House Girls Quotes & Sayings

So ... why is your brother mean to girls?"
"Because," said Michael from the doorway, "I have three younger brothers who think it's hilarious to parade jailbait through here on a daily basis."
His tone was enough to make her glad she'd worn the pullover into the house. "No one told me there was a parade," she said acidly. "And here I forgot my banner. — Brigid Kemmerer

Red remembered growing up in that house as heaven. There were enough children on Bouton Road to form two baseball teams, when they felt like it, and they spent all their free time playing out of doors - boys and girls together, little ones and big ones. Suppers were brief, pesky interruptions foisted on them by their mothers. They disappeared again till they were called in for bed, and then they came protesting, all sweaty-faced and hot with grass blades sticking to them, begging for just another half hour. "I bet I can still name every kid on the block," Red would tell his own children. But that was not so impressive, because most of those kids had stayed on in the neighborhood as grown-ups, or at least come back to it later after trying out other, lesser places. Red — Anne Tyler

I'm so honored to be on this recording with Ann & Nancy Wilson. They are iconic and I've truly been one of their biggest fans since I was a kid. And what a perfect song to sing with them, since I adore Vince Gill and have been very proud for his commitment to his own musical vision. When we were recording at Nancy's house, and even though I'm friends with those girls now, I had to keep 'pinching' myself and marvel at how blessed my life is! It was a very PROUD moment for me. — Deana Carter

I think every parent knows that, like, boys and girls are different. And we just don't take that into account in schools on those things like required reading lists. 'Cause that was my experience, say, with my son, who had to read 'Little House on the Prairie' when he was in third grade. — Jon Scieszka

The first grade class gathered around the teacher for a game of Guess the Animal. The first picture the teacher held up was a cat. "Okay, boys and girls," she said brightly, "can anyone tell me what this is?" "I know! I know! It is a cat," yelled a little boy. "Very good, Eddy. Now who knows what this animal is called?" "That's a dog," piped up the same little boy. "Right again. And what about this animal?" she asked, holding up a picture of a deer. Silence fell over the class. After a minute or two the teacher said, "I will give you a hint, children, listen. It is something that your mother calls your father around the house." "I know! I know!" screamed Eddy. "It is a horny bastard!" A — Osho

He stepped back, away from her. He shook his head in disbelief. "You know, I shouldn't try to go out with career women. You're all stricken. A guy can really tell what life has done to you. I do better with women who have part-time jobs."

"Oh, yes?" said Zoe. She had once read an article entitled "Professional Women and the Demographics of Grief." Or no, it was a poem: If there were a lake, the moonlight would dance across it in conniptions. She remembered that line. But perhaps the title was "The Empty House: Aesthetics of Bareness." Or maybe "Space Gypsies: Girls in Academe." She had forgotten. — Lorrie Moore

The show is escapism. If you look back to when I was in college, all the girls in the sorority houses were gathered around watching soap operas. That was the escapism, the show that was giving you something you couldn't have. Now, you go into any sorority house, there are 50 to 100 girls piled in watching The Bachelor. We are the modern-day soap opera. — Chris Harrison

Where did you source your ingredients from?" one of them asked. "Are they local?" "Yeah," Pat said, "they're from the store about a mile from my house." One of the girls behind the table laughed. "Sorry," she said. — J. Ryan Stradal

For they were alone, and he was one of the seven persons in the world who knew the Archmage's name. The others were the Master Namer of Roke; and Ogion the Silent, the wizard of Re Albi, who long ago on the mountain of Gont had given Ged that name; and the White Lady of Gont, Tenar of the Ring; and a village wizard in Iffish called Vetch; and in Iffish again, a house-carpenter's wife, mother of three girls, ignorant of all sorcery but wise in other things, who was called Yarrow; and finally, on the other side of Earthsea, in the farthest west, two dragons: Orm Embar and Kalessin. — Ursula K. Le Guin

And so, as they climb the ladder of achievement, I'd simply say, remember what Barbara Bush told those girls at Wellesley: "What happens in your house is more important than what happens in the White House." — George H. W. Bush

A noble madiden must convery diginity and chstity wihotut appearing to think about either one. Let common-born girls tuddle in the hay with their loutish swains. the future of your familys bloodline and your furture lord's bloodline should be your grearest concern. Let no man but one of your family embrace you. Let no man but your betrothed kiss any more than your fingertips; let your betrothed kiss you only on fingers, cheek, or forhead, lest he think you unchaste. and enver allow yourself to be alone wiht a man, to safeguard the percioud jewel of your reputaiotn. No well-born maigen e vetr suffered form keeping her cuitors at arms length. You cbhastity will make you a prize to your future husbands house and an honor to your own.
- form adivce to younge noblewomen, by lady fronia of whitehall (in Maren). given to ally on her twelfth birhdya by her godmother, Queen Thayet, — Tamora Pierce

