Girls Stories Quotes & Sayings

In the story shoes are just a metaphor for what these girls go through ... the grass is always greener and everyone always wants to be in somebody else's shoes; they don't want to be in their own. — Cameron Diaz

God, I hate Sleeping Beauties." Why that story, out of all the possible stories, should have the sort of staying power it does is beyond me. Centuries of helpless girls, half of them rotting away years before their Prince could come. It makes me sick. — Seanan McGuire

My thoughts about pornography tend to revolve around the fact that while very few of us are zombies, detectives, cowboys, or spacemen, there are an infinite number of books that are recounting the stories of those lifestyles. However, all of us have some sort of feelings or opinions about sex. And yet the only art form which in any way is able to discuss sex, or depict sex, is this grubby despised under the counter art form, which has absolutely no standards. This was what Lost Girls was intended as a remedy for, that there is no reason why a horny piece of literature, that is purely about sex, could not be as beautiful, as meaningful, and have as absorbing characters as any other piece of fiction. — Alan Moore

What I hadn't expected was to be blindsided by a history lesson that betrayed every hard-won experience I'd had as a player and now a coach at the same school I'd attended. . . Whoever was responsible for sending a championship team into virtual obscurity was either a serious egomaniac or just plain mean. It stung.

After all, wasn't the story told at today's funeral the stuff of legacies? Of school lore passed on to the next class, and the next, building institutional pride as well as magical identities that made every kid in the state want to play there? — Jo Kadlecek

Wait
we have one left," the runner said, bringing out what was surely the most expensive bouquet of all: a three-foot tall arrangement of two hundred white roses, in the palest ivory color. All the girls swooned. Almost no boys bought white roses ever. It was a big sign of commitment. But this one practically trumpeted a captured heart.
The runner set the bouquet in front of Schuyler.
Mimi raised an eyebrow. She had always won the roses lottery. What was this all about?
For me?" Schuyler asked, awestruck by the size of the thing.
She took the card from the tallest stem.
For Schuyler, who doesn't like love stories." It was not signed. — Melissa De La Cruz

The girls in the stories make such fools of themselves. They are so weak. They fall helplessly in love with the wrong men, they give in, they are jilted. Then they cry. — Margaret Atwood

I wanted to put all my family stories down for my girls, and I remember everything so vividly. I just wanted to put everything down while I still can remember it all. — Sissy Spacek

(Theodore) Roosevelt confessed early fascination with "girls'stories" such as Little Man and Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

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

Here is part of the problem, girls: we've been sold a bill of goods. Back in the day, women didn't run themselves ragged trying to achieve some impressively developed life in eight different categories. No one constructed fairy-tale childhoods for their spawn, developed an innate set of personal talents, fostered a stimulating and world-changing career, created stunning homes and yardscapes, provided homemade food for every meal (locally sourced, of course), kept all marriage fires burning, sustained meaningful relationships in various environments, carved out plenty of time for "self care," served neighbors/church/world, and maintained a fulfilling, active relationship with Jesus our Lord and Savior. You can't balance that job description. Listen to me: No one can pull this off. No one is pulling this off. The women who seem to ride this unicorn only display the best parts of their stories. Trust me. No one can fragment her time and attention into this many segments. — Jen Hatmaker

I learned a long time ago that life introduces young people to situations they are in no way prepared for, even good girls, lucky girls who want for nothing. Sometimes, when you least expect it, you become the girl in the woods. You lose your name because another one is forced on you. You think you are alone until you find books about girls like you. Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life. Stories have given me a place in which to lose myself. They have allowed me to remember. They have allowed me to forget. They have allowed me to imagine different endings and better possible worlds. — Roxane Gay

So you don't fancy meeting up again?' Max persisted, though Neve didn't know why, because she thought she'd made her position perfectly clear. 'Swap war stories?'
'I don't have any war stories,' Neve said, and in that moment she felt that she never would. That every night would be spent creeping round her flat in her socks with the telly turned down so low that she could barely hear it, so in the end she'd have no other option but to escape into the pages of books where there were other girls falling in and out of love but not her. Never her. She stared down at the scuffed toes of her faux Ugg boots in sudden and tired defeat.
'If you don't have any war stories, then at least you don't have any war wounds,' Max said, so quietly that Neve had to strain her ears to catch his words. 'Take my number. — Sarra Manning

