Gossip From The Girls Room Quotes

Sofia on the lost and found
But what's also amazing is how some of this stuff was ever lost in the first place. I mean, who "loses" their T-Shirt? Oops, my tee flew off my body and landed somewhere unknown. ~ Rose Cooper

Weekends smoosh together, like one big meshed day of non-schooling. It should be called something like Sunturday. [...] I'm always thinking Saturday is Sunday and Sunday is Saturday so if it's Sunturday, I could never be wrong.
--Sofia ~ Rose Cooper

America, is there lipstick on my teeth?" Zoe asked. I turned to my left and found her smiling maniacally, exposing all her pearly whites.
"No, you're good," I answered, seeing out of the corner of my eye that Marlee was nodding in confirmation.
"Thanks. How is he so calm?" Zoe asked, pointing over at Maxon, who was talking to a member of the crew. She then bent down and put her head between her legs and started doing controlled breathing.
Marlee and I looked at each other, eyes wide with amusement, and tried not to laugh. It was hard if we looked at Zoe, so we surveyed the room and chatted about what others were wearing. There were several girls in seductive reds and lively greens, but no one else in blue. Olivia had gone so far as to wear orange. I'd admit that I didn't know that much about fashion, but Marlee and I both agreed that someone should have intervened on her behalf. The color made her skin look kind of green.
Two minutes before the cameras turned on, we realized it wasn't the dress making her look green. Olivia vomited into the closest trash can very loudly and collapsed on the floor. Silvia swooped in, and a fuss was made to wipe the sweat off her and get her into a seat. She was placed in the back row with a small receptacle at her feet, just in case.
Bariel was in the seat in front of her. I couldn't hear what she muttered to the poor girl from where I was, but it looked like Bariel was prepared to injure Olivia should she have another ~ Kiera Cass

And I wrote a story for private circulation, "Miss Lewis & the Giant Turd," about a painful bowel movement that began in class, as she was drilling us on prepositions. Suddenly she emitted a low scraping sound like a box of rocks being dragged across concrete--like a glacier moving!--and she let out an AIIIIEEEEEEE and bent over double and hobbled to the girls' room, where she fell to the floor and cried pitifully for the janitor, who rushed in with a plunger and tried to extract the fecal mass from her, but it was too immense, and then the fire department arrived and laid her over the sink and attached a suction pump, two men on either side of her skinny butt, working a lever, and they managed to suction the poop out of her, and when they were done, she weighed forty-five pounds. And she couldn't teach anymore, she just sat on her front step waving to passing cars.

This title passed from pupil to pupil, two grimy sheets of paper folded to pocket size.... The story found its way to Laura, Miss Lewis's pet, who handed it over to her, and she read it, thin-lipped, and tore it into tiny pieces and dropped them into the wastebacket. "This is so childish it doesn't bear talking about," she said. "It is beneath contempt. ~ Garrison Keillor

I am nine.
We are bored
and Karen is dying.

We drove to Austin
that summer
so Sarah's dad-

who described Karen as
/the great and impossible love/
of his life, who taught us

the word /lymphoma/ and then,
the concept of the prefix,
how it explains where the tumor lives-

could say goodbye.

The house is a rind
spooned out by the onset of death,
what's left in the medicine cabinet

full of razors & we are hungry
& alone & sitting
on the living room floor

where the light
from a naked window
slices the hardwood

like a melon, brandishes
each, individualfuzz
on my scabbed calf

a field of erect, yellow poppies
& we have been alive as girls
long enough to know

to scowl at this reveal
& what better time
than now to practice removal.

Once, I watched my mother
skin a potato in six
perfect strokes

I remember this
as Sarah teaches me
to prop up my leg
on the side of the tub

and runs the blade
along my thing, /See?/
she says, /Isn't that so much better?/

Before we left Albuquerque
her father warned us,
/She will have no hair/

a trait
we have just
begun to admire

except, of course
for the hair he is talking about
we hold against our n ~ Olivia Gatwood

We are for breeding purposes: we aren't concubines, geisha girls, courtesans. On the contrary: everything possible has been done to remove us from that category. There is supposed to be nothing entertaining about us, no room is to be permitted for the flowering of secret lusts; no special favors are to be wheedled, by them or us, there are to be no toeholds for love. We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices. So ~ Margaret Atwood

