Elena Quotes

I'm 36 years old, and I'm growing up. Little by little. ~ Elena Anaya

I felt that fear in me could not put down roots, and even the lava, the fiery stream of melting matter settled in my mind in orderly sentences, a pavement of black stones like the streets of Naples, where I was always and no matter what at the center. Everything that struck me
my studies, books, Franco, Pietro, the children, Nino, the earthquake
would pass, and I, whatever I among those I was accumulating, I would remain firm. 179 ~ Elena Ferrante

Like Raphael's Seven," Izak continued, aching hope in his expression. "You're a consort. Elijah's consort has a Guard." Elena didn't know what she would do with a Guard, but saying no to this fragile, broken, hopeful boy was out of the question. "Consider yourself the first member." His smile lit up the whole room. ~ Nalini Singh

Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle, Frau Elena? ~ Anthony Doerr

The solitude of women's minds is regrettable, I said to myself, it's a waste to be separated from each other without procedures, without tradition. ~ Elena Ferrante

Leaders fight for freedom of action. Managers struggle to understand the rules and staying in their parameters. ~ Elena D. Calin

The Supreme Court, of course, has the responsibility of ensuring that our government never oversteps its proper bounds or violates the rights of individuals. But the Court must also recognize the limits on itself and respect the choices made by the American people. ~ Elena Kagan

I have every confidence that you'll find a way to end my life before I stain the world with evil."
Rebellion in those eyes. "We die," she said, "we die together. That's the deal."
He thought about his final thoughts as he'd fallen with her in New York, her body broken in his arms, her voice less than a whisper in his mind. He hadn't considered holding onto his eternity for a second, had chosen to die with her, with his hunter. That she would choose to do the same ... His hands clenched. "We die," he repeated, "we die
together."
A moment of utter silence, the sense of something being locked into place. ~ Nalini Singh

I know I`m mean to tell you these things, but he is much worse than I am. He has the worst kind of meanness, that of superficiality. ~ Elena Ferrante

The rottweiler stood his ground and waited for me to take the next step in the dance of ritualized intimidation. Instead, I leaped at him. Screw ritual. Now was not the time to stand on ceremony. ~ Kelley Armstrong

The whole future---I thought---will be that way, life lives together with the damp odor of the land of the dead, attention with inattention, passionate leaps of the heart along with abrupt losses of meaning. ~ Elena Ferrante

Anonymity lets me concentrate exclusively on writing. ~ Elena Ferrante

Live your life as a curious student and you will discover how fascinating it is. ~ Elena Ornig

She went like that saint who, although she still has her head on her shoulders, is carrying it in her hands, as if it had already been cut off. ~ Elena Ferrante

For the first time in forever, he was stunned to silence. Not by her words, but by the tenderness in her hands, the worry in her eyes. He was an archangel. He'd been wounded far, far worse and shrugged it off. But then, there had been no woman with sun kissed by the sunset and eyes of storm gray to tear into him for daring to get himself hurt. ~ Nalini Singh

Lijuan warned Raphael I'd make him a little bit mortal.'
'You have.' Quiet equanimity. 'And you worry you've weakened him. You have.'
Elena flinched. 'Elena.'
Shaking his head, Keir waited until she met his gaze again. 'Even an archangel needs a weakness - absolute power is a corruption. ~ Nalini Singh

I wanted him to see in that plate of pasta everything that, by leaving, he would no longer be able to look at, or touch, or caress, listen to, smell: never again. ~ Elena Ferrante

But I knew something that Elena hadn't. That the measure of a true queen didn't lie in her magic. It had more to do with who she was, and what she was willing to give of herself, than it did with the powers she possessed
- Charlaina di Heyse ~ Kimberly Derting

I always choose my projects for the script or what the director want to tell with that story. And if I like the story. ~ Elena Anaya

We consummate life and lose it because in some long-ago time someone, in the desire to unload his cock inside us, was nice, chose us among women. We take for some sort of kindness addressed to us alone the banal desire for sex. We love his desire to fuck, we are so dazzled by it we think it's the desire to fuck only us, us alone. Oh yes, he who is so special and who has recognized us as special. We give it a name, that desire of the cock, we personalize it, we call it my love. ~ Elena Ferrante