I know also another man who married a widow with several children; and when one of the girls had grown into her teens he insisted on marrying her also, having first by some means won her affections. The mother, however, was much opposed to this marriage, and finally gave up her husband entirely to her daughter; and to this very day the daughter bears children to her stepfather, living as wife in the same house with her mother! — T. B. H. Stenhouse

Wanita Young vs. Free Cookies Cookies will brighten up anybody's day - especially if they're being given away for free. At least, that's what two teenage girls thought when they surprised their neighbor with a plate of homemade cookies. But they were in for a surprise. The two girls, Lindsey Zellitti and Taylor Ostergaard, wanted to do something nice for their neighbors. So they went around their neighborhood, knocking on doors and leaving a small package of cookies in front of every door. When they got to 49-year-old Wanita Young's house, the sound of the girls knocking on the door apparently drove her into an anxiety attack, causing her to call the police who eventually took her to the hospital. After the girls apologized, and after they offered to pay her hospital bills, Young still decided to take them to court and sue them for $900 - and she actually won the case. — Jamie Frater

If feminism means anything at all, women with power should be addressing their energies to help the girls and women who suffer the pain of genital mutilation, who are at risk of being murdered because of their Western lifestyle and ideas, who must ask for permission just to leave the house, who are treated no better than serfs, branded and mutilated, traded without regard to their wishes. If you are a true feminist, these women should be your first priority. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Derek looked at Kylie and half chuckled. The last time I saw that look from girls, there was a handwritten note on my neighbor's tree house that read 'No boys allowed.' I'll see you. And if I get anything from my computer research, I'll let you know. — C.C. Hunter

It need hardly be said that the qualities which filled Martin with the pangs of hero-worship were not altogether those which David's parents would have most desired. If he had had to earn his living, David would have been a serious problem. But, owing to the ill-judged partiality of an aunt, he had been independent for some years. So he lived in town and had hankerings for the stage and the cinema and broadcasting, and every now and then his looks and his easy manners and his independent income landed him in a job, though not for long. And, as Martin had dimly surmised, heaps of girls had been in love with him. When the Leslies wished that David would settle down to a job and stick to it, they never failed to remind each other that the house would not be the same if David were not there so often. Mr — Angela Thirkell

Every evening the girls of the house gathered about me on the mats, and after chasing away Kory-Kory from my side - who nevertheless, retired only to a little distance and watched their proceedings with the most jealous attention - would anoint my whole body with a fragrant oil, squeezed from a yellow root, previously pounded between a couple of stones, and which in their language is denominated 'aka'. And most refreshing and agreeable are the juices of the 'aka', when applied to ones, limbs by the soft palms of sweet nymphs, whose bright eyes are beaming upon you with kindness; and I used to hail with delight the daily recurrence of this luxurious operation, in which I forgot all my troubles, and buried for the time every feeling of sorrow. Sometimes — Herman Melville

There are eight girls in the house in which I am living, and practically all of them are good looking. You can realize that I am kept busy. — Franz Schubert

Alonso paid one of the guards to keep him informed on what goes on in the house when he's not around. Alonso was in the guest house entertaining a few young girls all under the age of seventeen. He had been drugging and fucking them all — Nako

I would sink into the relief I felt from having friends like these girls. Smart. Patient. Good daughters and sisters. That's who I ran with. That being said, I still went through the young-girl rites of passage, including being kicked out of the group. Almost every girl goes through this weird living nightmare, where you show up at school and realize people have grown to hate you overnight. It's a Twilight Zone moment when you can't figure out what is real. It is a group mind-fuck of the highest kind, and it makes or breaks you. I got through it by keeping my head down, and a few weeks passed and all the girls liked me again. We all pretended it never happened. There should be manuals passed out to teach girls how to handle that inevitable one-week stretch when up is down and the best friend who just slept over at your house suddenly pulls your hair in front of everyone and laughs. — Amy Poehler

She read absorbedly books found in boarding-house parlours, in hotels, in such public libraries as the times afforded. She was alone for hours a day, daily. Frequently her father, fearful of loneliness for her, brought her an armful of books and she had an orgy, dipping and swooping about among them in a sort of gourmand's ecstasy of indecision. In this way, at fifteen, she knew the writings of Byron, Jane Austen, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Felicia Hemans. Not to speak of Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, Bertha M. Clay, and that good fairy of the scullery, the Fireside Companion, in whose pages factory girls and dukes were brought together as inevitably as steak and onions. These last were, of course, the result of Selina's mode of living, and were loaned to her by kind-hearted landladies, chambermaids, and waitresses all the way from California to New York. — Edna Ferber

