get too literal or too focused, he doesn't take it personally. I'm better at loving him than anyone else, because he never makes me guess what he needs. And because he lets me. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I stand in front of him, trying to figure out how to look friendly or normal and where to put my hands ... It seems ridiculous suddenly that people have hands and no place to put them. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Once, I ordered two thousand lady bugs from the local garden center and set them loose in the atrium. I sprinkled marigold seeds in the ficus planters and put gold fish in the lobby fountain. These are things I did with no consequences, no repercussions. My nineteen detentions were for smart answers and missed homework. There is no equivalent punishment for making the world a stranger place. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I still can't picture what he does in his every day life when he's not busy with school or misdemeanors or me. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Her voice was like loneliness. It was regret. She sang about a past you couldn't get out of and didn't want. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

You can't keep acting like this," Lillian says, and for the first time in months, it's like she's actually trying to be nice. "Tragedy isn't this evil thing that came from outer space. It's just there, you know. Along with everything else. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Look, you don't want to put the power in the hands of the people, okay? You're just going to get three hundred write-in votes for My Dick. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I looked at the ground and the dark, drizzling sky and pretty much anyplace that wasn't her. "I like you. A lot." When I finally glanced at her, my face was hot and it was hard to keep looking.
She squinted up at me. Then she crossed her arms. "This is a really inappropriate place to be having this conversation."
"I know. I like you anyway."
Saying it a third time was like breaking some kind of spell. Her face went soft and far away.
"Don't say that unless you mean it."
"I don't say anything I don't mean. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Epochs later, the curtains grew dusty and brittle, the deep, vicious colour of a bruise. The floorboards creaked and we were civilized. We were no longer the wild, ravening voices of the world, howling our shame and indignation at the sky. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

The sound of her voice was painful. She screamed, sobbed, whispered Hallelujah. But she never sang it. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

All the things are want are hard to find the words for. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Finny Boone is probably a sociopath. A big, lighter-stealing sociopath, but his eyes are steady and complicated. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Autumn is not nobody, but a real, actual force of nature. She is so much more than just some run-of-the-mill person. She's Bette David and Dorothy Parker and Madonna. Autumn is Tyler Durden and Tony Soprano. Autumn is Cthulhu, Destroyer of Worlds. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Fisher twined his fingers with mine and when he did, the feeling was the best thing in the world, like it was always better to be this tangled up, to always have a piece of each other. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Love is when you care more about something else than you do about yourself. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Because I was conceived and born and I grew up. I'm breathing and my heart is beating and as much as it hurts ― as much searing, monumental pain it causes me ― I have to exist. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

The tone of his voice is like he expects a fight, like he's challenging me to disagree, and I want to tell him that I don't care one way or the other. That her blood-relative status makes no difference as long as she loves him. And she does. She wears it, beaming it around like a neon sign. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Why are you so determined to destroy yourself?" I say, and my voice is very small.
"I don't know," he whispers back. "Why are you? ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Everything in life involves choice. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I've never been impulsive. It's always been in my nature to consider things carefully and then decide upon the best solution. Except, sometimes the circumstances change. Sometimes things get so complicated and so bad that your nature just doesn't matter anymore. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

For the first time in maybe my whole life, I feel dangerous and magical, like a dragon or a mermaid. A fury, standing there with my half-gone grape slush and my jaw clenched, ready for whatever comes next. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Her smile doesn't look any more real than mine. I wonder if she has to practice too. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I don't remember any of the true, important parts, but there's this dream I have. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

It wasn't like the other songs. There was no story, no conversation. This was just the feeling, without words or pictures, and it had nothing to do with Luther or his clean, stinging guitar. It was the sound of being outside, of being alien. It was the pulse that ran under everything and never let you forget that you were strange, that the world hurt just to touch. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

People do that sometimes. Change. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Your gods don't know you exist.
And that's okay. ~ Brenna Yovanoff