No power is worth you, Elena-mine. I would give up immortality for a single mortal lifetime with you. ~ Nalini Singh

He has a fascination with mortals.
Raphael had said that to her before she'd woken with wings of midnight and dawn.
"Why are you starting at me, Ellie?" Illium said without taking his eyes from the blade dancing around his fingers.
The words were instinctive, something she might as easily have said to rib Ransom. "You're so pretty, it's difficult to resist."
A flashing grin, a hint of that aristocratic English accent in his response. "It's hard to be me, it's true.
~ Nalini Singh

Closed door means knock," Elena said to Clay, shooing him out.
You've been in here for two hours," he said. "She can't need that much work." He frowned as he examined my outfit. "What the hell is she? A tree?"
"A dryad," Elena said, cuffing him in the arm.
"Oh, my god," Jamie said, surveying my outfit. "We forgot the bag!"
"Bag?" Clay said. "What does a dryad need with-"
"An evening bag," Cassandra said. "A purse."
"She's got a purse. It's right there on the bed."
"That's a day purse," Cassandra snapped.
"What, do they expire when the sun goes down? ~ Kelley Armstrong

The waste of intelligence. A community that finds it natural to suffocate with the care of home and children so many women's intellectual energies is its own enemy and doesn't realize it. I waited in silence ~ Elena Ferrante

On Napoli, Elena Ferrante is more ferocious than Roberto Savino. ~ Angela Paolantonio

God, Elena missed her friends. (Not that Troy and Gabe weren't great. She'd definitely miss them.) (Even Gabe.) (Especially Gabe.) ~ Rainbow Rowell

There is this presumption, in those who feel destined for art and above all literature: we act as if we had received an investiture, but in fact no one has invested us with anything, it is we who have authorized ourselves to be authors. ~ Elena Ferrante

When there is no love, not only the life of the people becomes sterile but the life of cities. ~ Elena Ferrante

Urban survival rule 22: Never annoy an armed man. ~ Kelley Armstrong

But just as you become impregnated with someone, even after that someone is gone, that is how Lilus remained ~ Elena Poniatowska

No one depended anymore on my care and, finally, even I was no longer a
burden to myself. ~ Elena Ferrante

Children don't know the meaning of yesterday, of the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this, now: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this the night. ~ Elena Ferrante

Lila is right, one writes not so much to write, one writes to inflict pain on those who wish to inflict pain. The pain of words against the pain of kicks and punches and the instruments of death. ~ Elena Ferrante

Nowhere is it written that you can't do it. ~ Elena Ferrante

I'm sorry," I say and the words start spilling out. "I'm sorry. I should have just talked to you and then you wouldn't have felt guilty and then you wouldn't have gotten into this accident. It's my fault. I'm so sorry."
I'm still holding his hand and he's looking at me with his beautiful blue eyes.
"You're sorry?" he asks in confusion. "You're sorry? For what? It's not your fault. None of this is your fault."
"I was being a baby," I tell him. "I didn't know what to say to you and I was trying to be strong but I was so upset that you were kissing Elena."
"Elena kissed me," he answers. "I just want to clarify that. And she kissed me because I had just told her that I can't see her anymore. Because I want to be with someone else."
"Someone else?" My voice is small in the large hospital suite and all of a sudden my heart is numb again. This time, it is numb because it is waiting hopefully for words that I am desperately wanting to hear.
"Yes," he nods. "Someone else."
My heart is still waiting.
There is a pause.
Then another pause.
He doesn't say anything so I do.
"Is it anyone I know?"
I look down and he looks up and our eyes lock.
"I should hope so since it is you," he says.
My heart stops.
And then starts again.
And then I bend down and kiss Dante Gili-bear-ti as softly and gently as I can.
"You want to be with me?" I ask this as I pull away and look at him. He smells like iodine an ~ Courtney Cole

