Sylvie Quotes

Yes, Mrs. Todd, a bonny, bouncing baby girl." Sylvie thought ~ Kate Atkinson

In the prosperous household of Sylvie's childhood, Cook was called 'Cook' but Mrs Glover preferred 'Mrs Glover'. It made her irreplaceable. Sylvie still stubbornly referred to her as Cook. ~ Kate Atkinson

I'm always so glad,' Sylvie murmured, 'that I don't have to take a turn at being other people.'
'You're very good at being yourself,' Ursula said, aware that it didn't necessarily sound like a compliment.
'Well, I've had years of practice. ~ Kate Atkinson

Not so much that I wanted to give up rock writing, but I also wanted to try something new. So I moved to a crumbling stately heap on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere in southwest France, about 60 miles from Bordeaux: wine instead of cocaine. ~ Sylvie Simmons

She could see Sylvie and her friends on the lawn below, their dresses fluttering like moths in the encroaching dusk. ~ Kate Atkinson

Technical perfection is insufficient. It is an orphan without the true soul of the dancer. ~ Sylvie Guillem

Having limits to push against is how you find out what you can do. ~ Sylvie Guillem

Then and now, beautiful, I'll take you any way you come to me ... Any way. I love this Sylvie, I loved that Sylvie. I just love you, baby. ~ Kristen Ashley

Dear Nancy,
I love your book The Crystal Navigator. You paint beautiful imagery throughout the pages of the story, and I loved learning about art through the adventures of Lucy. I'm honored to be one of the first readers of your wonderful story,
Sincerely,
Sylvie" (11 years old) ~ Sylvie

I didn't want to live in LA again, although I'd go back every couple of months to do an interview, usually with a heavy rock or metal band. And as the decade went on, so much of that scene had become totally corrupted by too much coke and money and silicone. ~ Sylvie Simmons

Leonard Cohen can give you "Leonard Cohen" - the self-deprecating wit, the slow, considered speech, the perfectly-honed anecdote - Tom Waits is far more comfortable giving a journalist "Tom Waits" the character, whose conversation is really a series of strange tales, learned or ad-libbed. ~ Sylvie Simmons

Better, perhaps, to dress like a whore around the clock and thus achieve a fully integrated personality. ~ Chris Kraus

Oooh, intrigue?' Sylvie said playfully. 'Want to know a secret? I am someone else. Nobody knows the real me.'
Jess opened the door, sick of being toyed with, wanting to get away. Her voice was flat. 'You're a girl. It's the same for all of us. ~ Kirsty Eagar

You know how sometimes you remember a place you once loved, a movie you've enjoyed, only to be disappointed when you return to that place or see that movie for a second time? Well, it wasn't disappointing. She sounds exactly as I remember her - and there is still something so warm and caring about her that it is difficult to hate her for how she abandoned us. ~ Christina Westover

All I want is to sleep
to dream. Life is better in dreams. ~ Christina Westover

Christmas really is about all the cliches: health, happiness and love. A future with my family is the important thing ... to stay alive for them. ~ Sylvie Meis

He was a baby once, she thought. New and perfect, cradled in his mother's arms. The mysterious Sylvie. Now he was a feathery husk, ready to blow away. His eyes were half open, milky, like an old dog, and his mouth had grown beaky with the extremity of age, opening and closing, a fish out of water. Bertie could feel a continual tremor running through him, an electrical current, the faint buzz of life. Or death, perhaps. Energy was gathering around him, the air was static with it. ~ Kate Atkinson

Someone who dreams cannot be forced to stop - there are no limitations to dreams, because we do not own dreams, dreams are from God. ~ Christina Westover

Sylvie was surprised by the rabid patriotism of the women on the platform, surely war should make pacifists of all women? ~ Kate Atkinson

That's what belief does, Sylvie. Whether something is true or not is beside the point. ~ John Searles

To all the girls I've loved before,
To Sylvie, Sophie, Gabrielle and Lenore,
The raven may tap and crow upon my door,
But regardless of any plans of fate, or enticing lures,
I promise to love you forevermore. ~ M.K. Schiller

She doesn't believe in dogs," Bridget said. "Dogs are hardly an article of faith," Sylvie said. ~ Kate Atkinson

(" 'Sacrifice,' " Sylvie said, "is a word that makes people feel noble about slaughter.") But, ~ Kate Atkinson

I never wanted to work in fashion. At age 12 or 13, I wanted to design for showgirls - for the theater! And I was crazy for the Hollywood of the 1950s: Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones. They were my idea of glamour - and Sylvie Vartan, the French singer. ~ Christian Louboutin

Whether you are rich or poor, beautiful or ugly, young or old, cancer knows no boundaries. ~ Sylvie Meis

