Genevieve Valentine Quotes & Sayings

You can't expect people to give you the things you love, unless you know how to ask. — Genevieve Valentine

They must not understand why he's really asking, I think; they must none of them have sisters. — Genevieve Valentine

I don't know if I've vanished by then in this memory, or if it never happened and it's one of the things I dream that's only grief and sand.

I don't know if this is a mistake I'm making, or if this is something Fairuz built - a place for us to be alone, a language she wrote on her back so she would have a way to reach me that I would understand. — Genevieve Valentine

Then you are the bird, and the bird, and the bird. — Genevieve Valentine

She falls in love every night for a while. Then she learns that if you're quiet, they talk, and you can find something to dislike about anyone. — Genevieve Valentine

It frightened her how deep her sobs could reach, as if someone was pulling sorrow from her bones. — Genevieve Valentine

There, it's the old ways and no mistake; there it's only a corpse gone purple at the bottom and two coins no one will ever take back and the bread soaked through with sweat and your sins gleaming in every maggot, and sand under my eyelids and the wrappings still waiting and four jars lined up neatly with the faces watching, and my feet aching and my body going heavy everywhere and my throat too dry to swallow but my teeth gleaming wide, and the dark night all around us and a long walk home, and far off, silent, coming closer: wolves.

The sounds for that, they've never put a name to. — Genevieve Valentine

The girls were wild for dancing, and nothing else. No hearts beat underneath those thin, bright dresses. They laughed like glass. — Genevieve Valentine

Even Ayar's back tells the right time twice a day, and it was my turn to be right. — Genevieve Valentine

This is what happens when you take a step: you are moving closer to what you want. — Genevieve Valentine

Lou had been a blur of red in Jo's memories of this
room, the bright spot of color in the endless waiting white. — Genevieve Valentine

He watched her like he had come home after a long absence and had missed her most of all. — Genevieve Valentine

No need to worry about loving one when all of them would be back tomorrow night. — Genevieve Valentine

The ways in which language changes never ceases to interest me. — Genevieve Valentine

I promise not to step on you - I only look like a clodhopper," he was saying when Jo reached them. He winked at Ella, who glanced away and blinked, as if surprised that he'd come so close to guessing what she thought.
Jo slid up to the bar behind her sister, planted a stiff arm on the ledge, and raised an eyebrow at him.
He glanced up and saw her.
She expected him to blanche, or bristle, or pretend he'd just forgotten someplace else he had to be. A lot of men did that, when they realized that the girl they thought was alone had brought friends to look out for her.
But instead he only said, "Oh," softly, his smile so wide and earnest that crows'-feet appeared at the edges of his eyes; he smiled as though she was an old friend, as though he had been waiting for Jo a long time and was delighted to see her at last. — Genevieve Valentine

It was for Alec she made the wings.

It was the only gift she ever gave him; it was the only gift she has ever given to someone without a new name attached, the only gift she's ever given without killing someone first. — Genevieve Valentine

Lou was last, and she stopped next to Jo long enough to pluck her cigarette holder out of her mouth.
"You meet the nicest people in the clink, Jo. I should have figured something was up. Were you planning to hit the road with him in your fancy frock after the party?"
"Oh, I don't think he'd look very good in my fancy frock," said Jo, and moved to catch up with the rest. — Genevieve Valentine

Most of my writing takes place at a cramped desk in a cramped apartment, so whenever I get to write on a train or make notes on a road trip, it has an entirely different cadence. And I can remember specific writing sessions while on a train through beautiful countryside in a way I can remember almost nothing else. — Genevieve Valentine

I had never seen her this way before, and I wondered why until I realized it was the tattoo; I saw, finally, there was magic at work here that was darker and deeper than I had imagined, that the tattoo was like putting a pair of spectacles on a child with poor vision. I stared up at the camp hill, my heart in my throat, and wondered what everything would look like, now that I could see. — Genevieve Valentine

With so many trapped in the upper floors, it hardly surprised Jo how often they fought, or how fiercely. When you didn't have one room to yourself in the whole world, you laid claim to every inch of whatever you could. — Genevieve Valentine

Then she set it aside.
(She set everything aside. There was some hollow place inside her that few and grew.) — Genevieve Valentine

I will always have a soft spot for 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon,' which I discovered just at the age when I was beginning to enjoy the darkness in fairy tales but still wanted a story where the good guys win. — Genevieve Valentine

He was like a song she'd heard years back, played again in a quiet room; there was no telling if the song was any good, or if she only remembered it fondly because of the person she'd been long ago, when she heard it first. — Genevieve Valentine

Tenderly, as only monsters are tender, he asks, "Are you afraid to be like us, Ying?"

"No," Ying says. (How can she be afraid of anything, when he is so beautiful?)

She turns her head. Her breath fogs over the copper petals, until nothing is left of her but a dim reflection in his wings. — Genevieve Valentine

When are you going to get a fella?" Lily asks Rose after a year or two of dancing. "I have one who wants to take me kissing, but I think I should wait for you to have one."
Rose flushes. "I don't think I'll ever have a fella."
"Why not?" Lily bristles. "We're plenty pretty."
"I don't like the look of them," Rose says.
Lily purses her lips at the dance floor, appraising.
After a moment long, Rose says, "Any of them."
Lily looks at her a long time, as Rose tries not to hyperventilate.
Then Lily shrugs and says, "Well, then it's you who should have learned to lead, isn't it?" and when Rose clasps Lily's hand, she clasps it back.
It's the closest they've ever been. — Genevieve Valentine

I felt sorry for her. Insects were easy to love. It's always easier to find a thing and love it without hoping for a reason. — Genevieve Valentine