As our boys and men are all expecting to be Presidents, so our girls and women must all hold themselves in readiness to preside inthe White House; and in no city in the world can honest industry be more at a discount than in this capital of the government of the people. — Jane Swisshelm

When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I'd wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car
See me. — Randall Jarrell

....one of those long, romantic novels, six hundred and fifty pages of small print, translated from French or German or Hungarian or something -- because few of the English ones have the exact feeling I mean. And you read one page of it or even one phrase of it, and then you gobble up all the rest and go about in a dream for weeks afterwards, for months afterwards -- perhaps all your life, who knows? -- surrounded by those six hundred and fifty pages, the houses, the streets, the snow, the river, the roses, the girls, the sun, the ladies' dresses and the gentlemen's voices, the old, wicked, hard-hearted women and the old, sad women, the waltz music -- everything. What is not there you put in afterwards, for it is alive, this book, and it grows in your head. 'The house I was living in when I read that book,' you think, or 'This colour reminds me of that book. — Jean Rhys

My friend Jonathan had a great tree house. It was awesome. It was like a big fort up in this tall magnolia tree ... That's where we would conduct our very important business, I'm sure, with all our bikes leaning up against a tree and no girls allowed, handling all sorts of important things you handle when you're seven or eight. — Eric Ladin

I won't allow magazines in the house. When I was younger, I wanted to have my hair cut like so-and-so in the class above me at school, not somebody in a magazine. You see young girls trying to dress like so-and-so because they've seen lots of pictures of them. — Kate Winslet

I'm kind of old-fashioned in a lot of ways. I prefer mano a mano. Even if you have two girls in the house, it's not like we're together all the time. But I need variety. — Charlie Sheen

There is no slave, after all, like a wife ... Poor women, poor slaves All married women, all children and girls who live in their father's house are slaves. — Mary Boykin Chesnut

Last night, I went to a birthday party, and this girl brought a cake and a cheesecake. And the other girls that lived in the apartment, I swear to God, all night long: 'You're taking that cake with you when you go. That cake's not staying in this house.' Like it's this evil, Hope Diamond, nuclear, horrifying cursed thing. — Janeane Garofalo

I knew it. You're an alien," said her former best friend, the pale, bespectacled creature with the spectacular cleavage.
"Yes, I'm an alien and I still made cheerleader. And now I'm going to steal your boyfriend to prove girls can't really be friends."
"I sat back timidly when you torched my house, killed my parents, and ate my dog. But now you're stealing my boyfriend? That's a step too far! — Libba Bray

don't you dare, for one minute,
believe that my kindness makes me
anything but insurmountable.
i did not unzip my chest to every kind of hurt,
and stagger back, wounded and alive,
just to hear you call me weak for trying.
i opened my door to heartache -
i gave her the fucking key.
my softness for wayward strangers
has made me nothing less
than a halfway house for aching soles.
so when you open your mouth
and call me 'baby'
understand that i am not your next victim
in a laundry list of broken girls.
you think i don't know you? people like you?
people with mouths for hands.
i've got skin like topsoil
and your teeth could never take root.
so when you go looking to make a plaything
of a sunburst,
you better look for someone with less fire
than me.
because softness or no,
i will eat you alive
before i let you make a meal of me. — Ashe Vernon

With two teenagers in the house, we sometimes experience a degree of domestic turbulence that sounds, to my ear, like a boiling teakettle filled with hormones shrieking on a stove. — Roland Merullo

With girls house bristles with suspicion and frigidity; how much is paranoia transference? The damnable thing is that they can sense insecurity and meaness like animals smell blood. — Sylvia Plath

Remember when I was a kid and Jack Kennedy had little kids in the White House. Are your daughters taken by the fact that there are young girls in the White House? Yeah, but you've got to remember, they're so young. Zahra was 4 when Obama was nominated. So as far as they're concerned, there have always been little black girls in the White House. — Anonymous

Near the gardens, Pei stopped and caught her breath. She liked sweet-voiced Song Lee and hoped for the best in dealing with the other sisters, but Pei rememered all too well the different personalities that had affected her life, first at the girls' house, then at the silk factory and sisters' house. Dealing with so many people was often like playing a game of chess. There were so many pieces, all moving in different directions. It was always wise to guard all sides against capture. — Gail Tsukiyama