Desperately, Phoenix attempted to maneuver both tips of the instrument around the bullet. He knew that each move caused Nellie unimaginable pain, but he could not grasp the target. "It's no use," he sobbed. "And my hand is going numb."
In a frenzy, Nellie shouted something into the gag, but no one could understand her.
"I beg your pardon, child?" queried Alistair.
Nellie spat out the rag and rasped, "Get the Kabra chick!"
"Natalie?" Fiske exclaimed. "She's fallen completely to pieces."
"Get her!" Nellie demanded. "Anybody with eyebrows plucked like that knows how to use a tweezers!"
Reagan bounded across the room and came back with a shivering, mewling Natalie.
"I can't!" she wheezed.
Fiske poured alchohol over the girl's beautifully manicured fingers. "You must."
Still protesting, her eyes tightly shut, she took over the instrument from Phoenix. "I can't do it! You can't make me - oh!" She said in sudden surprise. "This?" And when she pulled the tweezers out of the wound, the tips were firmly grasping a flattened, blood-slimed bullet.
Nellie laughed - and promptly fainted. ~ Gordon Korman

Who're you writing the novel to anyway?" Ron asked Hermione, trying to read the bit of parchment now trailing on the floor. Hermione hitched it up out of sight.
"Viktor."
"Krum?"
"How many other Viktors do we know?"
Ron said nothing, but looked disgruntled. They sat in silence for another twenty minutes, Ron finishing his Transfiguration essay with many snorts of impatience, rolling in up carefully and sealing it, and Harry staring into the fire, wishing more than anything that Sirius's head would appear there and give him some advice about girls. But the fire merely crackled lower and lower, until the red-hot embers crumbled into ash and, looking around, Harry saw that they were, yet again, the last in the common room.
"Well, 'night," said Hermione, yawning widely, and she set off up the girls' staircase.
"What does she see in Krum?" Ron demanded as he and Harry climbed the boys' stairs.
"Well," said Harry, considering the matter, "I s'pose he's older, isn't he...and he's an international Quidditch player...."
"Yeah, but apart from that," said Ron, sounding aggravated. "I mean he's a grouchy git, isn't he? ~ J.K. Rowling

THE TWO OTHER GIRLS in the room, Mabel and Deirdre, said I imagined it. But they were wrong. My brother appeared to me there. A beam of light from the streetlamp lay in a crooked zigzag along the floor, toward the bed, and my brother stepped onto it, his face pensive but not crying, dressed as he might be for a wedding, his good suit, his collar and tie, and not a mark on him, no bloodstain, ~ Edna O'Brien

The walls, where there was room, were well decorated with calendars and posters showing bright, improbable girls with pumped-up breasts and no hips - blondes, brunettes and redheads, but always with this bust development, so that a visitor of another species might judge from the preoccupation of artist and audience that the seat of procreation lay in the mammaries. Alice Chicoy ... who worked among the shining girls, was wide-hipped and sag-chested and she walked well back on her heels ... She was not in the least jealous of the calendar girls and the Coca-Cola girls. She had never seen anyone like them, and she didn't think anyone ever had. ~ John Steinbeck

I scooted out of the laundry room and skipped down the hallway, arms flaying around my head like one of the hot pink puppets from the movie Labyrinth. "A scent and a sound, I'm lost and I'm found. And I'm hungry like the wolf. Something on a line, it's discord and rhyme - whatever, whatever, la la la - Mouth is alive, all running inside, and I'm hungry like the - " Warmth spread down my neck.

"It's actually, 'I howl and I whine. I'm after you,' and not blah or whatever."


Startled by the deep voice, I shrieked and whipped around. My foot slipped on a section of well-cleaned wood and my butt smacked on the floor.

"Holy crap," I gasped, clutching my chest. "I think I'm having a heart attack."

"And I think you broke your butt." Laughter filled Daemon's voice.

I remained sprawled across the narrow hallway, trying to catch my breath. "What the hell? Do you just walk into people's houses?"

"And listen to girls absolutely destroy a song in a matter of seconds? Well, yes, I make a habit out of it. Actually, I knocked several times, but I heard your…singing, and your door was unlocked." He shrugged.

"So I just let myself in."

