Ramona Quotes & Sayings

You've been following me around."
"No", he denied, without flinching.
"Gosh", I scoffed, "I had no idea the woods were rigged with TV cameras. My bad."
One of the corners of his mouth twitched. — Ramona Wray

Some things are just simply not meant to be. — Ramona Matta

Don't hesitate to tell your friends how much you love them. Sometimes they are in need to hear you say it. — Ramona Matta

I thought you told me Jimmy Jimmereeeno was run over and killed."
"What?"
"You heard me," Eloise said. "Why are you sleeping way over here?"
"Because," said Ramona.
"Because why? Ramona, I don't feel like
"
"Because I don't want to hurt Mickey."
"Who?"
"Mickey," said Ramona, rubbing her nose. "Mickey Mickeranno. — J.D. Salinger

He lowered his mouth to mine anyway, close enough that our lips almost brushed for a millisecond before his glided across my cheek, his breath laying a fiery trail from the corner of my mouth to my ear.
"I'm not going to kiss you, Lily," he whispered. "I'm patient. I'll wait until you want it bad enough."
[...]
"You'll be asking for it soon," he added. "No hesitation. — Ramona Wray

It doesn't always make sense, how you go about loving someone. Sometimes loving means gathering them back, sometimes it means sending them away. — Ramona Ausubel

The idea that I'm someone's best friend fills my rib cage with summer. — Julie Murphy

unless one bought her way out of it, motherhood was a small room with high walls and no door. — Ramona Ausubel

I will survive, because I have survived. — Julie Murphy

You are like a shell," he said. "A seashell. Hollow but beautiful."
"Hollow." She nodded.
For the rest of the day, they sat not far from each other, gazing out the window at the light shifting almost imperceptibly. They sat about and let themselves be objects on which dust might settle, air might past, light could play.
"I am just an emptiness," she said.
"No," he told her. "You are a resting place. — Ramona Ausubel

Before I knew it, my daily schedule had started to look a lot like this:

Monday: Woke up, thought of Ryder; went to school, stared at Ryder; had lunch with J, gaped at Ryder; went to PE, brooded over Ryder's absence; went home, thought of Ryder; took a drive "accidentally" passing by Dave's Garage, spied on Ryder; came home, thought of Ryder; had dinner, no appetite due to lack-of Ryder; went to bed, tossed and turned thinking about Ryder.
Tuesday: See above, with minor adjustments.
Wednesday: Ryder wasn't in school, my world collapsed
Thursday: Same as Monday and Tuesday
Friday: See above.
Saturday: Nightmarishly long, boring. Drove by Dave's Garage twice, hoping to see Ryder.
Sunday: See above, minus the drive-by. But, yay, tomorrow I'll see Ryder in school! God bless Mondays. — Ramona Wray

Mephistopheles' contentious, often ambiguous relationship to Faustus is a reference to tantra just as it is to alchemy. It resembles the shifting tactics of a guru who varies his approach to his pupil in order to dissolve his resistances and prepare him for wider states of consciousness. Both Faustus and the tantric aspirant stimulate and indulge their senses under the guidance of their teachers who encourage them to have sexual encounters with women in their dreams. Both work with magical diagrams or yantras, exhibit extraordinary will, "fly" on visionary journeys, acquire powers of teleportation, invisibility, prophecy, and healing, and have ritual intercourse with women whom they visualize as goddesses. The tantrist [sic] is said to become omniscient as a result of his sacred "marriage," and Faustus produces an omniscient child in his union with the visualized Helen, or Sophia. — Ramona Fradon

But undying memories stood like sentinels in her breast. When the notes of doves, calling to each other, fell on her ear, her eyes sought the sky, and she heard a voice saying, Majella! — Helen Hunt Jackson

His hair was think and curly and reddish-brown, his eyes a clear ice blue; Ramona had told him many times that she could see the sky in them, clouds when he was angry and rain when he was sad. Now, if she had looked into his eyes closely enough, she might've seen the approaching storm. — Robert McCammon

I feel ill with emotional indigestion: I don't think I've ever felt for Mo the kind of raw, priapic lust I feel for Ramona, but Ramona is a poisonous bloom - off-limits if I value my life. — Charles Stross

The privilege of money, as Edgar's parents saw it, was that you could get yourself into the great wild beauty - the thousand-meter-deep sea, the wide open West, an island inhabited mostly by dangerous animals, and feel alive and real - and then come over the crest of the hill and have someone meet you with a silver tray containing fresh fruit, aged scotch, a cold towel for your hands, and show you to a seat with a perfect view from which to tell the story of your adventure. — Ramona Ausubel