He. Does there have to be a he? It seems weak and unoriginal doesn't it, for stories told by girls to always have a he? — Rinsai Rossetti

I like sunny stories. You know, my favorite girls in the '50s were Debbie Reynolds, Doris Day, and Esther Williams. — Edward Herrmann

You can trace an entire childhood in sexism through the entries sent in to the Everyday Sexism Project. The flashes of realization and first, painful moments of learning a woman's place. Often the memories are so vivid women carry and are shaped by them for the rest of their lives. I've been asked in countless interviews what has shocked me the most since starting the project. I think journalists expect me to tell them that it's the stories of rape, or the most appalling accounts of violence. Those stories have certainly angered and devastated me, of course, but nothing has shocked me more than the thousands and thousands of entries from young girls under the age of eighteen. When I started the project, I thought adult women would share their stories. The torrent of harassment, abuse, violence and assault being faced by children was a horribly unexpected surprise. People — Laura Bates

I looked at the back of Jessica's silky bent head and thought of those old stories where one twin is hurt and the other, miles away, feels the pain. I wondered if there had been a moment, during that giggly girls' night at Auntie Vera's, when she had made some small, unnoticed sound; if all the answers we wanted were locked away behind the strange dark gateways of her mind. — Tana French

As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the Four Musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do. — A.S. Byatt

And I know there are plenty of other "colored" things I could do besides telling my stories or going to Shirley Boon's meetings- the mass meetings in town, the marches in Birmingham, the voting rallies upstate. But truth is, I don't care that much about voting. I don't care about eating at a counter with white people. What I care about is, if in ten years, a white lady will call my girls dirty and accuse them of stealing the silver. — Kathryn Stockett

So, you used to come up here, too, and escape all the girl drama?" I said and chuckled when his cheeks turned a little red.
"Nah," he refuted. "It was always these two the girls wanted. The Jacobsons are hot commodities around here."
"Bull crap! You had them eating up those stupid 'I'm a cowboy' stories and you know it," Kyle yelled. "The one about you saving your sister from the bull was classic. Classic!"
"Eat me," Rodney said, embarrassed. — Shelly Crane

I like young girls. Their stories are shorter. — Thomas McGuane

I'd grown up hearing stories about the special hazards that girls faced. I knew where the bodies were found: naked on beaches or cut into pieces, parts frozen in freezers or buried in cement. These stories were never kept from us girls. Instead they were spread around like ghost stories, our parents hoping that fear would do the job that our judgment might not. — Karen Thompson Walker

Roman ignored her and took her ankles and flipped them purposefully, but because of her hands she could not turn all the way and ended up with her legs scissored unintuitively, and suddenly things were different. Ashley had heard girls tell stories of getting into situations and changing their minds as though this made them victims of what happened next, like that was how it worked, that you got so far and it switched off just like that and they were not themselves to blame for being little sluts and cock teases in the first place. But now she understood: it was not like that. Changing your mind was not the thing that happened at all, what changed was your body telling you what was right and what was wrong and before now she had never known the way things can just like that go all wrong. — Brian McGreevy

It will take you long, lonely years, but one day you will grow tired. Tired of boys, tired of contempt, and then where will you be? All these girls around you with their stories and their lives, the solace of one another, and you will be as far away from them as an anthropologist among a foreign people, curious but unable to make contact. Have faith: you will learn. — Sarah McCarry

Cartoons for girls don't have to be a puddle of smooshy, cutesy-wootsy, goody-two-shoeness. Girls like stories with real conflict; girls are smart enough to understand complex plots; girls aren't as easily frightened as everyone seems to think. — Lauren Faust

His whole life he tried to make things better for poor children, but his real calling was being a father. It was a talent with him. As soon as our girls could sit up, he was wheeling them to the library and taking out books to read them bedtime stories. — Anita Diamant