"I can see that." I stood, wincing. "Oh, man, maybe I did break my butt."

"I hope not. I'm kind of partial to your butt." He flashed a smile. "Your face is pretty red. You sure you didn't smack that on the way down?"

I groaned. "I hate you. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

She felt the electric tickle of Finn behind her. He must have come from the hallway. She turned.
Standing on the first step, she was almost eye level with him. He'd carried the irresistible smell of the morning in with him, caught in his hair and clothes.
"Good morning, beautiful," he said. Teagan leaned closer.
"What are you doing?" Aiden asked.
Sniffing Finn. How weird would that sound? She changed the sniff into a kiss on the cheek, but Finn turned just before her lips met his face. She felt a shock as their lips touched, the wild inside her exploding like fireworks, rocketing through her to Finn. He swayed, and she managed to get her arms around him before his knees gave way.
"Wa," he gasped. "Could you steer me toward the couch, girl?"
"Oh, my god," Abby said from behind her. "The couch? Are you going to let them do that in your living room, Mr. Wylltson?"
"Do what?" Finn flushed red. "Oh. I just meant . . . I need to sit down. The girl's that good a kisser."
Thomas and Mr. Wylltson were staring. Aiden's mouth was hanging open.
"What are you doing, Tea?" Abby asked. "You totally lunged at him."
"I did not lunge." I was just sniffing him. That would sound worse than lunging. "I just . . . caught him."
"Then why don't you let him go?"
Because he wasn't steady on his feet yet. Finn's electronics had gone haywire.
"Well played." Thomas winked at Finn and grinned at Teagan. "And well caught."
Finn groped f ~ Kersten Hamilton

A late arrival had the impression of lots of loud people unnecessarily grouped within a smoke-blue space between two mirrors gorged with reflections. Because, I suppose, Cynthia wished to be the youngest in the room, the women she used to invite, married or single, were, at the best, in their precarious forties; some of them would bring from their homes, in dark taxis, intact vestiges of good looks, which, however, they lost as the party progressed. It has always amazed me - the capacity sociable weekend revelers have of finding almost at once, by a purely empiric but very precise method, a common denominator of drunkenness, to which everybody loyally sticks before descending, all together, to the next level. The rich friendliness of the matrons was marked by tomboyish overtones, while the fixed inward look of amiably tight men was like a sacrilegious parody of pregnancy. Although some of the guests were connected in one way or another with the arts, there was no inspired talk, no wreathed, elbow-propped heads, and of course no flute girls. From some vantage point where she had been sitting in a stranded mermaid pose on the pale carpet with one or two younger fellows, Cynthia, her face varnished with a film of beaming sweat, would creep up on her knees, a proffered plate of nuts in one hand, and crisply tap with the other the athletic leg of Cochran or Corcoran, an art dealer, ensconced, on a pearl-grey sofa, between two flushed, happily disintegrating ladies.

At a ~ Vladimir Nabokov

As I finished my rice, I sketched out the plot of a pornographic adventure film called The Massage Room. Sirien, a young girl from northern Thailand, falls hopelessly in love with Bob, an American student who winds up in the massage parlor by accident, dragged there by his buddies after a fatefully boozy evening. Bob doesn't touch her, he's happy just to look at her with his lovely, pale-blue eyes and tell her about his hometown - in North Carolina, or somewhere like that. They see each other several more times, whenever Sirien isn't working, but, sadly, Bob must leave to finish his senior year at Yale. Ellipsis. Sirien waits expectantly while continuing to satisfy the needs of her numerous clients. Though pure at heart, she fervently jerks off and sucks paunchy, mustached Frenchmen (supporting role for Gerard Jugnot), corpulent, bald Germans (supporting role for some German actor). Finally, Bob returns and tries to free her from her hell - but the Chinese mafia doesn't see things in quite the same light. Bob persuades the American ambassador and the president of some humanitarian organization opposed to the exploitation of young girls to intervene (supporting role for Jane Fonda). What with the Chinese mafia (hint at the Triads) and the collusion of Thai generals (political angle, appeal to democratic values), there would be a lot of fight scenes and chase sequences through the streets of Bangkok. At the end of the day, Bob carries her off. But in the penultimate scene, Siri ~ Michel Houellebecq

