Brenna Yovanoff Quotes & Sayings

Let me tell you a little bit about demons. They love pain and other people's misery. They lie when it suits them and don't see anything wrong with it. They corrupt and kill and destroy, all without conscience. You just don't have the capacity for something as honorable as loving another person. — Brenna Yovanoff

The fear of God is nothing compared to the fear of tragedy and loss. -The Lady — Brenna Yovanoff

Fisher twined his fingers with mine and when he did, the feeling was the best thing in the world, like it was always better to be this tangled up, to always have a piece of each other. — Brenna Yovanoff

Everything in life involves choice. — Brenna Yovanoff

It seemed so hopeless, so impossible that a life could rest on such a small thing (the human heart). — Brenna Yovanoff

All great acts are ruled by intention. What you mean is what you get. — Brenna Yovanoff

Callie glances over her shoulder. She's younger than me, but aggressively put together, with curled hair and heavy lipstick. — Brenna Yovanoff

Why does she always seem to think you drive like we're holding up a bank?"
Roswell grinned and rolled his eyes, "Because that's what teenagers do, right? They also carve swastikas into their arms, steal prescription drugs from old people, and freebase cocaine. I need to institute a policy where she stops watching 60 Minutes and pretty much all public service announcements. — Brenna Yovanoff

The fact is, the contest has always been invulnerability, and even when you win, you still lose. — Brenna Yovanoff

All the things are want are hard to find the words for. — Brenna Yovanoff

Why?" I say, so quietly that it comes out sounding like a tiny, tired sigh.
"Nobody wants to be mediocre." Her shadow on the ceiling is monstrous, a witch in profile. — Brenna Yovanoff

He knew how useless words could be. How even when you wanted more than anything just to hear someone say they understood, it didn't make you feel better. Not really. — Brenna Yovanoff

Intention is one of the most powerful forces there is. What you mean when you do a thing will always determine the outcome. The law creates the world. — Brenna Yovanoff

Did you ever think about boys?' I say, staring up into the dark.
'There wasn't room,' she whispers, and her voice is unbelievably sad. 'At first, after Connor, I was just waiting. I was going to get a new boyfriend soon- as soon as I was prettier or better, more perfect. But after a while there was no room for anything else. If I though about kissing or sex, I just started feeling ugly, too awful for anything good. — Brenna Yovanoff

The world is full of unused corners. — Brenna Yovanoff

She bruised easily, in dark purple smudges like in blooming on tissue paper. — Brenna Yovanoff

Lillian laughs and rolls her eyes. Do I look like I know the answer to that? I always just locked on to the target and then followed it all the way down. — Brenna Yovanoff

It's not luck, Waverly. I mean yeah, to find someone who really gets you, maybe that's luck, but if you treat people like they matter, they remember it. — Brenna Yovanoff

For the first time in maybe my whole life, I feel dangerous and magical, like a dragon or a mermaid. A fury, standing there with my half-gone grape slush and my jaw clenched, ready for whatever comes next. — Brenna Yovanoff

Goodbye," she said.
When I didn't say it back, she rested her hand on the top of my head. The weight was strange and gentle. "I love you," she said. "And when I tell you goodbye, I don't mean forever or for long. Just that I'm going home now, and so are you. — Brenna Yovanoff

On the opposite page, there was a poem. It described how beauty and truth mattered more than anything else. They were the same thing.
But it didn't matter how pretty you painted the world. — Brenna Yovanoff

The sound of her voice was painful. She screamed, sobbed, whispered Hallelujah. But she never sang it. — Brenna Yovanoff

Intent matters. If you believe you're charmed, capable, likable, popular, then you are. — Brenna Yovanoff

People do that sometimes. Change. — Brenna Yovanoff

It seemed to me that some things were ugly enough that fixing them was worth trespassing. — Brenna Yovanoff

We lay on the grass beside the cemetery fence, kissing and shivering. Her teeth started to chatter and I pulled her against me, which made me feel like a superhero for no apparent reason. — Brenna Yovanoff

History was a tangled thing, people were resilient, and the one constant law of the world was that it would heal. — Brenna Yovanoff

Tender," she said again. "Tender is kind and gentle. It's also sore, like the skin around an injury. — Brenna Yovanoff