The children always needed Fern to be a different kind of mother than she had been the week before. They exhausted her and she longed for a break and then she missed them acutely the moment they were out of sight - that was the truth of motherhood. — Ramona Ausubel

He looked like someone trying to sell something for less than it was worth. — Ramona Ausubel

I did get a nice compliment from Ramona Fradon a few years ago.She was talking about the one and only Plastic Man comic that I inked for her for DC and she said it was the only time that she'd ever had anyone ink her. Everyone else put in their own personality and changed it. In fact, bless her heart, she said if she were still doing Brenda Starr, she'd have me ink it. — Mike Royer

Life is effortful," said Mac. "That's the way it's supposed to be. It's good to have work to do. — Ramona Ausubel

Say, who is this Mr. King?" "What Mr. King?" asked Ramona, walking into his trap. "Nosmo King, — Beverly Cleary

Mother," said Ramona urgently. This time she stepped into the hall. "Unless we get a ladder (Go back to your room, Ramona) and break the window so we can unlock it," Mother continued, speaking with one sentence inside another, the way grown-ups so often did with Ramona around. "But Mother," insisted Ramona even more urgently. "I have to - " "Oh, dear, I might have known," sighed Mother. — Beverly Cleary

Ramona could not understand why grown-ups always talked about how quickly children grew up. Ramona thought growing up was the slowest thing there was, slower even than waiting for Christmas to come.
She had been waiting years just to get to kindergarten, and the last half hour was the slowest part of all. — Beverly Cleary

The moment we were in was a hinge - the past swung on one side, the future on the other. — Ramona Ausubel

Didn't the people who made those license plates care about little girls named Ramona? — Beverly Cleary

Not only does art imitate life but life imitates art. Perhaps we not only learn about life from stories, perhaps we make our lives through the stories we tell ourselves about the things that happen to us. — Ramona Koval

There should be a word for this happiness, she thought. The happiness of nothing extra. — Ramona Ausubel

The only true thing is what's in front of you right now. — Ramona Ausubel

It was disconcerting for the novel to seem so different when I re-read it. Of course we are a different person each time we open a book to read it again; we can never really experience it in the same way, just as we can never step into the same stream twice. — Ramona Koval

The rainy winter days passed quickly. Thanksgiving came and not long afterward Christmas vacation. Ramona missed Daisy, who went with her family to visit her grandparents. When she returned, the girls spent an afternoon dressing up Roberta in the clothes she had received for Christmas. Roberta was agreeable to having a dress pulled over her head, her arms stuffed into a sweater, her head shoved into caps. She enjoyed the girls' admiration. She was not so happy about a pair of crocheted slippers with ears and tails that looked like rabbits, a gift from Howie's grandmother, who enjoyed crocheting. Roberta did not care for the slippers. — Beverly Cleary

All her life she had wanted to squeeze the toothpaste really squeeze it,not just one little squirt ... The paste coiled and swirled and mounded in the washbasin. Ramona decorated the mound with toothpaste roses as if it was a toothpaste birthday cake — Beverly Cleary

A person who wants to believe lives in a world full of proof. — Ramona Ausubel

My first thought isn't that I'm gay or that Freddie is a boy or that he's one of my best friends. His lips are lips. They're soft and they taste like pumpkin pie and whiskey. — Julie Murphy

Close your eyes," he said, low and soft. "Look inside yourself and don't think for a second, just ... tell me, how did you feel when I kissed you?"
[...]
"Unbroken. — Ramona Wray

Time was a dazzling lie, a magician worth a bird in his hat. The truth, I felt certain, was that everything happened at once. How old was I? I was every age at the same time. All the days of our lives were today. — Ramona Ausubel

Next time! In what calendar are kept the records of those next times which never come? — Helen Hunt Jackson

True browsing means that we discover shelves and subjects that we could not have anticipated when we started. And the books we read introduce us to other books, as if we are at a magnificent party of the mind, being ever welcomed by new friends to join in the conversation. — Ramona Koval

Nothing was more terrifying than what families could do to each other. — Ramona Ausubel

This is the stuff dreams are made of, right?"
I could've pointed out the misquotation; everybody goes for Humphrey Bogarst's famous like from The Maltese Falcon, when the words actually are "We are such stuff as dreams are made on" and they belong to Master Shakespeare, but you know what? With all due to respect to the women's movement, the fact is that, on rare occasions, silence really is a girl's best garment.
So I just smiled instead. — Ramona Wray

Learn to trust your instincts more often. They tend to be the most accurate alarm. — Ramona Matta