Those beautiful girls, so happy when you acted like a gentleman and all of that, just to touch them and carry the memory of it back to my room, where dust gathered upon my typewriter and Pedro the mouse sat in his hole, his black eyes watching me through that time of dream and reverie. Pedro the mouse, a good mouse but never domesticated, refusing to be petted or house-broken. I saw him the first time I walked into my room, and that was during my heyday, when The Little Dog Laughed was in the current August issue. It was five months ago, the day I got to town by bus from Colorado with a hundred and fifty dollars in my pocket and big plans in my head. I had a philosophy in those days. I was a lover of man and beast alike, and Pedro was no exception; but cheese got expensive, Pedro called all his friends, the room swarmed with them, and I had to quit it and feed them bread. They didn't like bread. I had spoiled them and they went elsewhere, all but Pedro the ascetic who was content to eat the pages of an old Gideon Bible. ~ John Fante

Unable to resist any longer, I leaned close to Tristan and whispered, "So, exactly how many of the," I glanced around the room, "thirty girls in your class did you date?"
"Only one's a senior, but I've dated thirteen girls from Clarence," he answered easily. "But more would've dated me, if I'd asked."
"Way to be humble, Romeo. ~ Renee Carter

When she first arrived, Mi-ran was impressed. The dormitories were modern and each of the four girls who would share one room had her own bed rather than use the Korean bed mats laid out on a heated floor, the traditional way of keeping warm at night while expending little fuel. But as winter temperatures plunged Chongjin into a deep freeze, she realized why it was that the school had been able to give her a place in its freshman class. The dormitories had no heating. Mi-ran went to sleep each night in her coat, heavy socks, and mitten with a towel draped over her head. When she woke up, the towel would be crusted with frost from the moisture of her breath. In the bathroom, where the girls washed their menstrual rags (nobody had sanitary napkins, so the more affluent girls used gauze bandages while the poor girls used cheap synthetic cloths), it was so cold that the rags would freeze solid within minutes of being hung up to dry. Mi-ran hated the mornings. Just as in Jun-sang's school, they were roused by a military-style roll call at 6:00 A.M., but instead of marching off like proud soldiers, they shivered into the bathroom and splashed icy water on their faces, under a grotesque canopy of frozen menstrual rags. ~ Barbara Demick

I can't swallow another drop of soda by this point because the carbonation is burning my throat.
"Oh really? Well ... " I trail off as I feel bubbling at the base of my throat. This is not good.
Before I can stop myself, I let out the biggest burp I've ever, ever, ever had. I slap a hand over my mouth and stare at Logan whose eyebrows have reached astronomical heights.
"Dude! So not smooth, man! Girls cannot stand rudeness," Dan yells from the back room. ~ Leah Rae Miller

The girls changing in the gym watched her from the other side of the room the first time she went in, and one of the nuns was sitting there as well, just because Stella was there. They took her into a meeting in school and she had to say in advance that she wasn't a lesbian, or they wouldn't have let her even try to use the girls' changing room. They asked her if she was still a Christian. She explained that her family are not religious. They asked her what she knew of damnation. She asked them what they knew of autonomy. They asked her how she knew that word. She asked if they had met her mother. They said they would pray for her. She said it was not necessary. They asked if she might feel different in a few months, or if perhaps she would simply change for gym in the janitor's cupboard. She said she'd felt like this her whole life and no amount of praying was going to change it and she could use the janitor's cupboard to change, but she was a person, not a broom. They said she needed to find Jesus. She asked if it was like finding Wally? Only one nun knew what she meant. That little drawing in those old comic strips her mum had, when you look for the dweeby guy in the stripy hat. ~ Jenni Fagan

When we were still living at home, all he ever drank was cola, huge amounts of it; he had no problem knocking back an entire king-size bottle at dinnertime. Then he would produce these gigantic belches, for which he was sometimes sent to his room, belches that lasted ten years or longer
like subterranean thunder rolling up and exploding from somewhere deep down in his stomach
and for which he enjoyed a certain schoolyard fame: among the boys, that is, for he knew even then that girls were only repulsed by burps and farts. ~ Herman Koch