I tend toward an expansive sentence that has a cold surface and, visible underneath it, a magma of unbearable heat. I want readers to know from the first lines what they will have to deal with. ~ Elena Ferrante

Suppose a state said that, Because we think that the focus of marriage really should be on procreation, we are not going to give marriage licenses anymore to any couple where both people are over the age of 55. Would that be constitutional? ~ Elena Kagan

Not for you," Lila replies ardently, "you're my brilliant friend, you have to be the best of all, boys and girls. ~ Elena Ferrante

Sarratore's son is really unbearable. ~ Elena Ferrante

You are my father," she said to Averill. "And you are my grandmother," she said to Elena. "And you are duty-bound to me," she said to Nightwalker.
"If you take action against Hunts Alone without my permission, we will be at war. ~ Cinda Williams Chima

She grumbled, she said sarcastically that men place such an enormous importance on fucking, she laughed: not Marcello - although even he doesn't joke - but Michele, who went crazy, he's been obsessed with me for a long time, and even runs after the shadow of my shadow. ~ Elena Ferrante

My breasts are small," I said in a whisper, but immediately despised myself because it sounded as if I were making excuses, excuse me if I can't offer you big tits, I hope you enjoy yourself anyway, idiot that I was, if he liked little tits, good; if not, the worse for him, it was all free, a stroke of luck had fallen to this shit, the best birthday present he could hope for, at his age. ~ Elena Ferrante

My politics would be, must be, have to be, completely separate from my judgment. ~ Elena Kagan

You still love me? After all I have done?" she asked, her voice breaking.
"It doesn't matter. Nothing that has happened matters. I am here now, and I love you. ~ Elena Greene

She spoke with a different sort of determination, calmer, as if it were no longer necessary to fight to the death for every little thing. ~ Elena Ferrante

Soon you'll be hosting angelic balls with regularity."
"Hey, watch the insults. ~ Nalini Singh, Archangel's Enigma

It is important that girls know the obstacles they will face throughout their lives, but it is also essential that they know that these obstacles are surmountable. Not only will they find ways to overcome them, but they can eliminate them for the women of the future, just as the women in this book have done. ~ Elena Favilli

Wave to the nice tourists, Sparkle. I promise it won't cause pestilence and firestorms."
Elena bit the inside of her cheek at Aodhan's glare-she'd never seen anyone crack his reserved shell. "Sparkle and Bluebell, nice."
"Never," Aodhan said, hands stubbornly on the girder, "ever repeat that. Illium seems to have forgotten I promised to separate his tongue from his mouth should he utter it again in this immortal lifetime. ~ Nalini Singh

Easy, you're safe," said a deeply rich and sexy voice. "Lie back down. ~ Elena Kincaid

What's this?" Nick said. "Bedtime?"
No one answered him. I kept my eyes closed.
You look positively content, Clayton," Nick continued, thumping down on the floor. "That wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Elena is cuddled up with you, is it?"
It's cold in here," I murmured.
Doesn't feel cold."
It's cold," Clay growled.
I could start a fire."
I could start one too," Clay said. "With your clothes. Before you get them off. ~ Kelley Armstrong

You always were selfish. Your one fault. Not willing to share anything, are you?" Suddenly, Damon's lips curved up in a singularly beautiful smile. But fortunately the lovely Elena is more generous. Didn't she tell you about our little liaisons? Why? The first time we met she almost gave herself to me on the spot."
"That's a lie!"
"Oh, no, dear brother, I never lie about anything important. Or do I mean unimportant? Anyway, your beauteous damsel nearly swooned into my arms. I think she likes men in black." As Stefan stared at him, trying to control his breathing, Damon added, almost gently, "You're wrong about her, you know, You think she's sweet and docile like Katherine. She isn't. She's not your type at all, my saintly brother. She has a spirit and a fire in her that you wouldn't know what to do with."
"And you would, I suppose."
Damon uncrossed his arms and slowly smiled again. "Oh, yes. ~ L.J.Smith

You are a symbol - even if I am missed, so long as people can see you in the air, they'll feel safe." Because everyone knows I would not leave my consort in a city I didn't feel was protected against all harm. "Shit," Elena muttered. "I hate it when you make sense. ~ Nalini Singh