Beautiful girls in fairy stories are as common as pebbles on the beach. Magnolia-skinned milkmaids rub shoulders with starry-eyed princesses and, in fact, counting two eyes in each bright-eyed damsel would result in a whole galaxy of twinkling stars. — Eloisa James

Female success stories from sporting events like the Olympic Games have played a role in shifting the Indian perception to see the female athlete as a hero and a role model for young Indian girls. — Richard Attias

You are not like other girls. You are not like other girls ("You are not like other girls," the boys you run with will tell you, and you will try not to let them see you preen under the glancing light of their approval). You learn their books and their language. You laugh at their jokes. You listen to their stories, sit blank-eyed on their couched while they play video games, pass them your English notes. You keep their secrets. You use the words they use about other girls in order to assure yourself that they will never use those words about you. You make yourself into nothingness, a ghost conjured into being only through the desires of boys, the rules of boys, the ideas of boys. You're not like other girls. — Sarah McCarry

Romance novels feature nuanced portrayals of female characters having adventures, making choices, and accepting themselves just as they are. When we say these stories are silly and unrealistic, we are telling young girls not to expect to be the heroines in their own real lives. — Maya Rodale

Many of the stories centered around me hunting bandits and rescuing young girls. But none of them came terribly close to the truth. No story can move a thousand miles by word of mouth and keep its shape. — Patrick Rothfuss

And while you and the rest of your kind are battling together - year after year - for this special privilege of being 'bored to death,' the 'real girl' that you're asking about, the marvelous girl, the girl with the big, beautiful, unspoken thoughts in her head, the girl with the big, brave, undone deeds in her heart, the girl that stories are made of, the girl whom you call 'improbable' - is moping off alone in some dark, cold corner - or sitting forlornly partnerless against the bleak wall of the ballroom - or hiding shyly up in the dressing-room - waiting to be discovered! — Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

I think 'Pretty Little Liars' is going to be hugely popular for adults, for kids, for girls, for guys, you know, something for everyone to look at, and the stories are going to be great. There's suspense every week. The friendship is really fun to watch. I think it's going to have something for everybody. — Laura Leighton

I can't just sit on my daughter's bed and just say 'n
' all night and then put her to sleep. I just ain't gonna do that ... I told the girls that these boys are racists, and they're not nice boys. But I think we can still enjoy the stories about the fishin' and the tradin'. — Louis C.K.

They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls, even Elinor. They've never seen a battle, they've never seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her fathers head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them. — George R R Martin

Then there were her childhood book: Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, What Katy did next, Pollyanna - stories about girls who were good. All Pollyanna had ever done wrong was ruin her parasol. Beth in Little Women was so perfect she was only fit for heaven. Why were girls in novels exemplary, almost saintly? Grace preferred adventure stories, histories and romances about what to do if you were damned and female, tales about women who were kind, likeable and believable, who escaped unpunished. No thin Quakers with lace caps. No beatific consumptives coughing delicately. No unloved, eternally jolly orphans. Grace craved books about girls like herself: good women, normal women in a world bigger and more powerful than themselves. — Wendy Jones

There should be people around, shouldn't there? Vimes was hazy on rural issues, but weren't there supposed to be charcoal burners, woodcutters, and ... he tried to think ... little girls taking goodies to granny? The stories Vimes had learned as a kid suggested that all forests were full of bustle, activity, and the occasional scream. But this place was silent. — Terry Pratchett

They flew off in Xavin's spaceship and I watched it until it faded away. It was so sad. But I hope wherever they are right now they are having some cool space adventures, and doing things that girls who like each other do. Like having sleepovers and telling ghost stories. — C.B. Cebulski

The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in the stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own. — Charles De Lint

