Franny Choi Quotes

I buried myself all over the garden but the pieces only sprouted into new riddles ~ Franny Choi

knotted up; frayed; faked own death; kept showing
up in new clothes, new names; then leaving ~ Franny Choi

No moon in sight, so I howled at the exit sign instead. ~ Franny Choi

There are only so many parallel universes
that concern us. In one, he isn't dead.

In another, you drink light with your hands
all winter. There is a universe in which no one is lying

emptied in the street as the gas station burns, a universe
in which our mothers haven't learned to wrap

their bones in each small grief they've found.
There is a universe in which there is no difference

between the past and the ground. Another
where the oceans pull the moon. And so on.

This is an incomplete list. It has been abridged
for your comfort. ~ Franny Choi

Spring is the season of crying and seeing nothing. Of choking up on someone else's trash. ~ Franny Choi

I am only trying to remember how it felt not to leak. ~ Franny Choi

Here, in a seed, is a cyborg: A bleeding girl, dragging a knife through the sand. An imaginary girl who dreams of becoming trash. ~ Franny Choi

Turns out, there are no synonyms for King. ~ Franny Choi

(does not dream; is only dreamed of) ~ Franny Choi

Somewhere, she is a cell remembering itself
suddenly, late at night. ~ Franny Choi

My hunger, too, has both hard and soft parts. ~ Franny Choi

but some of us are born / in orbit / so learn /to commune with miles of darkness / patterns of dead gods / & quiet / o quiet like you / wouldn't believe ~ Franny Choi

All things birth their own opposites. ~ Franny Choi

Kingdom carved. At the end of the line, we made our own place. ~ Franny Choi

The first meeting of the Fraternitus Bad-Boyificus was also to be my first fighting lesson. I made a fist and showed it to Eldric.
"Fistibus Briony." I shook my fist. "Eldric terrorificorumest?"
"Terrific? I'm terrific!"
"Not terrific!" I said. "Quite the opposite. Listen carefully: terrorificorum."
"Hmm," said Eldric.
"Grant me patience, O Jupiter Magnificum!"
"Not terrified!" shouted Eldric at last. "never terrified of Briony's fistibus!"
We laughed and laughed. ~ Franny Billingsley

I can.
He rent his dark tresses,
Resulting in messes,
Thus prompting his L.I. to flee till,
she reached the end of the world and jumped off.
Perhaps I have untapped potential. ~ Franny Billingsley

When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things," Franny said. "What about the dead?" I asked. "Where do we go? ~ Alice Sebold

All sorts of creative communities are withering in New York because it's too hard to live here. It's ridiculous how expensive it is. ~ Susan Choi

For four years I have been wearing blinders. I thought all this time I walked a path of cobblestones, and it turns out to have been an avenue of stars! For four years, my head has been caught in a box. Its sides were painted with pleasant enough scenes, but that I should have thought this was the world! ~ Franny Billingsley

To the image of the characters, I do change my appearance. For example, I gain weight and I lose weight sometimes, and I grow my hair and cut it. Acting is all about physical expression, so I need to change my appearance for all the characters. ~ Min-sik Choi

The sea up close is enormous. I squeezed my eyes against it for a moment, which is ridiculous, like fighting a giant with a pin. It comes to you anyway, through your ears and nose and skin and tongue. It is a savage, muscular thing, a vast dim wetness battering at the land and the air and all your senses. ~ Franny Billingsley

Death had no lips, but it was smiling ~ Franny Billingsley

I love using unique names, so I go to a baby names site on the Internet and use the unique names. Sometimes my names have meanings such as 'strong', 'fire', and Phoenix which means dark red and is Greek. It's fun to think of a name meaning and matching it with a name. Even Frances means Victory. ~ Franny Armstrong

Principles are like sheaths. It doesn't have the sharp edge to cut something, but it can cover that sharp edge. So that no one gets hurt. ~ Choi Woo-seok