A 'career woman,'" Sylvie said, as if the two words had no place in the same sentence. "A spinster," she added, contemplating the word. Ursula wondered why her mother was working so hard to rile her. "Perhaps you will never marry," Sylvie said, as if in conclusion, as if Ursula's life was as good as over. "Would that be such a bad thing? 'The unmarried daughter,'" Ursula said, tucking into an iced fancy. "It was good enough for Jane Austen. ~ Kate Atkinson

It was the kind of summer evening that made Ursula want to be alone. 'Oh,' Izzie said, 'You're at an age when a girl is simply consumed by the sublime.' Ursula wasn't sure what she meant ('No one is ever sure what she means,' Sylvie said) but she thought she understood a little. There was a strangeness in the shimmering air, a sense of imminence that made Ursula's chest feel full, as if her heart was growing. It was a kind of high holiness - she could think of no other way of describing it. Perhaps it was the future, she thought, coming nearer all the time. ~ Kate Atkinson

Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die. ~ Lewis Carroll

I'm not what you want, Sylvie, I get that because it's the same for you as it is for me. I'm not what you want 'cause I'm what you need. ~ Kristen Ashley

On the one hand, Sylvie loves the feeling of being like everybody else... on the other hand when she feels most like a freak is when shes getting away with not being one. ~ Barbara Gowdy

She realized, when relationships failed to last, it was not because love was no longer present, but because people had stopped believing in themselves and in their partners. ~ Christina Westover

Sylvie was pretty, but she was prettiest when something had just startled her into feeling that the world had to be dealt with in some way, and then she undertook the most ordinary things with an arch, tense, tentative good will that made them seem difficult and remarkable, and she was delighted by even partial successes. ~ Marilynne Robinson

And again it's no fair play to t' French. Four o' them is rightly matched wi' one o' us; and if we go an' fight 'em four to four it's like as if yo' fell to beatin' Sylvie there, or little Billy Croxton, as isn't breeched. And that's my mind. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

I have something to check out. You ... guard the truck."
"Sylvie," Wright said, "no one wants this truck. I'm broke and on foot, and I don't want this truck. ~ Lyn Benedict

I love Tom [Waits] for the same reason I love Leonard Cohen, which is that they are both one-offs, templates; they both seemed old, or at least dressed old when they were young; both kind of lived their careers backwards. ~ Sylvie Simmons

I'm not trying to ally myself with the rock stars of the universe. ~ Sylvie Simmons

It's a miserable story!" said Bruno. "It begins miserably, and it ends miserablier. I think I shall cry. Sylvie, please lend me your handkerchief."
"I haven't got it with me," Sylvie whispered.
"Then I won't cry," said Bruno manfully. ~ Lewis Carroll

No, dance is not a monster. The stage is monstrous, not in the negative sense but on the grandiose side. And dance is sacred as something emotionally strong happens. ~ Sylvie Guillem

I was terrified. No matter how far I fell, something pulled me back to safety - school and its occasional fascinating gift, dopey, well-meaning men, and books, books, that's where I found her most often, in the intimacies of characters, Ruth and Sylvie in a towboat, Esperanza on Mango Street, Anna K., of course, right before she jumps. ~ Julie Buntin

Suddenly the Professor started as if he had been electrified. "Why, I had nearly forgotten the most important part of the entertainment! The Other Professor is to recite a Tale of a Pig I mean a Pig-Tale," he corrected himself. "It has Introductory Verses at the beginning, and at the end."
It can't have Introductory Verses at the end, can it?" said Sylvie.
Wait till you hear it," said the Professor: "then you will see. I'm not sure it hasn't some in the middle, as well. ~ Lewis Carroll

A similar obligatory likeness of George adorned Mrs Glover's bedside table. Trussed in uniform and uncomfortable before a studio backdrop that reminded Sylvie of the Amalfi coast, George Glover no longer resembled a Sistine Adam. Sylvie thought of all the enlisted men who had already undergone the same ritual, a keepsake for mothers and sweethearts, the only photograph that would ever be taken of some of them. 'He could be killed,' Bridget said of her beau, 'and I might forget what he looked like.' Sylvie had plenty of photographs of Hugh. He led a well-documented life. ~ Kate Atkinson

It's not about being someone you're not. It's about affecting others without saying a word." #TheImageOfLeadership ~ Sylvie Di Giusto

Sylvie in a house was more or less like a mermaid in a ship's cabin. She preferred it sunk in the very element it was meant to exclude. We had crickets in the pantry, squirrels in the eaves, sparrows in the attic. Lucille and I stepped through the door from sheer night to sheer night. ~ Marilynn Robinson In Housekeeping

I want you here. I want you in my home, my bed, my life," he murmured, the smooth out of his voice, it was low and so rough with sex and emotion, it was abrasive, scoring through me.
"Baby –"
"I want your clothes in my closet. I wanna hear your voice in my house when you're talkin' on the phone. I want you sittin' beside me when we're watchin' TV. I want shit you like in my fridge. I want "your razors in my shower. I want my roof over your head. Your car in my garage. I want to give you what I should have been giving you for sixteen years. As good as you deserve. A showplace. A place where I can make you happy."
God. He was killing me.
"Creed, let me –"
He didn't let me finish. He pressed on, driving in, our bodies jolting with his thrusts, his voice harsh in my ear.