Ramona stepped back into her closet, slid the door shut, pressed an imaginary button, and when her imaginary elevator had made its imaginary descent, stepped out onto the real first floor and raced a real problem. Her mother and father were leaving for Parents' Night. — Beverly Cleary

they don't want a modern Beartown, because they know that a modern Beartown won't want them. Ramona — Fredrik Backman

It might still drown you, but love got deeper with time. — Ramona Ausubel

This was a season of worry and joy living side by side in Fern. They did not cancel each other out or blend to create a soft grey. Love could not temper fear and fear could not temper love. — Ramona Ausubel

Until we meet again in the everlasting world of tomorrow's dream, where the power of love is untouchable and the pain of sacrifice is invaluable. — Ramona Matta

A change doesn't always happen because we intentionally ask for it, but because it's a reality of life. — Ramona Matta

I realised that reading was the key that opened the door to secret lands, strange places and the worlds behind other people's eyes. — Ramona Koval

But it grieves my heart, love,
To see you tryin' to be a part of
A world that just don't exist.
It's all just a dream, babe,
A vacuum, a scheme, babe,
That sucks you into feelin' like this.
I can see that your head
Has been twisted and fed
By worthless foam from the mouth.
I can tell you are torn
Between stayin' and returnin'
On back to the South.
From To Ramona — Bob Dylan

I know you once offered to fix dinner for me, but I seriously thought you were bragging."
Those lips, mmm, those sinful lips, pouted briefly, with the sole purpose of driving me crazy, no doubt. He shrugged.
"Nope, no bragging. You hungry?"
"Starving." Though not exactly for food. — Ramona Wray

I learned that books could be collected, that they were important enough to keep and that a story that seemed to be over could be part of a bigger one. — Ramona Koval

Once upon a time, tomorrow was the first day of the world. — Ramona Ausubel

There had been no crises of incident, or marked movements of experience such as in Felipe's imaginations of love were essential to the fulness of its growth. This is a common mistake on the part of those who have never felt love's true bonds. Once in those chains, one perceives that they are not of the sort full forged in a day. They are made as the great iron cables are made, on which bridges are swung across the widest water-channels,
not of single huge rods, or bars, which would be stronger, perhaps, to look at; but myriads of the finest wires, each one by itself so fine, so frail, it would barely hold a child's kite in the wind: by hundreds, hundreds of thousands of such, twisted, re-twisted together, are made the mighty cables, which do not any more swerve from their place in the air, under the weight and jar of the ceaseless traffic and tread of two cities, than the solid earth swerves under the same ceaseless weight and jar. Such cables do not break. — Helen Hunt Jackson

Elementary, my dear Watson."
"That's a misquotation, by the way," I countered without thinking. Which might've made more of an impact if I'd stopped grinning like a cretin.
"See? Ten minutes and you already know I read Sherlock Holmes. Just imagine what you could discover if we went out on a real date. — Ramona Wray

Ramona wasn't at home anywhere. She felt like a spy in life and the ending of every great book and each orgasm, and the sight of every homeless shopping bag lady infected her with a titanic yearning for the world to make an unscheduled stop. — Ann Druyan

Ramona grabbed the book. "It's mine. I told you it was mine!" Then she turned to Beezus and said triumphantly, "You said people didn't buy books at the library and now you just bought one! — Beverly Cleary

A smile bloomed again in his eyes. "I love that you let me bring out that softness in you. You've always been such a tough little trooper, but under that snappy, tough act you put on, you're butter-soft. Sweet as honey. And I can get there! Make that softness come up. I'm so ... honored by it — Ramona Wray

But more than anything, as a little girl, I wanted to be exactly like Miss Piggy. She was ma heroine. I was a plucky little girl, but I never related to the rough-and-tumble icons of children's lit, like Pippi Longstocking or Harriet the Spy. Even Ramona Quimby, who seemed cool, wasn't somebody I could super-relate to. She was scrawny and scrappy and I was soft and sarcastic. I connected instead to Miss - never 'Ms.' - Piggy; the comedienne extraordinaire who'd alternate eye bats with karate chops, swoon over girly stuff like chocolate, perfume, feather boas or random words pronounced in French, then, on a dmie, lower her voice to 'Don't fuck with me, fellas' decibel when slighted. She was hugely feminine, boldly ambitious, and hilariously violent when she didn't get way, whether it was in work, love, or life. And even though she was a pig puppet voiced by a man with a hand up her ass, she was the fiercest feminist I'd ever seen. — Julie Klausner

I am not a pest, Ramona Quimby told her big sister Beezus. — Beverly Cleary

I took my time and observed Ryder Kingscott - the legend, the most envied, desired, talked about, etc., guy in school - mutating before my eyes into Ryder Kingscott, the ... possible stalker? — Ramona Wray