Should I ever again sink into illness, I'm sure I'll remember Eldric. I'll remember he cared for me. I'll remember that someone had at least taken the time to touch my face. ~ Franny Billingsley

People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don't feel very much. ~ Franny Billingsley

Word magic. If you say a word, it leaps out and becomes the truth. I love you. I believe it. How can something as fragile as a word build itself a whole world? ~ Franny Billingsley

I still can't understand how Cecil and my old tutor, Fitz, got along so well, when we often called Fitz 'the Genius' and avoided calling Cecil anything at all, so as not to be rude. ~ Franny Billingsley

The only right memory, is the one that first comes to you. ~ Franny Billingsley

I love writing about the military, as I live near an air force base and am inspired by the sacrifices our soldiers make for us. I like to give them a lot of challenges to beat, and show how they live with intrigue and danger. ~ Franny Armstrong

You can be with the same person for a long time and have it be fine and meet someone else who instantly makes you see that it's broken ~ Mary H.K. Choi

The next morning Sam woke up feeling good. Not sensational or anything foolish but supremely okay. ~ Mary H.K. Choi

I am proud to say that I plastic-wrapped Bruno Ricci's toilet in his trailer. ~ Kenneth Choi

Penny Googled "imposter syndrome."

Informally used to describe people who are unable to internalize their accomplishments despite external evidence of their competence. ~ Mary H.K. Choi

A toast at your wedding, perhaps?" said Eldric.
"I shall never get married," I said. "But I do like champagne. ~ Franny Billingsley

In spring training I'm in every newspaper (in Korea) every day. In the regular season, they watch it on TV. ~ Hee-seop Choi

...if you don't argue, you can't give in... ~ Franny Billingsley

Is this what a nun feels when she runs wild? Perhaps running wild needn't mean dressing in satin and taking to cigarettes. It might mean running into the wild, into the real, into the ooze and muck and the clean, muddy smell of life. ~ Franny Billingsley

Coffee?" Santangelo calls down to us. We both look up. He,Ben, and Raffy are hanging over the side.
"Is it espresso?" Anson Choi asks behind us.
"Freshly percolated," Ben answers. "You should see the gadgets they have up here."
Anson Choi aims a begging look at Griggs.
"You want to sell out over a coffee?" Griggs asks him with disgust.
"They've got muffins as well," I tell them. "Double chocolate chip. His mum made them."
Griggs gets up and holds out a hand to me. "Truce. ~ Melina Marchetta

Franny gave her sister a tired smile. "Oh, my love," she said. "What do the only children do?"

"We'll never have to know," Caroline said. ~ Ann Patchett

Coup de foudre; perhaps it was real. One went from believing, when twenty, that it was the one kind of love that was real, to believing, once closer to forty, that it was not only fragile but false
the inferior, infantile, doomed love of twenty-year-olds. Somewhere between, the norms of one culture of love were discarded, and those of the other assumed. When did it happen, at midnight of one's thirty-first birthday? On the variable day that, while browsing a grocery-store aisle with a man, the repeating refrain of the rest of one's life for the first time resounds in one's ear? ~ Susan Choi

To be a hero, you had to decide it was you. ~ Mary H.K. Choi

Fiction was fine, but real life was the true freak show. ~ Mary H.K. Choi

Western ghosts are evil, but Korean ghosts are about making peace. That is part of our Korean psyche. ~ Min-sik Choi

Comic fans are some of the toughest fans to please, and I'm one of them. ~ Kenneth Choi

Heartbreak doesn't flow through the heart but along that frail shallow canal of the sternum. ~ Susan Choi

Sam sighed. Maybe if he called she'd tell him where she'd buried his balls and his heart. ~ Mary H.K. Choi

It isn't just Wally. It could be a girl, for goodness' sake. I mean if he were a girl - somebody in my dorm, for example, - he'd have been painting scenery in some stock company all summer. Or bicycled through wales. Or taken an apartment in New York and worked for a magazine or an advertising company. It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so - I don't know, not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid, necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and - sad-making.
And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way. ~ J.D. Salinger