Love is when you care more about something else than you do about yourself. — Brenna Yovanoff

I stand in front of him, trying to figure out how to look friendly or normal and where to put my hands ... It seems ridiculous suddenly that people have hands and no place to put them. — Brenna Yovanoff

All my life, I've understood the nature of where I come from, but I never thought it might be wicked until now. — Brenna Yovanoff

The way Lillian says it is hungry, like she's waiting for something to be revealed, and I wonder if maybe that's the real difference between us - that when she pulls back the curtain and stares into the blackness behind it, it's just one more way of testing herself. Like some game you can never win, because even if you face all the shocking realities and the horrors of the world, once you've seen that kind of awfulness, you can never un-see it. You have to carry it around with you forever. — Brenna Yovanoff

Everything smells like mildew, and the grim commitment to filth that can only be cultivated by post-adolescent boys. — Brenna Yovanoff

God, I hate her!" Kelly shouts as soon as Connor and his mom are out of the store. "How did that wretched, wretched woman ever even find someone to procreate with? — Brenna Yovanoff

I'm scared to disturb the balance, though- that delicate equilibrium. Marshall and I can only exist in the narrow spaces where I'm not me and he is not him. — Brenna Yovanoff

We're literal people, you and me. Whatever the most obvious interpretation is, that's our truth. — Brenna Yovanoff

I'm better at being sorry. — Brenna Yovanoff

It's not the wisest thing - love - but when it happens, there's not a lot you can do to stop it. Sometimes you just have to soldier on through. — Brenna Yovanoff

Finny Boone is probably a sociopath. A big, lighter-stealing sociopath, but his eyes are steady and complicated. — Brenna Yovanoff

...and when I pretended to Portia or myself that the dark stuff couldn't touch me, that was a lie. — Brenna Yovanoff

I didn't know how to respond to that. There was something disturbing about being responsible for partially decayed girls going swimming. — Brenna Yovanoff

Sometimes this was just the way the game ended. Sometimes you did your best, and it all went straight to hell anyway. — Brenna Yovanoff

I'm not about love, but in this moment, I wish that I were. — Brenna Yovanoff

I thought he made me a different person altogether, but maybe I was always holding those pieces inside me, waiting for a chance to use them. — Brenna Yovanoff

Don't you ever just have those days where even if you don't really like someone, you might as well hang out with them because right then, it's better than being alone? — Brenna Yovanoff

The effectiveness of your persona is inversely proportional to what people know about you. — Brenna Yovanoff

I'd been living on dreams so long it was hard to know if any one of the fifteen things happening inside my head was real. — Brenna Yovanoff

Why are you so determined to destroy yourself?" I say, and my voice is very small.
"I don't know," he whispers back. "Why are you? — Brenna Yovanoff

When you name something, you take away some of it's power. It becomes known — Brenna Yovanoff

It's hazardous, though, being that much to someone. When you're the yardstick that everything else is measure against, eventually, you just fail. — Brenna Yovanoff

Once, my mother told a whole host of angels that she'd rather die than go back to a man she didn't love. — Brenna Yovanoff

Are you waiting for someone to come and get you? I whisper. I sound small and thirsty. He doesn't answer. Instead, he bends his head and kisses me, just once, then let's me go.
When Connor would kiss Angelie in the halls last spring, he did it like he was trying to suck the chocolate off the outside of a Klondike bar.
It could last for hours. This is more like seeing a star fall - thrilling and soundless and then over. — Brenna Yovanoff

Once, I ordered two thousand lady bugs from the local garden center and set them loose in the atrium. I sprinkled marigold seeds in the ficus planters and put gold fish in the lobby fountain. These are things I did with no consequences, no repercussions. My nineteen detentions were for smart answers and missed homework. There is no equivalent punishment for making the world a stranger place. — Brenna Yovanoff

I just want that, the way I feel when you kiss me. Just having it makes all the bad things better. — Brenna Yovanoff

I start, because if I don't, then everything just stays the same. — Brenna Yovanoff

My father's answer was revenge-has always been revenge-and the outcome was just, but not better. Nothing is fixed. — Brenna Yovanoff