An invitation to dinner was soon afterwards dispatched; and already had Mrs. Bennet planned the courses that were to do credit to her housekeeping, when an answer arrived which deferred it all. Mr. Bingley was obliged to be in town the following day, and, consequently, unable to accept the honour of their invitation, etc. Mrs. Bennet was quite disconcerted. She could not imagine what business he could have in town so soon after his arrival in Hertfordshire; and she began to fear that he might be always flying about from one place to another, and never settled at Netherfield as he ought to be. Lady Lucas quieted her fears a little by starting the idea of his being gone to London only to get a large party for the ball; and a report soon followed that Mr. Bingley was to bring twelve ladies and seven gentlemen with him to the assembly. The girls grieved over such a number of ladies, but were comforted the day before the ball by hearing, that instead of twelve he brought only six with him from London - his five sisters and a cousin. And when the party entered the assembly room it consisted of only five altogether - Mr. Bingley, his two sisters, the husband of the eldest, and another young man. ~ Jane Austen

No. No. Not this. Not this, that had kept him aloof from his fellows through school. Not this, fear of seeing the sun on a cheekbone, filtered through someone's eyelashes, or the shadow of a jawline, and feeling ... this thing. The thing that poets spoke about, but not like this. Not for the girls at the dances with their shy smiles and sturdy prettiness but for the boys, milling about on the other side of the room in navy shirts and red ties, looking, by turns, bored and nervous and happy. ~ Anonymous

For a split second, Elsa recalled a new memory of her younger self. She was building a snowman with another girl. They pulled the snowman around the room laughing. It was clear they loved each other. Her hands started to tingle in an unfamiliar way- they were warm- then the sensation was gone and she was left with a sharp headache.
What was that? she wondered. The girl had to be in her imagination. She had never used magic before that week. Had she?
Elsa stood up, her legs shaking. She held on to her bed frame to keep from falling. Heart pounding, fingers aching, she closed her eyes again and tried to remember the love she had just felt coursing through her veins. The emotion was stronger than fear. This feeling had come from building something out of love- a snowman for the two girls to enjoy. ~ Jen Calonita

When Pidge wakes up, let me know, okay?" he said in a soft voice. "I got spaghetti,
and pancakes, and strawberries, and that oatmeal shit with the chocolate packets, and she
likes Fruity Pebbles cereal, right, Mare?" he asked, turning.
When he saw me, he froze. After an awkward pause, his expression melted, and his
voice was smooth and sweet."Hey, Pigeon."
I couldn't have been more confused if I had woken up in a foreign country. Nothing
made sense. At first I thought I had been evicted, and then Travis comes home with bags
full of my favorite foods.
He took a few steps into the living room, nervously shoving his hands in his pockets.
"You hungry, Pidge? I'll make you some pancakes. Or there's uh…there's some oatmeal.
And I got you some of that pink foamy shit that girl's shave with, and a hairdryer, and a…
a….just a sec, it's in here," he said, rushing to the bedroom.
The door opened, shut, and then he rounded the corner, the color gone from his face.
He took a deep breath and his eyebrows pulled in. "Your stuff's packed."
"I know," I said.
"You're leaving," he said, defeated. ~ Jamie McGuire

Well," he asked, "whaddya expect?"
It was so obviously a rhetorical question that of course I answered it. My truth impulse seemed stronger around this boy,my impulse control way under par.
"I would expect you to be dancing."
His expression was unreadable in the limited light. "Is that an invitation?"
"No. An observation."
He shrugged. "Okay. I needed a break. It was either keep an eye on Chase while he pukes up a fifth of cheap rum in the guys' bathroom or follow the girls into the ladies' room."
I almost smiled and told him about Willing's bathrooms and me. Instead, some truly horrific and irresistible impulse had me announcing, "Amanda looks really pretty tonight."
"So do you."
Bizarrely, I felt my breath catch in my chest, and for a long, awful second, I thought I might cry. I gripped the top of my pad tightly, concentrated on the spiral metal binding where it dug into my skin.
"It's a cool costume," he said. "Water nymph?"
"Sea goddess," I answered quietly. "Roman."
"Hmm." Alex was staring out toward the garden now,looking so at ease that I went from pretzel to knot. Could it really be that easy for him? To say things like he did without thinking? Without meaning them at all? "Too many mermaids tonight. Not that I have anything against mermaids.Mermaids are hot. I mean,you saw my drawing."
I nodded.
"You know," he went on, "that day in the hall,you compared my stuff to two Japanese artists-"
I nodded a ~ Melissa Jensen

