Francesca Spinelli Quotes

It's Tolstoy, by the way," I say as I open the door.
He turns around. "What?"
Shut up, I tell myself. Shut up.
"The writer of Anna Karenina. Not Trotsky. Trotsky was a revolutionary who was stabbed with a
pickax in Mexico in 1940. But I can understand how the T thing could confuse you. ~ Melina Marchetta

So I ring Justine Kalinsky and I say, "It's Francesca Spinelli," and she says, "Francesca, you've got to stop using last names. How are you doing?" and I say "I feel like shit", and I don't know how it happens, but by eight o'clock that night I'm lying next to her on the couch with Siobhan and Tara and we're eating junk food and watching a Keanu movie. And I want to stay on that couch for the rest of my life. ~ Melina Marchetta

Just like any woman, ... we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our children, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same. ~ Francesca Lia Block

If Death is your father, you don't ever have to worry about what part of his body the disease will strike next. If Death is your lover, you don't have to be afraid that he will ever leave you. ~ Francesca Lia Block

The true warrior isn't immune to fear. She fights in spite of it. ~ Francesca Lia Block

You know a school is run by stuck-up sons of bitches when it doesn't even have a bike rack. ~ Francesca Zappia

Write with abandon and no constraints for first draft. Cut brutally and save in separate files on second draft. Add conflict; don't be afraid to make your characters suffer. Read what you love. Write what you love. Love. ~ Francesca Lia Block

I saw my own blood and I thought, how could I live in a world where this exists- where love can become death? ~ Francesca Lia Block

Beauty loved him more than anything, her Beast boy, but, secretly, sometimes, she wished he would have remained a Beast. ~ Francesca Lia Block

The rest of the year, I wondered if the point of Christmas was just spending money and getting fat and opening gifts. Indulging.
But when Christmas finally comes, and that warm, tingly, mints-and-sweaters-and-fireplace-fires feeling gathers in the bottom of your stomach, and you're lying on the floor with all the lights off but the ones on the Christmas tree, and listening to the silence of the snow falling outside, you see the point. For that one instance in time, everything is good in the world. It doesn't matter if everything isn't actually good. It's the one time of the year when pretending is enough. ~ Francesca Zappia

Stop! Stop!"
Sophie shrieked with laughter as she ran down the stone steps that led to the garden behind Bridgerton House. After three children and seven years of marriage, Benedict could still make her smile, still make her laugh . . . and he still chased her around the house any chance he could get.
"Where are the children?" she gasped, once he'd caught her at the base of the steps.
"Francesca is watching them."
"And your mother?"
He grinned. "I daresay Francesca is watching her, too."
"Anyone could stumble upon us out here," she said, looking this way and that.
His smile turned wicked. "Maybe," he said, catching hold of her green-velvet skirt and reeling her in, "we should adjourn to the private terrace."
The words were oh-so-familiar, and it was only a second before she was transported back nine years to the masquerade ball.
"The private terrace, you say?" she asked, amusement dancing in her eyes. "And how, pray tell, would you know of a private terrace?"
His lips brushed against hers. "I have my ways," he murmured.
"And I," she returned, smiling slyly, "have my secrets."
He drew back. "Oh? And will you share?"
"We five," she said with a nod, "are about to be six."
He looked at her face, then looked at her belly. "Are you sure?"
"As sure as I was last time."
He took her hand and raised it to lips. "This one will be a girl."
"That's what you said last time."
"I know, ~ Julia Quinn

No When. No Then. Only Now. ~ Jerry Spinelli

His mind is trying to catch the thought as a cat tries to catch a shadow. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Vowels were something else. He didn't like them and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you know pretty much where you stood, but you could never trust a vowel. ~ Jerry Spinelli

She's alone, they kept telling themselves, and surely she danced in no one's arms, yet somehow that seemed to matter less and less. As the night went on, and clarinet and coyote call mingled beyond the lantern light, the magic of their own powder-blue jackets and orchids seemed to fade, and it came to them in small sensations that they were more alone than she was. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Whenever she walked along the streets of Manhattan, she looked at all the different faces coming toward her and, despite their different features and colors, she regarded them all as Americans. ~ Francesca Marciano

Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon ~ Gregory Corso

She began to feel like the plastic doll she had been named after, without even a hole where her mouth was supposed to be. ~ Francesca Lia Block

Stories are like genies ... They can carry us into and though our sorrows. Sometimes they burn, sometimes they dance, sometimes they weep, sometimes they sing. Like genies, everyone has one. Like genies, sometimes we forget that we do.
Our stories can set us free ... When we set them free. ~ Francesca Lia Block

My parents say it all began with my role of Percy the Polar Bear back in nursery school! I began dance classes at the age of five (you would never guess though) and then I went on to join my local theatre group, Glantawe Players, at the age of eight and then Swansea Amateur Dramatics Society. I then joined the National Youth Music Theatre, so I really can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in Musical Theatre! ~ Francesca Jackson

Morning. Strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder sugar sun. And nobody to munch on it with ~ Francesca Lia Block