In his youth, he was electrified. The stars were moving in his bloodstream. He would not have been cowed by the customs of an earthly monarch. When he loved, it was with a heat and a desperation that he carried like a sword. He loved in the way that Greeks burned cities. — Brenna Yovanoff

Ariel is capable of whispering the same way a toaster is capable of flight. — Brenna Yovanoff

He was a whole mess of almosts, of mismatched pieces. — Brenna Yovanoff

When I press my forehead to his back, the shape of his pain is alluring, almost visible. It forms him, tells him to protect himself, makes him everything he is. He needs to keep it. — Brenna Yovanoff

The treachery of demons is nothing compared to the betrayal of an angel. — Brenna Yovanoff

From the window, I watch the city and the freeway. In the distance, the sky-rises look like mystic spires, unbearably close and far. I want to pick them up and eat them. I want to scream out loud sometimes, but I never do. — Brenna Yovanoff

We sat on the picnic bench, not talking, not looking at each other, but being quiet and okay. The rain was almost gone, nothing but a thin chilly fog. For now, I just wanted to sit on the picnic bench with him and not be anything but fine and uncomplicated. — Brenna Yovanoff

I looked at the ground and the dark, drizzling sky and pretty much anyplace that wasn't her. "I like you. A lot." When I finally glanced at her, my face was hot and it was hard to keep looking.
She squinted up at me. Then she crossed her arms. "This is a really inappropriate place to be having this conversation."
"I know. I like you anyway."
Saying it a third time was like breaking some kind of spell. Her face went soft and far away.
"Don't say that unless you mean it."
"I don't say anything I don't mean. — Brenna Yovanoff

Her gaze was direct, full of a sadness so raw and crystallized that I could see the shape of it. — Brenna Yovanoff

My father gave me a ruined boy to compensate for the fact that he does not love me.
The boy is fragile, broken - broke himself - broke everything.
I asked him why he did it. He said because the world was unlivable. He said it was unlovable, but I think he meant himself. I think he meant that loneliness is sometimes painful.
I curl against him, tuck my head beneath his chin and listen to his heart. It says stay and wait. It says regret. He knows what it is to want love, a love so fierce you grow roots. I hear his heart say please.
He went looking for angels and found me instead, girl of the sorrows, sad but not sorry. I waited for a sign, a star to fall. He reached for a knife and drew branches. — Brenna Yovanoff

Back the, my life was mostly pieces-tire swings and lemonade, dogwood petals drifting down and going brown in the grass. Cotton dresses, bedsheets flapping on the line. An acre of front porch. A year of hopscotch rhymes. — Brenna Yovanoff

Epochs later, the curtains grew dusty and brittle, the deep, vicious colour of a bruise. The floorboards creaked and we were civilized. We were no longer the wild, ravening voices of the world, howling our shame and indignation at the sky. — Brenna Yovanoff

Whatever they said, whatever they told you about yourself, it's not true — Brenna Yovanoff

The thought of him is electric, beating in my chest like a birthday wish, dark and warm and secret. — Brenna Yovanoff

He smiles an honest smile for the first time, and the difference is hard to describe but easy to recognize. — Brenna Yovanoff

I had only to remember that centuries before, men fell in battle for the daughter of Troy, that passions carried greater weight than decorum. It took so little to prove that human life and property are devastatingly temporary. All she had to do was lie down for a prince. They burned the city to the ground. — Brenna Yovanoff

Even in that black dress, even in the dark, Waverly was the brightest thing in the gym. — Brenna Yovanoff

He'd been old, and I'd been little, but still, it seemed wrong that someone so comforting in his dailiness could simply stop existing. — Brenna Yovanoff

Her smile doesn't look any more real than mine. I wonder if she has to practice too. — Brenna Yovanoff

The hours spool out like a ribbon I can't find the end of. — Brenna Yovanoff

The things I had were mine and some of them were broken, but they were real. They were so very far from nothing. — Brenna Yovanoff

People make decisions, and maybe you don't always agree, but those choices are still their own. — Brenna Yovanoff

They?" he said, sounding apprehensive.
"Me. They're like me."
"Don't be a jackass," Roswell said, but not meanly. "No one's like you. — Brenna Yovanoff