Despite her cough, Rose was in unusually good spirits. That was irritating. If I'm to trade my life for Rose's, I'd appreciate her exhibiting a touch of melancholy. Also acceptable would be despair. ~ Franny Billingsley

Portland is the perfect weekend getaway. I studied acting in Portland and lived there for five years. It's a small city with so much to do. There's beautiful scenery, a great bar scene, and so many fabulous restaurants. ~ Kenneth Choi

But what I don't like - and what I don't think either Seymour or Buddy would like, either, as a matter of fact - is the way you talk about all these people. I mean you don't just despise what they represent - you despise them. It's too damn personal, Franny. I mean it. You get a real little homicidal glint in your eye when you talk about this Tupper, for instance. All this business about his going into the men's room to muss his hair before he comes in to class. All that. He probably does - it goes with everything else you've told me about him. I'm not saying it doesn't. But it's none of your business, buddy, what he does with his hair. It would be all right, in a way, if you thought his personal affectations were sort of funny. Or if you felt a tiny bit sorry for him for being insecure enough to give himself a little pathetic goddam glamour. But when you tell me about it - and I'm not fooling, now - you tell me about it as though his hair was a goddamn personal enemy of yours. That is not right - and you know it. If you're going to to war against the System, just do your shooting like a nice, intelligent girl - because the enemy's there, and not because you don't like his hairdo or his goddam necktie. ~ J.D. Salinger

But sometimes it's so incidental that these people are the parents. Beyond the biology of it. It's not as if they had to pass a test or unlock achievements to be the ones making the decisions. Sometimes they're actually stupid. ~ Mary H.K. Choi

Lane watched her for a moment with mounting irritation. Quite probably, he resented and feared any signs of detachment in a girl he was seriously dating. In any case, he surely was concerned over the possibility that this bug Franny had might bitch up the whole weekend. ~ J.D. Salinger

Franny liked this moment most of all: being alone in the kitchen after almost everything was finished, and listening to the assembled guests chatting happily, knowing they were soon to be fed. ~ Emma Straub

To David, love meant declaration. Wasn't that the whole point? To Sarah, love meant a shared secret. Wasn't that the whole point? ~ Susan Choi

Let's just say when I was little and my mom was out, I'd go to bed with a ketchup bottle."

"I already love this story so much..."

"It was a foolproof plan. If the bad guys came in I could douse myself and they wouldn't kill me because I was already dead."

"Jesus, I can't tell if that's the cutest thing I've ever heard or the absolute most sad. ~ Mary H.K. Choi

When she reached 44 Greenwich Avenue she went inside alone, and only the crow knew that it was possible for a woman to claim to have no heart at all and still cry as though her heart would break ~ Alice Hoffman

I like rain and mist. I've never understood why people exclaim over bright skies and bushels of glaring sunshine. ~ Franny Billingsley

Franny was among the first of the girls to get off the train, from a car at the far, northern end of the platform. Lane spotted her immediately, and despite whatever it was he was trying to do with his face, his arm that shot up into the air was the whole truth. Franny saw it, and him, and waved extravagantly back. She was wearing a sheared-raccoon coat, and Lane, walking to- ward her quickly but with a slow face, reasoned to himself, with suppressed excitement, that he was the only one on the platform who really knew Franny's coat. He remembered that once, in a borrowed car, after kissing Franny for a half hour or so, he had kissed her coat lapel, as though it were a perfectly desirable, organic extension of the person herself. ~ J.D. Salinger

Blast Cecil!" said Eldric. "You have my permission," I said. ~ Franny Billingsley

Franny Armstrong is a mother of three and a grandmother of four. Her husband supports her imagination and has the patience of a saint. She's been writing since she was a child, creating plays to act out in front of the neighborhood children. ~ Franny Armstrong