My job title was youth advocate. My approach was unconditional positive regard. My mission was to help the girl youth succeed in spite of the unspeakably harrowing crap stew they'd been simmering in all of their lives. Succeeding in this context meant getting neither pregnant nor locked up before graduating high school. It meant eventually holding down a job at Taco Bell or Walmart. It was only that! It was such a small thing and yet it was enormous. It was like trying to push an eighteen-wheeler with your pinkie finger. I was not technically qualified to be a youth advocate. I'd never worked with youth or counseled anyone. I had degrees in neither education nor psychology. I'd been a waitress who wrote stories every chance I got for most of the preceding years. But for some reason, I wanted this job and so I talked my way into it. I wasn't meant to let the girls know I was — Cheryl Strayed

They do make love stories for girls with black hearts after all. They go like this. — Jandy Nelson

Women.
Lord God, I used to follow these girls.
THey would come at me, those girls who were not really girls anymore. Grown up, wounded, hurt and terrible. Pained and desperate. Mean and angry. Hungry and unable to say just what they needed. Scared, aching, they came into my bed like I could fix it. And every time I would try. I would do anything a woman wanted as long as she didn't want too much of me. As long as I could hide behind her need, I could make her believe anything. I would tell her stories. I would bury in them. I have buried more women than I am willing to admit. I have told more lies than I can stand. — Dorothy Allison

It's only that the answers in most stories are boring because they are supplied by the real world rather than, well, something better. Something more stimulating. Sit down with the Greeks and the Romans, and the boring answers get more interesting. Seasons because a girl and a crocus. Death because a girl and an apple. The moon because a girl keeps driving her daft chariot into the sea.
It's all down to girls, one way or another. — Catherynne M Valente

I just want to know...if I am special,' finished September, halfway between a whisper and a squeak. 'In stories, when someone appears in a poof of green clouds and asks a girl to go away on an adventure, it's because she's special, because she's smart and strong and can solve riddles and fight with swords and give really good speeches, and . . . I don't know that I'm any of those things. I don't even know that I'm as ill-tempered as all that. I'm not dull or anything, I know about geography and chess, and I can fix the boiler when my mother has to work. But what I mean to say is: Maybe you meant to go to another girl's house and let her ride on the Leopard. Maybe you didn't mean to choose me at all, because I'm not like storybook girls. I'm short and my father ran away with the army and I wouldn't even be able to keep a dog from eating a bird. — Catherynne M Valente

The girls with prettiest smiles seem to tell saddest stories — Demi Lovato

We all knew the stories. Djinn who fell in love with worthy princesses and gave them all of their hearts' wishes. Pretty girls who lured Nightmares straight onto men's blades. Brave merchants' daughters who caught Buraqi and rode them to the ends of the earth.

They were drawn to us, but also vulnerable to us. We could turn them into flesh and blood. — Alwyn Hamilton

I wish I could say I gulp pure courage as I run, like those brave little girls you read about in stories, ... But this burst of speed comes from an older adrenaline, some limbic other. Not courage, but a deeper terror. I don't want to be left alone. And I am ready to defend Ossie against whatever monster I encounter, ... and save her for myself. — Karen Russell

A high school teacher once told me that identity is half what we tell ourselves and half what we tell other people about ourselves. But the missing piece he didn't mention - the piece that holds so much weight, especially in the minds of young women and girls - is the stories that other people tell us about ourselves. — Jessica Valenti

There are so many stories about boys becoming heroes, learning their powers and becoming incredibly heroic. There have to be those stories for girls, too. — Cassandra Clare

I tell my story, not because its unique, but because its not, it is the story of many girls — Malala Yousafzai

He says this episode will be about grief. About helping other people to mourn. He says that my family's involvement could really help other people in similar situations. All those viewers who thought they lost a family member to a famous serial killer, then are told 36 years later that DNA from the crime scene matches both that of a retired nurse and a man who was four years old at the time and grew up to murder his mother, I think.
With less graciousness than I'd hoped to display, I ask if there's a reason why stories about the bizarre, violent deaths of young, good-looking, middle- to upper-class white girls help people mourn better than other stories. — Maggie Nelson

I hear all the time that boys don't like stories about girls. Which never made much sense to me. Wasn't 'Terminator' about a girl? And 'Alien'? Hell, I grew up on 'The Wizard of Oz.' People enjoy stories about anything if they're good stories. — Ted Naifeh