Funny how I always thought the world would dilate and then snap back with a loud bang the day a boy happened to me. But there was no explosion, no fireworks, no sudden shift in the tectonic plates of the earth. It was more of a Zen moment - Quiet. Everything was instantly quiet. The world, my mind, the flux of time - all still. And in the middle of it was him. — Ramona Wray

Ramona chuckled as she picked up her basket and pruning shears. "You, my dear, are wasted out here where no one but the servants are subject to your wry humor and intelligence." I grinned. — L.R. Olson

We read to find out what the world is like, to experience lots of lives, not just the one we live. If it is true that our lives are chaotic and we crave a shape, stories are the shapes that we put on experience, containing all the wisdom in the world. We can even choose what kind of wisdom suits us. — Ramona Koval

For heartsickness of the unending variety, befriend a dove. Do not catch it, not even so that you can set it free. Just get down on the ground with bread crumbs on your chest and wait for it to find you interesting. — Ramona Ausubel

Books that recount ordeals are precious because an ordeal is what we most fear, and the stories that tell us how to survive them reassure us about what a human being is capable of, as we survive our own lives every day, our own mysterious journeys. — Ramona Koval

We all have pasts that haunt us, Mr. McLeod. — Ramona Flightner

She did not try to explain aging or love and how much harder it was to keep trusting beauty the later it got. How, though she was only twenty-eight years old, she seemed to have passed into the long slide during which time a woman became less and less valuable, and to keep her around became an act of charity rather than pleasure. — Ramona Ausubel

Ain't curiosity the worst thing ever? — Ramona Wray

One day, while at the drugstore picking up some aspirin for my Mom, dear old Mrs. Burns, our pharmacist, shoved a pack of condoms into my hand with a conspiratorial wink.
"They glow in the dark," she whispered.
This, from a sixty-five year-old granny, I kid you not. Stuff of nightmares. — Ramona Wray

That's what is so precious in reading this way - you can plumb the depths of another's experience while sitting still with a book in your hands. — Ramona Koval

What game is this, Ryder?" I asked frostily. "What are we playing at here?"
Shrugging, he replied "It's not me who's playing. I'm not the one who's wasted the last two weeks trying to make up her mind. Not the one who's asking about other people or has second thoughts about something as innocent as a kiss. — Ramona Wray

Tiddlywinks, tiddlywinks, I want to play tiddlywinks, chanted Ramona, shaking her head back and forth. — Beverly Cleary

Over the years, I have been approached about making Ramona into a cartoon or movie, but I was afraid that no one could really capture the spunky character of Ramona. — Beverly Cleary

Ramona was originally an accidental character I added to the Henry Huggins books because I noticed that none of the characters had siblings. I added Ramona as Beazus' pestering little sister. — Beverly Cleary

The things that hurt us the worst in life end up being the same as those that mean to us the most. — Ramona Matta

But, in the end, the books that surround me are the books that made me, through my reading (and misreading) of them; they fall in piles on my desk, they stack behind me on my shelves, they surprise me every time I look for one and find ten more I had forgotten about. I love their covers, their weight and their substance. And like the child I was, with the key to the world that reading gave me, it is still exciting for me to find a new book, open it at the first page and plunge in, head first, heart deep. — Ramona Koval

Can we really be friends with those who don't love the books that we do? Of course we can, but can we really be friends with those who don't love any books? I'm not so sure of that. — Ramona Koval

Being rich had felt to Edgar like treading alone for all of time in a beautiful, bottomless pool. So much, so blue, and nothing to push off from. No grit or sand, no sturdy earth, just his own constant movement to keep above the surface. It was easy to hate riches when they surrounded him, but Edgar did not know how to be any other kind of person. He did not know that in every life the work of want and survival was just as floorless, just as unstopping. — Ramona Ausubel

How could you be watching me the whole year?" I asked, sensing my eyes bulging, but unable to control it. "I think I would've noticed."
His smile widened. "What, you mean, since you where always checking me out? — Ramona Wray

I said to Ramona [my daughter] once ... you should never look yourself up on the Internet. It's something I've learned. — Maggie Gyllenhaal

You know that smell, when you put your nose up to a pine tree?" I told her I did perfectly. "No matter how long it has been, you always will. Like you are storing a part of that tree in your own body ... Everything stays true. You are yourself, no matter how much you have to change. — Ramona Ausubel

I choose guys. I choose girls. I choose people. But most of all: I choose. — Julie Murphy