When he was done adding sloe gin and grenadine, Danny shoved the glass across the counter to Drew. "Try that and tell me what it needs."
Drew took a sip, then coughed and set the glass down. "That's awful."
Danny scowled and tossed a dripping tablespoon at him. "You're awful. I'm looking for constructive feedback, asshole. What does it need?"
Drew threw the tablespoon back. "It needs to be taken out and shot."
"Make your own damn drink, Mr. Mixology. — Brenna Yovanoff

There was a whole, sprawling world underneath us, filled with ugly, vicious, beautiful people. The line between the two places was thin, hardly a separation, and both ran on pain and blood and fear and death and joy and music.
But for now, the sunset was enough. — Brenna Yovanoff

I couldn't work out what she actually wanted. Whether being dead happened in a pretty box on Welsh Street or someplace else, it didn't make a difference. Dead was irreversible. It was permanent. You couldn't do anything about it, and still, Tate seemed determined to take it back, like with the right answer, she could fix everything. — Brenna Yovanoff

She was the purest, biggest truth. — Brenna Yovanoff

I wanted it in the way you sometimes want to jump into very cold water, even though you know it won't feel good. I wanted to go numb. To see what it felt like to be someone else. — Brenna Yovanoff

Truman Flynn is a piece of paper in my coat pocket. He is a memory of water and of loss, his hand sliding free from mine, no way to hold on. — Brenna Yovanoff

I get out my hairbrush and wish for her - the real Lillian, and not the worst, most selfish parts of her. I wish for a warm, true best friend, one who didn't die. — Brenna Yovanoff

Don't take this the wrong way, but all my life you've been the weirdest person I've ever met. That doesn't make you not a real person. In fact, it makes you pretty goddamn specific. — Brenna Yovanoff

The way he's looking at me is like I'm the only beating heart in the world. — Brenna Yovanoff

His eyes were softer now. When he smiled, the shape of his mouth made my blood go hot. — Brenna Yovanoff

He is broken in three ways, sometimes four. I count them.
-He believes himself to be human, but is not actually. At least not anymore. This is similar to the way he believes himself to be alive.
-He has a grim affinity for drugs. This comes with no caveat and no parentheses. This is just a fact of life.
-He is doggedly unhappy and once decided to kill himself. Sadly, he has not really stopped.
-On certain occasions when these first three things have ceased to be bad enough, he loves me. The other sins are commonplace, forgivable under a big enough umbrella. This fourth is irrevocable. Unconscionable. In a word, it is utterly damning. — Brenna Yovanoff

I don't do anything I'm not good at. — Brenna Yovanoff

I've never been impulsive. It's always been in my nature to consider things carefully and then decide upon the best solution. Except, sometimes the circumstances change. Sometimes things get so complicated and so bad that your nature just doesn't matter anymore. — Brenna Yovanoff

For the past month and a half, it's been inanely hot every single day. Someone's bound to feel a little homicidal now and then. — Brenna Yovanoff

All I want is for you to stand here and watch the people you love be horribly mutilated. Is that too much to ask? — Brenna Yovanoff

This is the defining event of my life and you're treating it like it's normal. like it's nothing."
He leaned back, looking up at the sk. "Well, maybe it should stop being the defining event. There's a whole lot more to an average life than something that happened before you were a year old."
I knew that he was right, but it was scary. I looked away because I didn't want him to see how lonely I'd been. It was disorienting to think everything that had defined me for so long was only circumstantial. — Brenna Yovanoff

Thinking of this friend I had. This friend I loved and keep loving
dead, but never really gone. — Brenna Yovanoff

I fell headfirst into a sinkhole of pretty things, and the world inside your eyelids is just as big as the one outside. — Brenna Yovanoff

And that's all it takes to make you happy? You kill little kids, then go home and wait until it's time to do it all again? What the hell kind of existence is that? — Brenna Yovanoff

When you love someone, sometimes it means that they strip you down, peel you open, and you have to let them and not worry about how much it's going to hurt. — Brenna Yovanoff

It wasn't like the other songs. There was no story, no conversation. This was just the feeling, without words or pictures, and it had nothing to do with Luther or his clean, stinging guitar. It was the sound of being outside, of being alien. It was the pulse that ran under everything and never let you forget that you were strange, that the world hurt just to touch. — Brenna Yovanoff