The room smells of lemon oil, heavy cloth, fading daffodils, the leftover smells of cooking that have made their way from the kitchen or the dining room, and of Serena Joy's perfume: Lily of the Valley. Perfume is a luxury, she must have some private source. I breathe it in, thinking I should appreciate it. It's the scent of pre-pubescent girls, of the gifts young children used to give their mothers, for Mother's Day; the smell of white cotton socks and white cotton petticoats, of dusting powder, of the innocence of female flesh not yet given over to hairiness and blood. It makes me feel slightly ill, as it I'm in a closed car on a hot muggy day with an older woman wearing too much face powder. This is what the sitting room is like, despite its elegance. ~ Margaret Atwood

Glancing around the entrance hall, she realized the crate was no longer in the corner. The twins must have raced downstairs the moment it had been mentioned. Clutching it on either side, they lugged it furtively toward the receiving room.
"Girls," Kathleen said sharply, "bring that back here at once!"
But it was too late. The receiving room's double doors closed, accompanied by the click of a key turning in the lock. Kathleen stopped short, her jaw slackening.
West and Helen staggered together, overcome with hilarity.
"I'll have you know," Mrs. Church said in amazement, "it took our two stoutest footmen to bring that crate into the house. How did two young ladies manage to carry it away so quickly?"
"Sh-sheer determination," Helen wheezed.
"All I want in this life," West told Kathleen, "is to see you try to pry that crate away from those two."
"I wouldn't dare," she replied, giving up. "They would do me bodily harm. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Moaning about how his own brilliance disadvantaged him was not a recipe for popularity. Stanley was initially as isolated in high school as Shirley would be in Rochester: "miserably lonely, reading prodigiously, hating everyone, and wishing I had enough courage to talk to girls." One day a boy he recognized from class sat down next to him in the locker room. Stanley, trying to make conversation as he best knew how, asked his classmate if he read Poe. "No, I read very well, thank you," came the reply. Stanley responded huffily that he didn't think puns were very clever. "I don't either," said the other boy, "but they're something I can't help, like a harelip. ~ Ruth Franklin

America," he begged.
I turned to Maxon.
"They're fine. The rebels were slow, and everyone here knows what to do in an emergency."
I nodded. We stood there quietly for a minute, and I could tell he was about to move on.
"Maxon," I whispered.
He turned back, a little surprised to be addressed so casually.
"About last night. Let me explain. When they came to prep us, to get us ready to come here, there was a man who told me that I was never to turn you down. No matter what you asked for. Not ever."
He was dumbfounded. "What?"
"He made it sound like you might ask for certain things. And you said yourself that you hadn't been around many women. After eighteen years...and then you sent the cameras away. I just got scared when you got that close to me."
Maxon shook his head, trying to process all this. Humiliation, rage, and disbelief all played across his typically even-tempered face.
"Was everyone told this?" he asked, sounding appalled at the idea.
"I don't know. I can't imagine many girls would need such a warning. They're probably waiting to pounce on you," I noted, nodding my head toward the rest of the room.
He gave a dark chuckle. "But you're not, so you had absolutely no qualms about kneeing me in the groin, right?"
"I hit your thigh!"
"Oh, please. A man doesn't need that long to recover from a knee to the thigh," he replied, his voice full of skepticism.
A laugh escaped me. Thankfully, Maxon join i ~ Kiera Cass

She is also my only friend - apart from Emily Pagett, who reminds me of Baba in The Country Girls (Edna O'Brien, Hutchinson, 1962), in that she often spreads lies about me - but which I tolerate, because she also tells me gossip about other people, which is fascinating. Even if it's also not true. I recognize that ultimately you have make your own amusement. ~ Caitlin Moran