I hated the idea that he knew everything about me while I knew little or nothing of him. I felt like someone who is blind and knows that he is being observed by the very people he would like to spy on in every detail. ~ Elena Ferrante

All I want to do is be at Hogwarts with you, eating turkey legs in the great hall while listening to the carols of the ghosts gliding past us. Then maybe we can go to Hogsmeade to get a butterbeer. ~ Maria Elena

But where Katherine was a white kitten, Elena was a white tigress. ~ L.J.Smith

But the happy ending has to do with the tricks of the narrative, not with life, or even love, which is an uncontrollable, changeable feeling, with nasty surprises that are alien to the happy ending. ~ Elena Ferrante

The stairs aren't challenging enough anymore?" he asked.
Antonio laughed. "Challenge has nothing to do with it, Jer. I'd say it's the big bad wolf huffing and puffing at her door up there. ~ Kelley Armstrong

You don't need weeks and months to fall in love; you just need the right two people and the perfect circumstance. ~ Elena Aitken

Second letter from Mom:
So! What if you colored the world? This still does not seem a great thing. In fact it seems very natural that you eventually got to paint the entire world. Those colors of yours were always strange; they didn't go away since you were born. ~ Elena D. Calin

I'm playing with fire, with something I don't understand. ~ L.J.Smith

Become. It was a verb that had always obsessed me...I wanted to become, even though I had never known what. And I had become, that was certain, but without an object, without a real passion, without a determined ambition. ~ Elena Ferrante

Sara held up a hand. 'How exactly did you "decline" his offer?'
'By slitting his throat. ~ Nalini Singh

What's the woman doing there?" he asked.
"Covering a scratch on the hood. She was cheaper than a new paint job."
He flipped through a few more pages of barely dressed women and classic cars. "Nick used to have magazines like this when we were kids. But without the cars." He rotated a photo sideways. "Or the bathing suits. ~ Kelley Armstrong

It was monks who first taught the art of reading in silence. During the Dark Ages. Augustine, perhaps, was first. And silence was a tongue Elena understood. Silence was her idiom for support and caring. Silence was permissive and contemplative and nonconfrontational and there was melody to it. It was both earth and ether. ~ Rick Moody

I'll enter first."
"I'm the hunter", Elena reminded him. "I should go first"
"Of course you may go first. When I'm dead ~ Nalini Singh

I sat on a bench and did what, as a girl, I had done whenever I needed to calm myself: instead of pressing the button with the number 4 on it, I let myself go up to the sixth floor. That space had been empty and dark for many years, ever since the lawyer who had his office there had left, taking with him even the light bulb from the landing. When the elevator stopped, I let my breath glide into my stomach and then return slowly to my throat. As always, after a few seconds, the light in the elevator went out, too. I thought of reaching my hand out to one of the door handles: you had only to pull it and the light would return. But I didn't move and continued to send my breath deep into my body. The only sound was that of the woodworms eating into the panelled walls.

Just a few months earlier (five, six?), on a sudden impulse, I had revealed to my mother, during one of my brief visits, that as an adolescent I used to retreat to that secret place, and I brought her up there, to the top. Maybe I wanted to try to establish an intimacy that there had never been, maybe I wanted to let her know in some confused way that I had always been unhappy. But she seemed to me only amused by the fact that I had sat suspended in the void, in a dilapidated elevator. ~ Elena Ferrante

I wasn't capable of entrusting myself to true feelings. I didn't know how to be drawn beyond limits. I didn't possess that emotional power that had driven Lila to do all she could to enjoy that day and that night. I stayed behind, waiting. She, on the other hand, seized things, truly wanted them, was passionate about them, played for all or nothing, and wasn't afraid of contempt, mockery, spitting, beatings. She deserved Nino, in other words, because she thought that to love him meant to try to have him, not hope that he would want her. ~ Elena Ferrante

There is something about this generation living now, that we don't accept death. ~ Elena Anaya

Elena notched a bolt into her crossbow. Let's go kill that murderous bitch. ~ Nalini Singh