In life, (the fashion world) is full of sharks. In this world the young girls lose themselves; become the property of others, live but for the job and their craziness ... they don't know anymore where their home is. Many take drugs. It's strange. Perhaps the girls understand that this does not work for me. I don't have many friendships with other models. I respect them and enjoy working with them, but I probably would not invite them into my home. My house is like my heart, and I open it only to those with whom I have a close relationship. — Laetitia Casta

We're gonna do it like George Foreman. We're gonna name all of our kids Mariah no matter if they're boys or girls. Mariah No. 1, Boy Mariah, Man Mariah, Tall Mariah. It's gonna be a house full of people named Mariah. — Nick Cannon

You put three girls in a house, and all of a sudden before you know it, you're talking about boys and drinking whiskey, and things go down and you get deep real quick. — Katie Aselton

Wow,Cal," I said, feeling a little bit like myself for the first time since I'd walked into this crazy house. "You will be able to have some awesome slumber parties in here.All of the other girls are gonna be so jealous."
Cal shot me a half smile, and I felt some of the weird-ness between us dissipate. "It's not so bad," he said. Then he flopped down on the bed, only to sink out of sight in the middle of it. As Cal drowned in a sea of fluffy coverlets and throw pillows, I couldn't help but crack up.
Lara looked offended. "That bed originally belonged to the third Duke of Cornwall."
"It's great," Cal said, his voice muffled. He gave her the thumbs-up, which only made me and Jenna laugh harder. — Rachel Hawkins

I didn't see Danny come in or run towards me. He was just suddenly there, pulling me up by my arm so hard that I gasped. I felt his grip on my skin long after he let go. We ran down the steps where Mom met us, coughing. She was followed by a thick black cloud of smoke. I had never felt smoke that hot in my life. I tasted ash when I breathed in.
"Go! Get out!" she choked, waving us towards the front door.
We ran out into the night in our pajamas.
"Run to Violet's!" Mom called behind us.

- The Stable House — Laura Smith

The doctor was a frequent visitor at Miss Trumball's establishment, preferring it to the Lanchester house, whose girls had a saturnine disposition in his opinion, as if imported from Maine or other gloom-loving provinces. — Colson Whitehead

Some daughter of one of the gentry planters, perhaps? Those girls had the domestic virtues. But - he was comfortable enough with his good servants at Fairfield House. His yearnings had little relation to somebody to preside over his household. Somehow, to Cornelis, these young ladies of the planter gentry were not alluring, vital. The most attractive of them, Honoria Macartney, he could hardly imagine beside him perpetually. Honoria had the dead-white skin of the Caucasian creole lady whose face has been screened from the sun since infancy.

("Sweet Grass") — Henry S. Whitehead

Although security and warfare had never been my gig, vampire security was highly contextual and thus incredibly interesting. There were links to history (Vampires were screwed over yesterday!) and politics (House X screwed us over yesterday!), philosophy (Why do you think they screwed us over yesterday?) and ethics (If we didn't bite, would they have screwed us over yesterday?), and, of course, strategy (How did they screw us over? How can we keep them from screwing us over again or, better yet, screw them over first?). — Chloe Neill

The will of little girls is stifled by Islam. By the time they menstruate they are rendered voiceless. They are reared to become submissive robots who serve in the house as cleaners and cooks. They are required to comply with their father's choice of a mate, and after the wedding their lives are devoted to the sexual pleasures of their husband and to a life of childbearing. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Protestant parents still keep a Bible handy in the house, so that the children can study it, and one of the first things the little boys and girls learn is to be righteous and holy and not piss against the wall. They study those passages more than they study any others, except those which incite to masturbation. Those they hunt out and study in private. — Mark Twain

I went to state in track, won the girls' city championship, and did well in volleyball. I was a varsity cheerleader. So you know, shoot, I've got a couple of letters and things! Last I counted, I think there were eight in my mama's house. — Vivica A. Fox

Right. I look fine. Except I don't,' said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman's magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki's knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies
it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it. — Zadie Smith

Girls like Diana Spencer, armed with nothing more than a guinea-pig-rearing certificate, proud to say in that old Sloane way that she was 'as thick as two short planks,' became the exception as girls from Benenden and Downe House started to fast-track towards the City and law, consultancy, media and the arts. — Peter York

We need women who are at the head of a boardroom, like at the head of the White House, at the head of kind of major scientific enterprises so that little girls everywhere can then think, you know what? I can do that, I want to do that, I will do that. — Chelsea Clinton