"Give me that, Sylvie. Give me that and, swear to God, I'll give you everything."
"I –"
His head came up, his cock drove deep and stayed planted and his eyes burned into mine.
"All I'll ask. All I'll ever ask. You give me that and you got a lifetime of nothin' but take. ~ Kristen Ashley

What I mean by depression isn't just the blues, it's not just like a hangover from the weekend,or the girl didn't show up or something like that" said Leonard describing the paralyzing darkness and anxiety he experienced. "It's kind of a mental violence that stops you functioning from one moment from the next" Leonard took the spending "a lot of time alone. Dying." He said "letting myself slowly die ~ Sylvie Simmons

They all chose Indian names for themselves. Teddy was Little Fox ("Naturally," Ursula said). Nancy was Little Wolf ("Honiahaka" in Cheyenne, Mrs. Shawcross said. She had a book she referred to). Mrs. Shawcross herself was Great White Eagle ("Oh, for heaven's sake," Sylvie said, "talk about hubris"). ~ Kate Atkinson

You did not need a God (Sylvie was an unconfessed atheist) to believe in sin. She ~ Kate Atkinson

Why can't they just mark it P for positive and a smiley for not pregnant?
-Sylvie ~ J.C. Reed

Besides,love is only a feeling. ~ Christina Westover

It's funny, the moment you dread the most, seeing yourself bald, is actually not such a bad moment at all. ~ Sylvie Meis

You know what can make a person possessed, Sylvie? It's not Satan or Lucifer or any of that nonsense. Do you know what it is? . . . Love and hate. Greed. Revenge. Pride. Those things... ~ John Searles

I'm proud of my short hair. I don't think I will grow it long again. ~ Sylvie Meis

Tell your father I never wanted to be a rose, only ever a night-scented gilliflower, and his moon was my sun. ~ Sylvie Grohne

It was a dark and clouded night, but the tracks led to the lake like a broad path. Sylvie walked in front of me. We stepped on every other tie, although that made our stride uncomfortably long, because stepping on every tie made it uncomfortably short. But it was easy enough. I followed after Sylvie with slow, long, dancer's steps, and above us the stars, dim as dust in their Babylonian multitudes, pulled through the dark along the whorls of an enormous vortex
for that is what it is, I have seen it in pictures
were invisible, and the moon was long down. I could barely see Sylvie. I could barely see where I put my feet. Perhaps it was only the certainty that she was in front of me, and that I need only put my foot directly before me, that made me think I saw anything at all. ~ Marilynne Robinson

In the end, if you can't trust each other, what's the point of being married? ~ Sylvie Meis

All heat drained from my face. Holy shit. I hadn't even started my new job and already I was insulting my new boss ... right after sleeping with him. I was worse than Sylvie. "So you're - "
My speech eluded me.
"Jett Mayfield, the stingy SOB who just hired you." He held out his palm. ~ J.C. Reed

My body is very nice to me. I have a lucky physique - I just don't take weight on. ~ Sylvie Guillem

Sylvie considered that children should be toughened up early, the better to take the blows in later life. ~ Kate Atkinson

Born to love you, baby," he repeated. "Die lovin' you, my Sylvie. ~ Kristen Ashley

Fox Corner - that's what we should call the house. No one else has a house with that name and shouldn't that be the point?'
'Really?' Hugh said doubtfully. 'It's a little whimsical, isn't it? It sounds like a children's story. The House at Fox Corner.'
'A little whimsy never hurt anyone.'
'Strictly speaking, though,' Hugh said, 'can a house be a corner? Isn't it at one?'
So this is marriage, Sylvie thought. ~ Kate Atkinson

Evening was her special time of day. She gave the world three syllables and indeed I think she liked it so well for its tendency to smooth, to soften. She seemed to dislike the disequilibrium of counterpoising a roomful of light against a worldful of darkness. Sylvie in a house was more or less like a mermaid in a ship's cabin. She preferred it sunk in the very element it was meant to exclude. ~ Marilynne Robinson