At least the girls in stories were alive before they died. — Francesca Lia Block

I've heard so many stories of young girls watching the Olympics and being inspired by it, and they want to do it now, and that's really cool. — Allyson Felix

My favorite book is The Mysterious Island. I order my books from a flimsy catalog the teacher hands out to every student in the class. Emil and the Detectives. White Fang. Like that. Money is tight for us, but when it comes to books my mother is a spendthrift; I can order as many as I like. I sit here day after day, waiting for my books to arrive. My books. It takes a month or more, but when they finally do, when the teacher opens the big box and passes out the orders to the kids, checking the books against a form taken from her desk, I glow with happiness. I've never had the newest dress, or the prettiest, but I always have the tallest stack of books. Little paperbacks that smell of wet ink. I lay my cheek against their cool covers, anticipating the stories inside, knowing all the other girls wonder what I could possibly want with those books. — Greg Iles

Words from my whole body, my entire life, or the lives of women and girls whose stories got stuck in their throats came gushing out. — Lidia Yuknavitch

Waited for my brother and didn't talk to anybody and nobody talked to her, because she'd always been one of those quiet, semi-retarded girls who you couldn't talk to without being dragged into a whirlpool of dumb stories. — Junot Diaz

Before Girls on Ice, mountains were just mountains. Valleys were just valleys. Now when I see them they're full of questions and stories. Girls on Ice encouraged a new kind of curiosity in me about things I would have thought boring before. Now I'm considering to pursue Geology after high school. Girls on Ice opened a door to new thoughts and interests for me to consider for my future. — Chloe Smith

I smoked my first pipe with Seth. I knew the stuff was bad, but I was so tired of being the cop, begging and ragging at him, throwing Pampers in his face when he walked in the door. I wanted to be on the same side again. So I smoked with Seth one afternoon when the girls were napping, and oh my God, I can only think about this for a minute or every part of me will turn into a mouth wanting more: the sexiness of it, fucking Seth like wild for the first time in months, going on even when the girls started to whimper and bang on the door. Then looking out the window and seeing the world shake itself to life: the heavy trees, the sky. And I was back on top. We were going to make it, Seth and I. The voice in my head was back again, telling me stories, too many to write down or even tell one from another. — Jennifer Egan

She's different from the girls I'm used to dating. She doesn't get tired of my stories and jokes or expect me to start reading her mind. She doesn't want me to dress better or put highlights in my hair or serious up. I'm not a lifestyle accessory to her. I'm a necessity. I'm the guy that's going to crack open her cocoon. She doesn't need to change me - she needs me to change her. At least until her little butterfly wings get strong enough to fly away. — Tim Tharp

Most of the girls I've met since moving here have failed to ignite any modicum of enduring interest. Of course, I've dated; I'm seventeen years old and as horny as the next guy. — Siobhan Davis

This world is bursting with silenced women and girls who have stories that need to be screamed, or whispered, or sang. — Rachel Kann

I love all the girls who have my song on their myspaces. I love the people who come to my shows and put the pictures on here. I love the people at those shows who sing along with me. I love reading your stories in emails, some so touching they've given me chills. I love every single person who has wanted my autograph, because for the life of me I never really thought it would mean something to someone for me to write my name down. I love the little girls who stand in line with their mothers like I used to do. That was me. I love the couple who danced to my song at their wedding. Every comment, letter, and message. I love people who listen to the radio. I love every single person who is reading this, because you've let me into your life.
I love you all so much, I just wanted you to know. — Taylor Swift

I notice young girls picking flowers off her gravestone; their clean hearts are soapstone. Their small sorrows are for children alone. And all of their stories will never be told. — Nicholaus Patnaude