By the brook she came suddenly upon Rosemary West, who was sitting on the old pine tree. She was on her way home from Ingleside, where she had been giving the girls their music lesson. She had been lingering in Rainbow Valley quite a little time, looking across its white beauty and roaming some by-ways of dream. Judging from the expression of her face, her thoughts were pleasant ones. Perhaps the faint, occasional tinkle from the bells on the Tree Lovers brought the little lurking smile to her lips. Or perhaps it was occasioned by the consciousness that John Meredith seldom failed to spend Monday evening in the gray house on the white wind-swept hill. — L.M. Montgomery

She's had nothing but love in this house. It's our toxic, sexist, over-sexed society. Girls are falling apart all over the place. It's the corporates." "Huh?" "The way they've cheapened and degraded sex." "Isn't that our fault too? We're the ones who threw off our tops and danced around maypoles in the People's Park." Drop the hypocrisy, we'd cried. Make love not war. Let it blossom, let it flow. Oh innocent us. — Orna Ross

She takes hold of his hands. As they move together, Rolph feels his self-consciousness miraculously fade, as if he is growing up right there on the dance floor, becoming a boy who dances with girls like his sister. Charlie feels it, too. In fact, this particular memory is one she'll return to again and again, for the rest of her life, long after Rolph has shot himself in the head in their father's house at twenty eight: her brother as a boy, hair slicked flat, eyes sparking, shyly learning to dance. — Jennifer Egan

For his part, Jazz knew he was handsome. It had nothing to do with looking in the mirror, which he rarely did. It had everything to do with the way the girls at school looked at him, the way they became satellites when he walked by, their orbits contorted by his own mysterious gravity. If attention could be measured like the Doppler effect, girls would show a massive blue shift in his presence. In the last year or so, he had even remarked the scrutiny of older women - teachers, cashiers at stores, the woman who delivered UPS packages to his house. What had once been a maternal flavor in their glances had taken on a lingering, cool sort of appraisal. He could almost hear them thinking, Not yet. But soon.
Despite his upbringing, despite the infamy of his father, they still watched him. Or maybe because of it. Maybe Howie was right about bad boys. — Barry Lyga

I had heard this dog barking over the music earlier, but this was the first time I had seen him. He was a giant, brown Great Dane who was either annoyed or excited by everything that was going on. He made a beeline for the girls who had just stepped back onto the sidewalk. Ruby was the first of them to spot him coming at them and began to scream and run backwards. The rest of the group froze in place. The dog was barking like crazy as it charged at them. He circled Ruby once and then pounced on her. Ruby screamed and swatted at the dog with her bucket and then took off down the sidewalk.
"Ruby!" I screamed, "Don't run!"

- The Stable House — Laura Smith

Being the father of girls is a kind of illness, in its own way - since any guy who has tried to live in a house with a wife and two daughters is, without any doubt, going to go certifiably nuts. — Steve Schirripa

They've been lying from the start. From the first time we read the words 'once upon a time,' we're fed the idea that these girls - these gorgeous, demure, singing-with-the-wildlife girls - get a happy ending. And I get it. Poor thing had to do some chores around the house, fine. But the idea that she needs a magic old lady to come down and skim off the dirt so the prince will see her beauty? That's ridiculous. Maybe she should have been working on her lockpicking skills instead of serenading squirrels. She could have busted out, hitched a ride to the castle, and impressed the prince with her safe-cracking prowess. Sorry, magic-fairy lady. She didn't need your help. — Kelsey Macke

I was so lucky. I was very broke and I was taking classes at Lee Strasberg's Institute and I saw a 3 X 5 index card on the bulletin board advertising for college-aged girls for a film. That was Animal House. — Karen Allen

[T]he House of Maidens was for little girls whose whole duty in life was to spill things, break things, and forget things ... until they had spilled, broken, and forgotten everything they could, and thus made room in their lives for a little wisdom. — Marion Zimmer Bradley

A girl is supposed to be ecstatic on her wedding day. According to tradition, getting married is what we live for. Hope your wedding day is soon, they say. To young girls even, barely ten years old. May we all celebrate your wedding day. What did it feel like for her, though? She waits at her father's house, all dressed up in white. The men in her family all proud, happy, one less mouth to feed, one less honor to defend. — Rabih Alameddine

The day, a compunctious Sunday after a week of blizzards, had been part jewel, part mud. In the midst of my usual afternoon stroll through the small hilly town attached to the girls' college where I taught French literature, I had stopped to watch a family of brilliant icicles drip-dripping from the eaves of a frame house. So clear-cut were their pointed shadows on the white boards behind them that I was sure the shadows of the falling drops should be visible too. But they were not. ("The Vane Sisters") — Vladimir Nabokov