You're really dumb," she whispered in my ear.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. Why do you think there're eighteen pebbles in my wagon?" And then the last remaining space between our lips was gone and I was falling headlong into her eyes, right there on Palo Verde after dinner. And I can tell you, that was no saint kissing me. ~ Jerry Spinelli

I mean if she's real, she's in big trouble. How long do you think somebody who's really like that is going to last around here? ~ Jerry Spinelli

I come from a very hospitable, close, Catholic, matriarchal family. ~ Francesca Annis

Write about what you care about. If you do that, you're probably going to do your best writing, reach off the page and touch the reader. How are you going to make the reader care if you don't care yourself? ~ Jerry Spinelli

Passion - eventually it cools. ~ Francesca Marciano

What I love is when I'm in the theater with audiences and I hear them laugh. That's such a relief to me. They're going on the ride and they're allowing themselves to enjoy it, even though we're traversing some dark waters. ~ Francesca Gregorini

I did leave something behind with you: my heart. Of course, you didn't know it at the time. Maybe I didn't either. What have you done with my heart, Leo? Have you taken good care of it? Have you misplaced it? ~ Jerry Spinelli

The pure whiteness, dazzling in the sun, was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Who was I to spoil it? Snow falls. Earth says: Here's a gift for you. And what do we do? We shovel it. Blow it. Scrape it. Plow it. Get it out of our way. We push it to our fringes. Is there anything uglier or sadder than a ten-day-old snow dump? It's not even snow anymore. It's slush. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Those who love the most
Do not talk of their love,
Francesca, Guenevere,
Dierdre, Iseult, Heloise
In the fragrant gardens of heaven
Are silent, or speak, if at all,
Of fragile, inconsequent things.
And a woman I used to know
Who loved one man from her youth,
Against the strength of the fates
Fighting in lonely pride,
Never spoke of this thing
But hearing his name by chance,
A light would pass over her face. ~ Sara Teasdale

He just did it for the same reason he does everything else - he felt like it. ~ Jerry Spinelli

For there has never been a story nearly as tragic as the one of Frankenstein, except for that of Johnny Heart and his Francesca Valentine. ~ Rae Hachton

Besides, secretly, without knowing it herself, she had been waiting for a Beast to go to. ~ Francesca Lia Block

I'll still be missing you as much as ever. I'l still smile at the memory of you. I'll still be - Okay, I'll say it again - loving you, but I won't abandon myseld for you. I cannot be faithful to you without being faithful to myself. ~ Jerry Spinelli

And each night in bed I thought of her as the moon came through my window. I could have lowered my shade to make it darker and easier to sleep, but I never did. In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn't the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Spun sugar clouds and extraterrestrial crystal vintage T-birds flying through space, morning-glory girls swinging from star-hung vines in cosmic gardens. ~ Francesca Lia Block

Weetzie could not even cry and make Kleenex roses. She remembered the day her father, Charlie, had driven away in the smashed yellow T-bird, leaving her mother Brandy-Lynn clutching her flowered robe with one hand and an empty glass in the other, and leaving Weetzie holding her arms crossed over her chest that was taking its time to develope into anything ~ Francesca Lia Block

It's really hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There's a whole commotion going on inside us. ~ Jerry Spinelli

He said that black sheeps express everyone else's anger and pain. It's not that they have all the anger and pain-they're just the only ones who let it out. Then the other people don't have to. ~ Francesca Lia Block

I believe that we have lost nostalgia in its anthropological sense. But we have also lost it when it comes to teaching - for example, nostalgia for the home. When we put our elders in nursing homes with a couple of mothballs in their pockets as if they were an overcoat, in a certain sense our nostalgic side has failed us, since being with our grandparents means coming face-to-face with our past. ~ Francesca Ambrogetti And Sergio Rubin

The horizontal world I had thought I occupied was tilting, dumping me somewhere else, somewhere new. ~ Jerry Spinelli

how to (un)cage a girl

longer hair bigger breasts smoother skin
flatter stomach whiter teeth smaller nose
if you worry enough you won't have time
or energy to see
what really is

what could i have learned
if i didn't live here in this cell?
where could i have flown?
how would i have grown?
if i forgave this shell?

oh, my body
let me cradle you like my girl's
her long limbs spilling over
or folding up like silk
her gold-tinged curls
ringleting my fingers
her eyes the blue of sorrow
and hyacinth

oh, my body
when you are at peace
rocked here to sleep
as if by a mother
as if by a lover
who sees your flushed skin
the grace that you're in
the gleam of your hair
the green of your stare
then this soul can fly off
to understand pyramids and time
history
electricity
technology
symbology
that all of us are one
that all of us are love ~ Francesca Lia Block

It had been the most relaxed that either of them had been for as long as he could remember--certainly since their engagement. Rachel had spun and twittered for the first few days, disoriented without a wedding as the epicenter of her near future. But the pleasure of the postmortem and of being, finally, just the two of them, had aided her recovery. By the end of the first week she was almost convincing when she said brightly, 'I'm so glad it's all over and we get to get on with normal life!' She had repeated this assertion a lot since they'd arrived, but that had been the first time that she hadn't sounded crestfallen. ~ Francesca Segal

Usually it takes me about nine to 12 months to write a book. ~ Jerry Spinelli