He came back to us with stories of bedrooms filled with crumpled panties, of stuffed animals hugged to death by the passion of the girls, of a crucifix draped with a brassiere, of gauzy chambers of canopied beds, and of the effluvia of so many young girls becoming women together in the same cramped space. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else's. As a kid growing up with books and films and stories instead of friends, that was always the narrative injustice that upset me more than anything else. I felt it sometimes like a sharp pain under the ribcage, the kind of chest pain that lasts for minutes and hours and might be nothing at all or might mean you're slowly dying of something mundane and awful. It's a feeling that hit when I understood how few girls got to go on adventures. I started reading science fiction and fantasy long before Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, before mainstream female leads very occasionally got more at the end of the story than together with the protagonist. Sure, there were tomboys and bad girls, but they were freaks and were usually killed off or married off quickly. Lady hobbits didn't bring the ring to Mordor. They stayed at home in the shire. — Laurie Penny

When I had my girls, I knew what magic felt like for the first time. I had created people who didn't exist before. Now I write for the same reason. Creating people and their life's stories through my writing is as close to magic as I'll ever get again. — Dori Ann Dupre

One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes. — Scarlett Thomas

She looked at me like I was stupid, the same look the girls in JC used to give me when I hadn't heard of the latest boy band, or turned up at Zouk wearing unfashionable clothes. — Jeremy Tiang

While they read these stories, moreover - and this is a comforting thought for those who believe that the best way for anyone to become a lover of real literature is to be exposed to it early and often - boys and girls are not only gratifying their love for a
stirring tale, they are making the acquaintance of the great story-tellers of the past, taking them into their lives as companions. This early contact gives children an experience which will keep their horizon in after life from being entirely circumscribed by the mediocre and ephemeral. If a boy has sailed the wine dark Aegean, or climbed a height whence he could watch Roland's last heroic stand in the Pass of Roncevaux, some gleam remains, and there is far less likelihood that his adult reading will be entirely commonplace. — Anne Thaxter Eaton

The small lives of women don't make for good stories. That's why there were no girls in the stories Myrddin told, unless they were there as a prize for the hero to win at the end of his adventures. — Philip Reeve

the love
some girls
have for
other girls
is
so gentle
so soft
so fucking
beautiful,
these girls
deserve
to have
better stories
than the ones
where they
are murdered
because they love
with too much
of their
hearts.

-love is never a weakness. — Amanda Lovelace

Of all the stories our mother told us when we were girls, the story about Lenz and the snowflakes and the sky was our favorite. We were children ourselves; we empathized with a little boy's failure to understand an adult's message. We got why his misapprehension was cute and silly, but we also got why it was wonderful, why this was a glorious way to see the world; not reduced to one of its component colors, but broad and encompassing and mystical, and the whole thing revolving around little old you. — Judith Claire Mitchell

Bruno opened his eyes in wonder at the things he saw. In his imagination he had tough that all the huts were full of happy families, some of whom sat outside on rocking chairs in the evening and told stories about how things were so much better when they were children and they'd had nowadays. He thought that all the boys and girls who lived there would be in different groups, playing tennis or football, skipping and drawing out squares for hopscotch on the ground.
As it turned out, all the things he thought might be there-wern't.' -The boy in the striped Pajamas — John Boyne

Many strong girls have similar stories: They were socially isolated and lonely in adolescence. Smart girls are often the girls most rejected by peers. Their strength is a threat and they are punished for being different. Girls who are unattractive or who don't worry about their appearance are scorned. This isolation is often a blessing because it allows girls to develop a strong sense of self. Girls who are isolated emerge from adolescence more independent and self-sufficient than girls who have been accepted by others.
Strong girls may protect themselves by being quiet and guarded so that their rebellion is known by only a few trusted others. They may be cranky and irascible and keep critics at a distance so that only people who love them know what they are up to. They may have the knack of shrugging off the opinions of others or they may use humor to deflect the hostility that comes their way. — Mary Pipher

Margaret ... you must know that you could never change your own life. You are a girl: girls have no choice. You could never even choose your own husband: you are of the royal family. A husband would always have been chosen for you. It is forbidden for one of royal blood to marry their own choice. You know this too. And finally, you are of the House of Lancaster. You cannot choose your allegiance. You have to serve your house, your family, and your husband. I have allowed you to dream, and I have allowed you to read, but the time has come to put aside silly stories and silly dreams and do your duty. — Philippa Gregory