You might think lunchtime at Willing would be different from other high schools. That everyone would be welcome at any table, united by the knowledge that we, at Willing, are the Elite, the Chosen, stellar across the board.
Um.No.Of course not.High school is high school, regardless of how much it costs or how many kids springboard into the Ivies. And nowhere is social status more evident than in the dining room (freshman and sophomores at noon; upperclassmen at one). Because, of course, Willing doesn't have a cafeteria, or even a lunch hall. It has a dining room, complete with oak tables and paneled walls that are covered with plaques going all the way back to 1869, the year Edith Willing Castoe (Edward's aunt) founded the school to "prepare Philadelphia's finest young ladies for Marriage,for Leadership, and for Service to the World." Really. Until the sixties, the school's boastful slogan was "She's a Willing Girl."
Almost 150 years, three first ladies, and one attorney general-not to mention the arrival of boys-later, female members of the student body are still called Willing Girls. You'd think someone in the seventies would have objected to that and changed it. But Willing has survived the seventies of two different centuries. They'll probably still be calling us Willing Girls in 2075. It's a school that believes in Tradition, sometimes regardless of how stupid that Tradition is. ~ Melissa Jensen

Hey! I'm not gonna watch this damn Nemo fish by myself!" My dad yells from the living room, making the girls giggle. ~ Kristen Proby

This 'vampire' stuff is to stay right in this room. Until we have the assailant in custody we say nothing about these girls being drained of blood. No more rumors. No reports in the papers," he added, looking directly at me and ignoring my colleague from the opposition press. "The official opinion at this time is that the cause of death is 'undetermined and under investigation'. We don't want to start a panic. It's bad for police operations. It's bad for the people. And it's had for business. ~ Jeff Rice

She gave lip service to the world: she went through the motions of complying with the regulations governing the behavior of teenaged girls from good families; she developed a halfway interest in clothes, boys, hairdos, gossip, and female aspirations; but she was uneasy all the time she was away from the security of those who she knew loved her. ~ Harper Lee

A new girl came to work in the room, and the cat was still in it. The cat hid from the new girl in Jess' old room behind a crack in the wall and yowled for Jess to come and throw this strange girl out of the cat's bed. This new girl clapped her hands over her ears, and then pulled powder out from her bag of make-up. She doused a piece of old food in the powder and threw it into the wall for the cat to eat.
Later that night, Rachel had to pull the dead cat from a crack in the wall with a long broom handle.
Rachel threw the dead cat over the wall, where the rain would come to wash the body into the sewers.
With Jess crying somewhere about her lost cat - selling hot corn among the thugs and night bruisers, paying for anything stolen - Rachel figured that the powder had done exactly what it had been made to do. The powder had killed a working girl's baby. ~ J.M. McDermott

Outside the hospital, a young girl who was selling small bouquets of daffodils, their green stems tied with lavender ribbons. I watched as my mother bought out the girl's whole stock. Nurse Eliot, who remembered my mother from eight years ago volunteered to help her when she saw her comng down the hall, her arms full of flowers. She rounded up extra water pitchers from a supply closet and together, she and my mother filled them with water and placed the flowers around my father's room while he slept. Nurse Eliot thought that if loss could be used as a measure of beauty in a woman, my mother had grown even more beautiful.
(The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold) ~ Alice Sebold

When sushi-suit girl calls up entrants to show off their costumes, Cole manages to pull Wallace out of his seat to stand awkwardly out there, but I refuse when my name is called.

"It's just for a second," Cole says, motioning me out with his hands. "Come on. Just a second."

"I don't . . . I don't really want to."

Wallace gently pushes Cole out of the way so he can get back to his seat and grab his phone.

If she doesn't want to, don't make her do it.

Cole sighs so overdramatically he must be joking, then turns to tell sushi girl I won't be participating after all. A few more people from other groups around the room go up. There's a panel of teenaged judges stationed behind one short bookcase like it's a desk, and at the very end they get together to deliberate before they announce one of the Hogwarts students as the winner.

"Oh, come on!" Cole cries. "The Harry Potter people always win! They've had like twelve years to put their costumes together!"

"I've done my waiting," Megan says to Hazel, pulling up the little girl's arms. "Twelve years of it! In Azkaban! ~ Francesca Zappia

For several moments he did not move from the doorway: he heard the girl's soft, thin voice rise above the murmur of the assembled guests she served. She raised her head, and suddenly he met her eyes; they were pale and large and seemed to shine with a light within themselves. In some confusion he backed from the doorway and turned into the sitting room; he found an empty chair in a space by the wall, and he sat there looking at the carpet beneath his feet. He did not look in the direction of the dining room, but every now and then he thought he felt the gaze of the young woman brush warmly across his face. ~ John Edward Williams