Why do old houses creak so much?" he asked idly, playing with her braid and drawing the silky end across her cheek.
"When all the warmth fades at night, it makes the old boards contract and slip against each other."
"A bloody massive house, it is. And you were left to your own devices in this place for too long. I didn't understand before, how alone you were."
"I had the twins for company. I watched over them."
"But there was no one to watch over you."
A sense of uneasiness came over her, as it always did whenever she reflected on her childhood. It had seemed as if her very survival had depended on never complaining or drawing attention to herself. "Oh I- I didn't need that."
"All little girls need to feel safe and wanted. — Lisa Kleypas

I got a house full of Rembrandts and priceless art, and all the little girls they wanna tear me apart. — Bruce Springsteen

I would have been an excellent member of the Brady Bunch. I would have been Shaun, the well-behaved blond boy who caused no trouble and helped Alice in the kitchen, then trimmed the split ends off Marcia's hair. I would have not only washed Tiger, but then conditioned his fur. And I would have cautioned Jan against that tacky bracelet that caused the girls to lose the house-of-cards-building contest. * — Augusten Burroughs

Abby must have been the one who found the safe house, because Townsend didn't like it.
"The building across the street is under construction," he snarled as soon as we'd carried our bags inside.
"The elevator has key card access, and I've hacked into the surveillance cameras from every system on the block," Abby argued. "We have a three-hundred-sixty-degree visual."
"Excellent." Townsend dropped his bag. "Now the circle can see us from every angle."
"Don't mind Agent Townsend, girls," Abby told us. "He's a glass-half-empty kind of spy."
"Also known as the good kind," he countered.
Abby huffed. — Ally Carter

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

We were in production on a movie called All the Real Girls, which filmed in the Fall of 2001, and we really discovered who Danny McBride was, as an actor. When I say we, I mean me and a crew and a small audience that would hit the art house. He'd never acted before, and it was a really refreshing, eye-opening experience to watch him unleash, in front of the camera, all this comedic potential that we knew he had, as a human being and as the guy doing keg-stands at the party. — David Gordon Green

But even in September, Thursday was a big money night, seven to eight hundred take-home, and that's what April concentrated on as she drove, Franny's chin starting to loll against her chest - April made herself think of that fat roll of tens and twenties she'd have at closing, how she'd fold it into the front pocket of her jeans then go to the house mom's office off the dressing room and give Tina a hundred before she found Franny in her pj's on Tina's brown vinyl couch, and she'd try not to think of the walls above Tina's desk covered with dancers' schedules and audition Polaroids of naked women, some of them under postcards from girls who came and went. — Andre Dubus III

When my mother was trying to teach me how to make friends when I was a kid, she'd bring girls over to the house and I'd give them all my clothes. Nothing changes, I still do it. And then I wonder, "Where is that really nice Isabel Marant dress that I spent a fortune on? Oh my god, I gave it to Liza." — Courtney Love

It had been in a Paris house, with many people around, and my dear friend Jules Darboux, wishing to do me a refined aesthetic favor, had touched my sleeve and said, "I want you to meet-" and led me to Nina, who sat in the corner of a couch, her body folded Z-wise, with an ashtray at her heel, and she took a long turquoise cigarette holder from her lips and joyfully, slowly exclaimed, "Well, of all people-" and then all evening my heart felt like breaking, as I passed from group to group with a sticky glass in my fist, now and then looking at her from a distance (she did not look ... ), and listening to scraps of conversation, and overheard one man saying to another, "Funny, how they all smell alike, burnt leaf through whatever perfume they use, those angular dark-haired girls," and as it often happens, a trivial remark related to some unknown topic coiled and clung to one's own intimate recollection, a parasite of its sadness. — Vladimir Nabokov

As long as Nelson was socked into baseball statistics or that guitar or even the rock records that threaded their sound through all the fibers of the house, his occupation of the room down the hall was no more uncomfortable than the persistence of Rabbit's own childhood in an annex of his brain; but when the stuff with hormones and girls and cars and beers began, Harry wanted out of fatherhood. — John Updike

For my writing, and because I love talking to young women about life, I often asked them which would they rather have - a father in the house with them while growing up or a big butt? I tell you 86 percent of the time, girls say a big butt because it gets them further. — Jill Scott