From Time for College - Mr. Chiardi & Other Stories

It was time for Junior to go to college. He'd sprouted pubic hair and was eyeing all the girls.
"I want to go to college," he said.
"Yes," I replied, "It's time."
His mother, my wife, was resigned to the fact that it was time for Junior to leave the nest. She sat on a stool at the granite kitchen counter, spiked coffee beside her, reading The New York Times. She looked almost real. — Rita Buckley Aka Charles Maxwell

On that day, in jungle hamlets and mountain villages, in cacophonous slums and sprawling refugee camps, on worn concrete floors and under roofs thatched of rice straw and banana leaves, in clay brick homes, on rutted, red dirt roads, and on scorching swaths of sand, children cried and screamed and sang and giggled and toddled and ran and fell and got back up and climbed on their mothers' laps and pulled their siblings' hair and gazed out in wonder at the big, bright world that swirled around them. Millions of boys and girls whose lives were reclaimed whose stories were allowed to continue, who were not mourned or grieved or buried, but instead were loved and held and fretted over and scolded and prepared for the challenges of living, of surviving, all because of a man they had never met and whose name they would likely never know. — Adam Fifield

He liked the girls, liked to hold them around the waist, felt like a man when he did. But as for talking with them, no, no! Then he felt as though he were dealing with another species of human being, in some cases a higher one, in others a lower. He secretly admired the weak, pale, little girl and had picked her to be his wife. That was still the only way he could think of a woman - as a wife. He danced in a very chaste and proper manner, but he heard awful stories about his pals, stories he didn't understand until later. They could dance the waltz backwards around the room in a very indecent way, and they told naughty stories about the girls. — August Strindberg

Two adolescent girls on a hot summer night
hardly the material of great literature, which tends to endow all male experience (that of those twin brothers who found themselves adrift so many years ago in the dark northern woods for instance) with universal radiance. Faithless sons, wars and typhoons, fields of blood, greed and knives: our literature's full of such stories. And yet suppose for an instant that it wasn't the complacent father but his bored daughter who was the Prime Mover; suppose that what came first wasn't an appetite for drama but the urge to awaken it. Mightn't we then permit a single summer in the lives of two bored girls to represent an essential stage in the history of the universe? — Kathryn Davis

My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And if you were found with a book, it was an automatic death penalty. She had gotten hold of a copy of 'Gone With the Wind', and she would take three or four hours out of her sleeping time each night to read. And then, during the hour or so when they were sewing the next day, she would tell them all the story. These girls were risking certain death for a story. And when she told me that story herself, it actually made what I do feel more important. Because giving people stories is not a luxury. It's actually one of the things that you live and die for. — Neil Gaiman

Part of me wanted to swoon into nothing, but the other women's bones were talking. I didn't see the bones but I knew they were there, under the house. The little runaway bones of skinny, hungry girls who didn't think they were worth much - anything - so they stayed after the party was over and let Derrick Blue tell them his stories. He probable didn't even have to use much force on most of them. — Francesca Lia Block

Cecilia looked for Isabel on the Year 6 balcony and saw her standing in between her best friends, Marie and Laura. The three girls had their arms slung around one another, indicating that their tumultuous three-way relationship was currently at a high point, where nobody was being ganged up on by the other two and their love for one another was pure and intense. It was lucky that there was no school for the next four days, because their intense times were inevitably followed by tears and betrayal and long, exhausting stories of she said, she texted, she posted and I said, I texted, I posted. — Liane Moriarty

If you spend any amount of time doing media analysis, it's clear that the most frenzied moral panic surrounding young women's sexuality comes from the mainstream media, which loves to report about how promiscuous girls are, whether they're acting up on spring break, getting caught topless on camera, or catching all kinds of STIs. Unsurprisingly, these types of articles and stories generally fail to mention that women are attending college at the highest rates in history, and that we're the majority of undergraduate and master's students. Well-educated and socially engaged women just don't make for good headlines, it seems. — Jessica Valenti