For girls and women, storytelling has a double and triple importance. Because the stories of our lives have been marginalized and ignored by history, and often dismissed and treated as 'gossip' within our own cultures and families, female human beings are more likely to be discouraged from telling our stories and from listening to each other with seriousness. ~ Gloria Steinem

I decide to throw it out there in the open. "Do you like this? Being the center of attention?"
"When I've got the most beautiful woman in this room across from me? What's not to like?"
I should scoff at the line. It's not light years away from the ones he has been using on me since first year, but for some reason, it feels different. More intimate. It doesn't put my back up the way it did before. "I'm sure you say that to all the girls," I joke.
"No. I don't. ~ Meghan March

Looking down at the stiff, cream-colored rice paper--the good kind that came in the books that we had never been able to afford--I was both excited and apprehensive. Remembering my rather precipitous departure from that wood gatherer's house, I decided that much as I valued my friends, I wanted to read Bran's letter alone.
No one followed me as I walked out. Behind, I heard Oria saying, in a voice very different from what I was used to hearing from her, "Come, Master Jerrol, there's some good ale here, and I'll make you some bread and cheese…"
As I walked up to my room, I reflected on the fact that I did want to read it alone, and not have whatever it said read from my face. Then there was the fact that they all let me go off alone without a word said, though I knew they wanted to know what was in it.
It's that invisible barrier again, I thought, feeling peculiar. We can work all day at the same tasks, bathe together at the village bathhouse, and sit down together at meals, but then something comes up and suddenly I'm the Astiar and they are the vassals…just as at the village dances all the best posies and the finest plates are brought to me, but the young men all talk and laugh with the other girls.
Was this, then, to be my life? To always feel suspended midway between the aristocrat and the vassal traditions, and to belong truly to neither? ~ Sherwood Smith

Emperor, right." she retacked the curtain "That's weird to say, after eighteen years of listening to celebrity gossip feeds go on and on about 'Earth's favorite prince'". She claimed one of the lumpy sofa cushions, curling her legs beneath her. "I had a picture of him taped to my wall when I was fifteen. Grand-mere cut it off a cereal box."
Wolf scowled.
"Of course, half the girls in the world probably had that same picture from that same cereal box."
Wolf scrunched his shoulders against his neck, and Scarlet grinned, teasing. "Oh, no. You're not going to have to fight him for pack dominance now are you? Come here."
She beckoned him with a wave of her hand and he was at her side in half a second, the glower softening as he pulled her against his chest. ~ Marissa Meyer

He held me still and spanked me again, really hard, the sound vibrating around the room. I felt dizzy. My throat was dry and suddenly the pain turned to an unexpected pleasure. ~ Chloe Thurlow

Fat-bashing in all its varied forms–criticism, exclusion, shaming, fat talk, self-deprecation, jokes, gossip, bullying–is one of the last acceptable forms of prejudice. From a very young age, before they can walk away or defend themselves, women are taught that they are how they look, not what they do or what they know. (1) ~ Robyn Silverman

Then she bent her head over at the waist and tossed her head around to separate the curls.
The elevator stopped and she heard the door open. She straightened up to find some big guy in a ball cap and sunglasses right in her face, charging into the elevator before she could even get out of it. He had both hands full of carry-out bags - Mexican food, judging from the smell.
She looked at them, her mouth watering. Yep. Enrique's. The best in town.
He whirled around to punch the door-close button.
"Hey," she said. "I'm getting off here."
Some girl outside in the lobby yelled, "We know it's you, Chase. You shouldn't lie to us."
Startled, Elle looked at the guy's face and saw, just before he reached for her, that it really was Chase Lomax in ragged shorts and flip-flops.
He grabbed her up off her feet and bent his head. Found her mouth with his.
"Wait for us," another girl yelled. The sound of running feet echoed off the marble floor, slid to a stop. "Oh, no!"
Kissing her, without so much as a "Hi, there, Elle." Burning her up. She tried to struggle but he had both her arms pinned to her sides.
And suddenly she wanted to stay right where she was forever because the shock was wearing off and she was starting to feel. A lot more than she ever had before.
The door slid closed. The girls began banging on it.
"We know your room number, Chase, honey," they yelled. "See you there."
Loud giggles.
"We'll show you a real g ~ Genell Dellin