We always hurt what we love most — Ramona Wray

Picture this: possible boyfriend X takes normal girl versus freak girl, namely me, home to meet his mother. After a handshake, normal girl comments, Oh, what a pretty manicure, Mrs. X. My comment? After I wipe away the foam at my mouth, and I'm finally done convulsing, Mrs, X, you'll die in a car crash two weeks from today. You may as well take care of the arrangements because I'm never wrong. And we live happily ever after? Fat chance. — Ramona Wray

Ramona was willing to talk about anything, now, about things beyond the present moment. Childhoods in El Modena and at the beach. The boats offshore. Their work. The people they knew. The huge rocks jumbled under them: "Where did they come from, anyway?" They didn't know. It didn't matter. What do you talk about when you're falling love? It doesn't matter. All the questions are, Who are you? How do you think? Are you like me? Will you love me? And all the answers are, I am like this, like this, like this. I am like you. I like you. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Guess where that left me? That's right: between Ryder, my boyfriend, who hated Lucian with the proverbial fiery passion and J, my best friend, who wanted Lucian around, so, basically in hell. — Ramona Wray

That's what reading was for my mother, and became for me - a way to escape, a private time machine, a place that began with moral instruction but soon morphed into empathy and imagination. — Ramona Koval

You sank my truck, you insulted my sauce, and you violated Ramona! — Vic

I am no longer afraid to face what is meant to be, but I am not so sure of what exactly I want for the future either. — Ramona Matta

I gathered myself in silent pain looking to leave the one way path I was never to come back to — Ramona Matta

How furiously she loved them and how heavy it was to carry that quantity of love, how perilous to care for those delicate bodies in the spinning world. — Ramona Ausubel

Bags and boxes across the hot parking lot to the van. On the way back to the mall, Willa Jean, who spotted the ice-cream store that sold fifty-two flavors, told her uncle she needed an ice-cream cone. Uncle Hobart agreed that ice-cream cones were needed by all. Inside the busy shop, customers had to take numbers and wait turns. Ramona, responsible for Willa Jean, who could not read, was faced with the embarrassing task of reading aloud the list of fifty-two flavors while all the customers listened. Strawberry, German chocolate, vanilla, ginger-peachy, red-white-and-blueberry, black walnut, Mississippi mud, green bubble gum, baseball nut. — Beverly Cleary

Do you love me?" James asked suddenly
"Yes. I do." I didn't even have to think about it. It was so freeing
"I love you, too," he replied. "I've never said that to anyone before."
It was so hard to believe. "Really?"
He grinned and gazed out the window. "Well, except my first motorcycle, Ramona. But she was a Ducati, so you can blame me. In fact, I think I might have loved her more than I love you."
I punched James in the spot between his chest and shoulder. — James Patterson

Are we nothing but heel skin and blisters? Traveling a straight line to the end of our lives? — Ramona Ausubel

Anyway, how are you and Ramona doing?'
Uh ... you know. Pretty good.'
Have you said the L-Word yet?'
The L-Word? You mean? Lesbian?'
Uh ... No. The other L-Word.'
?'
Okay. Uh, It's "love." I wasn't trying to trick you or anything. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

Perhaps fate is an answer from God ... or perhaps fate is nothing more than an accident - two ships lost in the dark, running aground on the same windward beach. — Ramona Ausubel

Willa Jean, pleased to have her grandmother on her side, set a red checker on top of a black checker. "Your turn," she said to Ramona as if she were being generous. — Beverly Cleary

We can do a cremation here, at the house?" I ask.
"We built a fire," my father says.
"Obviously. And I put the whole cat in the fire?"
"There isn't a whole cat," my mother says.
"What is there?"
"Parts of cat," they say together.
"Bones?" I ask.
"Mostly. And some fur. And some face. — Ramona Ausubel

He let himself into the house and sat down with his back against the door, where the tiles were cool on his legs and he tried to hear, as he had earlier imagined, every single thing that his wife was not doing in their home on this Sunday night. He could hardly keep track of it all, she was so busy being absent. She was not pouring water into a glass or a pitcher. She was not kicking his shoes out of the hall. She was not switching the laundry into the dryer. She was not opening the screen door and going outside barefoot and calling for him to come look at the sunset. She was not putting lotion on her elbows or flattening the newspaper or picking up the ringing telephone, which would go on calling out the absence of Petra in nine-ring sequences dozens of times every day. — Ramona Ausubel

There is no perfect moment to say I love you because when you feel the urge to say the words of love then you are already in the perfect moment. — Ramona Matta

But nothing comes free of charge; the world would tumble into chaos without that kind of balance... — Ramona Wray