That said, pointing out inaccurate or unrealistic portrayals of women to younger grade school children-ages five to eight-does seem to be effective, when done judiciously:taking to little girls about body image and dieting, for example, can actually introduce them to disordered behavior rather than inoculating them against it. I may be taking a bit of a leap here, but to me all this indicated that if you are creeped out about the characters fromMonster High, it is fine to keep them out of your house. — Peggy Orenstein

If they lived in Saudi Arabia, under Shari'a law, these college girls in their pretty scarves wouldn't be free to study, to work, to drive, to walk around. In Saudi Arabia girls their age and younger are confined, are forced to marry, and if they have sex outside of marriage they are sentenced to prison and flogged. According to the Quran, their husband is permitted to beat them and decide whether they may work or even leave the house; he may marry other women without seeking their approval, and if he chooses to divorce them, they have no right to resist or to keep custody of their children. Doesn't this matter at all to these clever young Muslim girls in America? — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Like many people, I consider myself an incurable romantic, and there is a part of me that will always believe in walking off into the sunset to live happily ever after. When I was younger, like many children, I assumed I would get married, live in a nice house, and have a couple of kids. I also assumed this very traditional achievement would bring me endless happiness and romance. So much so, that during my college years I considered girls engaged by graduation to be the epitome of success. Perhaps needless to say, I was not one of those girls. — Robi Ludwig

I'd like a stocking made for a giant, And a meeting house full of toys, Then I'd go out in a happy hunt For the poor little girls and boys; Up the street and down the street, And across and over the town, I'd search and find them everyone, Before the sun went down. — Eugene Field

A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

Henri said our names were fitting because we were destined to be together in our old age, like our great-great-aunts. Two gray old ladies in the bodies of teenage girls. Someday we'd live in a big house with faded curtains, a dozen or so cats, and a handful of our marbles long ago lost. On all accounts - our destiny, her clairvoyance, and our soon-to-be missing marbles - I believed her. — Jessica Taylor

Growing up in a house of five girls, I couldn't help but glance at a fashion magazine or two. — Karlie Kloss

Really, I'm the type of girl, and I know other girls who are the types of girls who it's not about the chain, it's not about the car, not about the house or this, that, and the other that you think are impressing me. It's really the intellect. It's really stimulating my mind. — Keri Hilson

Swirling furiously among the stairs and corridors of her exquisite home like a small and angry white bat Sybilla, Dowager Lady Culter, was not above spitting at her unfortunate son when he chose to sit down in his own great hall to take his boots off. 'If Madge Mumblecrust comes down those stairs once again for a morsel of fowl's liver with ginger, or pressed meats with almond-milk, I shall retire to a little wicker house in the forest and cast spells which will sink Venice into the sea for ever, and Madame Donati with it. The Church,' said Sybilla definitely, 'should excommunicate girls who do not replace lids on sticky jars and wash their hair every day with the best towels. — Dorothy Dunnett

Jackson blinked again, almost at a loss for words as he ignored the mini Cooper reference, a term the girls loved and had begun calling their offspring. Having four women all entering the second trimester of their pregnancy at the same time was just about killing the brothers. How the hell had he become part of this? He wasn't married to any of them, and yet now he was the peanut butter bearer. Hell. "Four ... four types of peanut butter?" Jackson asked. "Yes. Four. I'm alone in the house with four pregnant women who all want peanut butter of their own choosing. For the love of God, help me." The panic in his brother's voice made Jackson smile. Matt had the pre-daddy jitters. In fact, all his brothers did. — Carrie Ann Ryan

When I was writing The Shadow of the Glen I got more aid than any learning could have given me from a chink in the floor of the old Wicklow house where I was staying, that let me hear what was being said by the servent girls in the kitchen. — John Millington Synge

Girls ... were allowed to play in the house ... and boys were sent outdoors ... Boys ran around in the yard with toy guns going kksshh-kksshh, fighting wars for made-up reasons and arguing about who was dead, while girls stayed inside and played with dolls, creating complex family groups and learning how to solve problems through negotiation and roleplaying. Which gender is better equipped, on the whole, to live an adult life, would you guess? — Garrison Keillor

It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Your culture has become sophisticated, like a computer, or a drug that you take for a headache. You can use it, but you cannot explain how it works. Certainly not to girls who stack up their firewood against the side of the house. — Chris Cleave

It is not a Christmas tree!" said the King, so firmly that all the girls stopped jumping about. "This is a house of mourning. It is nothing more than a tree. I thought it would look nice. Inside. That is all. — Heather Dixon