The next day, at breakfast and during the entire drive to Milan, he talked passionately about what he considered the most exciting period of his life, the years between 1945 and 1948. I heard in his voice a genuine melancholy, which vanished, however, when he went on to describe with an equally genuine enthusiasm the new climate of revolution, the energy - he said - that was infusing young and old. I kept nodding yes, struck by how important it was for him to convince me that my present was in fact the return of his thrilling past. ~ Elena Ferrante

It's true," says Michael. "Dicken's novels came out in monthly installments. People couldn't wait for the next chapter to arrive. Mobs would gather at train stations and shipyards so they could be first in line to get the next part of the book."

"Mobs?" I say....

..."People don't feel that way about books anymore," Elena says sadly.

"Some people do," I say. ~ Paul Acampora

They were complicated years. The order of the world in which we had grown up was dissolving. The old skills resulting from long study and knowledge of the correct political line suddenly seemed senseless. Anarchist, Marxist, Gramscian, Communist, Leninist, Trotskyite, Maoist, worker were quickly becoming obsolete labels or, worse, a mark of brutality. The exploitation of man by man and the logic of maximum profit, which before had been considered an abomination, had returned to become the linchpins of freedom and democracy everywhere. Meanwhile, by means legal and illegal, all the accounts that remained open in the state and in the revolutionary organizations were being closed with a heavy hand. One might easily end up murdered or in jail, and among the common people a stampede had begun. ~ Elena Ferrante

I now knew a method of speaking and writing that - by means of a refined vocabulary, stately and thoughtful pacing, a determined arrangement of arguments, and a formal orderliness that wasn't supposed to fail - sought to annihilate the interlocutor to the point where he lost the will to object. ~ Elena Ferrante

First you throw bread at my head and bow you expect me to be a movie critic- Raphael said to Elena ~ Nalini Singh

His soul,' she would say, 'picked mine up and we flew.' And to those who gave her a disbelieving look, she would insist. 'Have you never touched someone and felt them? Felt what was inside of their body?' Only a few would know what she was talking about. ~ Marie-Elena John

Lucian's voice rang inside my head, loud and clear, "Move your ass, Elena, and no matter what, trust your reflexes." Relying on my clumsy butt was more like it. I'd made a joke, That was a good sign. ~ Adrienne Woods

If you can't
compete with beauty,
compete with wisdom;
because wisdom is
a powerful sword~ ~ Elena Toledo

The hell with your secrets," shouted Bonnie.
"Language, language! How about this: One of you has kept a secret all
their life, and is doing so even now. One of you is a murderer - and I am
not speaking of a vampire, or a mercy killing, or anything like that. And
then there is the question of the true identity of Sage - good luck on your
research there!One of you has already had their memory erased - and I don't mean
Damon or Stefan. And what about the secret, stolen kiss? And then there is
the question of what happened the night of the motel, that it seems that nobody
but Elena can recall. You might ask her sometime about her theories about
Camelot. ~ L.J.Smith

I listened, I understood and I didn't understand. Long ago she had threatened Marcello with the shoemaker's knife simply because he had dared to grab my wrist and break the bracelet. From that point on, I was sure that if Marcello had just brushed against her she would have killed him. But toward Stefano, now, she showed no explicit aggression. Of course, the explanation was simple: we had seen our fathers beat our mothers from childhood. We had grown up thinking that a stranger must not even touch us, but that our father, our boyfriend, and our husband could hit us when they liked, out of love, to educate us, to reeducate us. As ~ Elena Ferrante

Everything is interesting if you know how to work on it. ~ Elena Ferrante

I know I want to work for my whole life because I know I can't live without music or dancing. But I don't know if I want to be a big star. ~ Elena Roger

The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them. ~ Elena Gorokhova

Literary truth is not the truth of the biographer or the reporter, it's not a police report or a sentence handed down by a court. It's not even the plausibility of a well-constructed narrative. Literary truth is entirely a matter of wording and is directly proportional to the energy that one is able to ­impress on the sentence. And when it works, there is no stereotype or cliché of popular literature that resists it. It reanimates, revives, subjects ­everything to its needs. ~ Elena Ferrante