Eleanor Roosevelt loved to write. She was a wonderful child writer. I mean, she wrote beautiful essays and stories as a child. And Marie Souvestre really appreciated Eleanor Roosevelt's talents and encouraged her talents. Also, she spoke perfect French. She grew up speaking French. She's now at a french-speaking school where, you know, girls are coming from all over the world. Not everybody speaks French. — Blanche Wiesen Cook

He let go of the rope one hand at a time and latched onto Lisa's hands. Her fingernails dug into his wrists, but her grip was strong after a summer of lifting girls into the air. It was a tug of war battle between his friends and Shawn's ghost. The wind died down as Shawn gathered all of his energy to pull on Mike. Even though he was terrified of what was happening, Mike knew that Shawn wasn't trying to hurt him. After all these years, he was still trying to find a way out. Shawn wanted to go home too, and he saw the hope of being rescued falling away.
"Shawn! Please! Let me go!" Mike called over the dying wind, "I'll get you help! We'll get you out! Just please! Let me go!"

- Saving Hascal's Horrors — Laura Smith

I write simply because I hear voices of people in my head who won't give me peace until I convey their stories to the rest of the world. Seriously. They've always been with me. While other girls played with dolls, and my brothers with Hot Wheels, I was busy traveling through space or traipsing through graveyards with my imaginary playmates. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

In my stories I can kiss the girls I want to kiss and punch the girls I want to punch. Nobody pays a price for it. — Etgar Keret

Stories and cigarettes ruined lives of lesser girls. — Pete Yorn

For in Calormen, story-telling (whether the stories are true or made up) is a thing you're taught, just as English boys and girls are taught essay-writing. The difference is that people want to hear the stories, whereas I never heard of anyone who wanted to read the essays. — C.S. Lewis

So many of the models of courage we've had, ones that are still taught to boys and girls, are about going out to slay the dragon, to kill. It's a courage that's born out of fear, anger, and hate. But there's this other kind of courage. It's the courage to risk your life, not in war, not in battle, not out of fear ... but out of love and a sense of injustice that has to be challenged. It takes far more courage to challenge unjust authority without violence than it takes to kill all the monsters in all the stories told to children about the meaning of bravery. — Riane Eisler

My mother had raised me on a thousand stories of girls who were saved by the Djinn, princesses rescued from towers, peasant girls rescued from poverty.
Turned out, stories were just stories.
I was on my own. — Alwyn Hamilton

Due to the potent combination of my sexual recklessness and the slutty nature of some of the girls I have slept with, I have accumulated enough stories and anecdotes about abortion that they could name a Planned Parenthood clinic after me. — Tucker Max

I remember that there is no right answer. There are only stories to tell. Every day the world will tell my girls its story about sexiness and what it means to be a woman. My girls need to hear my story. Not so my story will become theirs, but so they'll understand that they are free to write their own stories. They need to know that much of what the world presents to them is not truth, it's poison. And my girls will only be able to detect lies if they know what truth sounds like. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I don't deserve a love story. Not anymore. Love stories aren't written for girls who could do what I just did to my brother, for girls with black hearts. — Jandy Nelson

Girls are important: Remember that very few stories are of great interest without the rustle of a skirt. — Jill Lepore

In stories told later, many boys would claim that the girls on Coffin Rock were decorated with chunks of raw turkey, soaked in poultry blood like the chick in fuckin' Carrie, but this was embellishment. — Joe Hill

There are two kind of men,' said Ka, in a didatic voice. 'The first kind does not fall in love until he's seen how the girls eats a sandwich, how she combs her hair, what sort of nonsense she cares about, why she's angry at her father, and what sort of stories people tell about her. The second type of man
and I am in this category
can fall in love with a woman only if he knows next to nothing about her. — Orhan Pamuk

I used to take my short stories to girls' homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her? — Ray Bradbury

A woman wants to be romanced. She wants to be an essential part of a great adventure; she wants a beauty to unveil. That is what little girls play at, and those are the movies women love and the stories that they love. — John Eldredge

These are not stories about girls getting what they want sexually, they are stories about girls gaining acclaim socially, for which their sexuality is a tool. — Ariel Levy