But I had to keep my hands under the desk - my fists under the desk, I should say. The White House, that whole criminal mob, those arrogant goons who see themselves as justified to operate above the law - they disgrace democracy by claiming that what they do they do for democracy! They should be in jail. They should be in Hollywood! I know that some of the girls have told their parents that I deliver "ranting lectures" to them about the United States; some — John Irving

chewing gum, particularly peppermint chewing gum, which they were allergic to, but they ran to the pots. Violet picked one up and Sunny picked up the other, while Klaus hurriedly made the beds. "Give them to me," Foreman Flacutono snapped, and grabbed the pots out of the girls' hands. "Now, workers, we've wasted enough time already. To the mills! Logs are waiting for us!" "I hate log days," one of the employees grumbled, but everyone followed Foreman Flacutono out of the dormitory and across the dirt-floored courtyard to the lumbermill, which was a dull gray building with many smokestacks sticking out of the top like a porcupine's quills. The three children looked at one another worriedly. Except for one summer day, back when their parents were still alive, when the Baudelaires had opened a lemonade stand in front of their house, the orphans had never had jobs, and they were nervous. The Baudelaires followed Foreman Flacutono into the — Lemony Snicket

It was a different social structure. I'd go to [David] Bailey's for dinner at 10:30. There were always girls there and a house full of ... I don't know, anybody. Cecil Beaton, Diana Cooper ... And there I am sitting down with these creatures of the 20th century, and it was normal to us. — Manolo Blahnik

Mary had become anxious in her old age, and she hated being away from the house for long. She'd hold the girls' hands tightly and calm herself by telling them what she would make for first frost that year- pork tenderloins with nasturtiums, dill potatoes, pumpkin bread, chicory coffee. And the cupcakes, of course, with all different frostings, because what was first frost without frosting? Claire had loved it all, but Sydney had only listened when their grandmother talked of frosting. Caramel, rosewater-pistachio, chocolate almond. — Sarah Addison Allen

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

Elizabeth Taylor has a big heart. She recently built a halfway house for girls who don't want to go all the way. — Red Buttons

Here were shadows on the window blinds of guests assembling, and there a group of pretty girls, hooded and Ugg-booted and all chattering at once, tripping off lightly to some near neighbor's house where woe would befall the single guy who saw them enter - they were artful witches, and they knew it. — David Levithan

I have six kids - four girls and two boys. I'm amazed that growing up in the same house, same parents with the same exposure to the same things that all my six kids can be so different. I see that as their (being) designed by God. — Alex Kendrick

It was the first time I discovered that some girls actually sneak out of the house during slumber parties and meet up with boys. I would've never known if I hadn't gone to the bathroom at midnight and caught Macy and Adrienne climbing through the bathroom window. They had on eyeliner, perfume, and cut-off shorts. Their only goodbye a glare that promised retribution if I didn't keep my mouth shut. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Dombey and Son had often dealt in hides, but never in hearts. They left that fancy ware to boys and girls, and boarding-schools and books. Mr. Dombey would have reasoned: That a matrimonial alliance with himself must, in the nature of things, be gratifying and honourable to any woman of common sense. That the hope of giving birth to a new partner in such a house, could not fail to awaken a glorious and stirring ambition in the breast of the least ambitious of her sex. — Charles Dickens

I've got six brothers, so I grew up with all boys, then I moved in with three girls, and the differences were incredible. Living in a very feminine house threw me a bit. The bathroom was unbelievable; it was like a chemist's. — Kimberley Nixon

I'd sneak out of the house to meet girls at 3:30 a.m. — Aidan Quinn

And our footsteps rang and echoed till it sounded like the room was full of dancers, the house calling up all the people who had danced here across centuries of spring evenings, gallant girls seeing gallant boys off to war, old men and women straight-backed while outside their world disintegrated and the new one battered at their doors, all of them bruised and all of them laughing, welcoming us into their long lineage. — Tana French

A noble maiden must convey dignity and chastity without appearing to think about either one. Let common-born girls tussle in the hay with their loutish swains. The future of your family's bloodline and your future lord's bloodline should be your greatest concern. Let no man but one of your family embrace you. Let no man but your betrothed kiss any more than your fingertips; let your betrothed kiss you only on fingers, cheek, or forehead, lest he think you unchaste. And never allow yourself to be alone with a man, to safeguard the precious jewel of you reputation. No well-born maiden ever suffered from keeping her suitors at arm's length. Your chastity will make you a prize to you future husband's house and an honor to your own."
- form Advice to a Young Noblewoman, by Lady Fronia of Whitehall (in Maren) given to Ally on her twelfth birthday by her godmother, Queen Thayet — Tamora Pierce