One writes to inflict pain on those who wish to inflict pain. ~ Elena Ferrante

Panic threatened but was beaten into submission by her will to live. Elena P. Deveraux had never given up yet. Gritting ~ Nalini Singh

It's the people who love us or hate us - or both - who hold together the thousands of fragments we are made of. ~ Elena Ferrante

Beautiful everywhere, outside and in, male fantasies. ~ Elena Ferrante

What's inside you no one can touch. ~ Elena Gorokhova

I would like to play Broadway! ~ Elena Roger

Falling in love is about hormones and pheromones and powerful emotions that overwhelm our better judgement. Staying in love requires time and effort and knowledge and trust that has to be earned over the course of lifetimes. Falling in love is the illusion. Staying in love is the real miracle. ~ Shaun David Hutchinson

Yeah, tell me I'm a bottle of single malt scotch, she thought. That's the way to my heart. ~ L.J.Smith

If I could conceal from myself the impression that the life had been drained out of me like blood and saliva and mucus from a patient during an operation, maybe I could deceive Mario as well. ~ Elena Ferrante

Torn clothing littered the ground, more hung from bushes. Nick held up half a pair of white panties and grinned at me.
"Wild dogs? Or just Clayton?"
"Oh God," I muttered under my breath.
I walked over to snatch the underwear from him, but he held it over his head, grinning like a schoolboy.
"I see Paris, I see France, I see Elena's underpants," he chanted.
"Everyone's already seen much more than that," Jeremy said. "I think we can safely resume the search."
Peter plucked Clay's shirt from a low-hanging branch and held it up, peering through a hole in the middle. "You guys can really do some damage. Where's the hidden video when you need it?"
"So this
uh
wasn't done by wild dogs?" one of the searchers said.
Peter grinned and tossed the shirt to the ground. "Nope. Just wild hormones. ~ Kelley Armstrong

I felt tight from the beginning of the match to the end. I couldn't relax. ~ Elena Vesnina

For example, I came to my exams very well prepared, but if the professor were suddenly to ask me, "Do you know from what works I derive the authority on the basis of which I teach this subject in this university?" I wouldn't know what to answer. But the others knew. So I moved among them fearful of saying and doing the wrong things. ~ Elena Ferrante

Leave, instead. Get away for good, far from the life we've lived since birth. Settle in well-organized lands where everything really is possible. I had fled, in fact. Only to discover, in the decades to come, that I had been wrong, that it was a chain with larger and larger links: the neighborhood was connected to the city, the city to Italy, Italy to Europe, Europe to the whole planet. And this is how I see it today: it's not the neighborhood that's sick, it's not Naples, it's the entire earth, it's the universe, or universes. And shrewdness means hiding and hiding from oneself the true state of things. ~ Elena Ferrante

Yes, yes, resign yourself to what you are, each on his own path. ~ Elena Ferrante

On the page was exactly what I had written, but it was clearer, more immediate. The erasures, the transpositions, the small additions, and, in some way, her handwriting itself gave me the impression that I had escaped from myself and now was running a hundred paces ahead with an energy and also a harmony that the person left behind didn't know she had. ~ Elena Ferrante

What's your favorite Star Wars movie?" Gabe asked. Uncharacteristically. Elena looked over at him.
"You might as well ask me who my favorite child is," Troy said. ~ Rainbow Rowell

In recent years I had begun to be interested in fashion, to educate my taste under Adele's guidance, and now I enjoyed dressing up. But sometimes - especially when I had dressed not only to make a good impression in general, but for a man - preparing myself (this was the word) seemed to me to have something ridiculous about it. All that struggle, all that time spent camouflaging myself when I could be doing something else. The colors that suited me, the ones that didn't, the styles that made me look thinner, those that made me fatter, the cut that flattered me, the one that didn't. A lengthy, costly preparation. Reducing myself to a table set for the sexual appetite of the male, to a well-cooked dish to make his mouth water. ~ Elena Ferrante