She Like Someone Else Quotes & Sayings

Sophie Betsuie lost her composure and returned to the hogan, crying. She was beating herself up with a club made out of the words if only, and I knew what it felt like. If only I hadn't done this. If only someone else hadn't done that. I hoped she would learn sooner, rather than later, that you can't unchoose anyone's choices, least of all your own. All you can do with your past is try to grow out of it. — Kevin Hearne

Adele doesn't need any ironic detachment. She can love and appreciate the talent of others without feeling threatened herself. This is often very hard for people. We usually worry that someone else's talent or success is being compared with our own so we take the role of a critic and evaluate people harshly in order to protect our own egos.

People like Adele focus on what they like and they ignore the comparisons. Plus, they let the people around them know when they found something that they love about their work or their art. — Charlie Houpert

I don't like how he holds on to her and don't like how long he's holding. That doesn't look like brotherly love to me. I stare at his girl. Why is she so damned happy to see her guy hugging someone else? — Katie McGarry

She put a hit on her boyfriend, so it's not like she hasn't murdered someone."
"And you know that how?" Sam asks.
I'm trying really hard to be honest, but telling the whole thing to Sam seems beyond me. Still, the fragments sound ridiculous on their own. "She said so. In the park."
He rolls his eyes. "Because the two of you were so friendly."
"I guess she mistook me for someone else." I sound so much like Philip that it scares me. I can hear the menace in my tone.
"Who?" Sam asks, not flinching.
I force my voice back to normal. "Uh, the person who killed him. — Holly Black

Lookin at herself, but wishing she was someone else because the body of the doll that don't look like hers at all. So she straps it on, she sucks it in, she throws it up and gives a grin. — Jack Johnson

If you cherish something enough", she told me, "it doesn't matter how old or worn or useless it's become; your caring for it immediately raises its value in somebody else's eyes. It's just like rehab- a body's got to believe in their own worth before anybody can start fixing them, but most people need someone to believe in them before they can start believing in themselves. — Charles De Lint

You know, I've always hated those stories about princes and princesses with some extraordinary ability, special because they're born special.'
'Like me?' He smiled wickedly, making me laugh a little.
'I didn't see how those were happy stories, because life has given princes and princesses enough unearned advantages. I'd rather believe that anyone can accomplish remarkable things when she really tries. Maybe her accomplishments will never be recognized, but simply loving and caring for someone else, that's miraculous to me. — Marta Acosta

Whenever she felt like crying, she would instead become angry - at someone else or at herself - which meant that it was rare for her to shed tears. — Haruki Murakami

The part that Sahsa moved into Alena's bedroom and slleps in Alena's bed and uses her belongings.But there is someone else who don't like the idea that someone is useing her sister's room and her stuff .So she tries to make sure that Sahsa never takes her sister's place and is jealous so she plans on making Sahsa'a Life A Living Hell. — V.C. Andrews

Questions spun through Nova's head, creating a tornado of fear with a sucking wind that grew and then funneled out her mouth. She could hear herself screaming, but the shriek sounded like it was coming from someone else. — Brittney Joy

What do you think?" I asked her.
Candice took her time answering, which is one of the reasons I really like having her as my partner - she's cool under pressure. "I think that, ultimately, this isn't about someone else's personal agenda. It's about the missing kids. It's about the frantic parents wanting an answer, and it's about the bastard who will continue to take other parents' kids and possibly hurt them until he's stopped. I also think that you're damn good at what you do, and I'm damn good at what I do, and we have no reason to apologize to anyone for how we make our living. So I think we should head to Washington and show this prick what we're made of. — Victoria Laurie

I can't go on like this. I'm not the guy who cheats on his girlfriend wishing all the time she was someone else."
Elation and fear washed over me in equal measure. "Cam, I ... "
"You want this. I know you do. — Samantha Young

She quickly realized she had an affinity for the older books and their muted scents of past dinners and foreign countries, the tea and chocolate stains coloring the phrases. You could never be certain what you would find in a book that has spent time with someone else. As she has rifled through the pages looking for defects, she had discovered an entrance ticket to Giverny, a receipt for thirteen bottles of champagne, a to-do list that included, along with groceries and dry cleaning, the simple reminder, 'buy a gun.' Bits of life tucked like stowaways in between the chapters. Sometimes she couldn't decide which story she was most drawn to. — Erica Bauermeister

I have no idea. You know what's really scary?" "What?" "No one will tell you." "Like who?" "Anyone. It's the damnedest thing. I really want to know what I'm up against. So I ask my best friend, she's had two. She says, 'Oh, when you see what you get it's worth it.' That's no answer, right? So I ask someone else who didn't use any anesthesia. She says, 'Oh, you'll forget all about it when you see the baby.' That's not an answer either. And my mom was knocked out, old-style, when she had me. So she can't tell me, and she probably wouldn't. It's some kind of mom conspiracy. — Charlaine Harris

Uh, Miss Carlson," I said, standing at her desk after everybody else had gone on to their next class, "somebody told me you went to that guy's funeral the one the highway patrol shot."
"Yes," SHe said. "I did."
She didn't look like she was mad at me about it. She had real long eyelashes. I bet she was good-looking when she was young.
"Was he a relative or something?" That was what I was afraid of.
"No. Not even a friend really." She paused, like she was hunting for the right words. Finally she said, "I read a book once that ended with the words 'the incommunicable past' You can only share the past with someone who's shared it with you. So I can't explain to you what Mark was to me, exactly. I knew him a long time ago. — S.E. Hinton

Dena had always been a loner. She did not feel connected to anything. Or anybody. She felt as if everybody else had come into the world with a set of instructions about how to live and someone had forgotten to give them to her. She had no clue what she was supposed to feel, so she had spent her life faking at being a human being, with no idea how other people felt. What was it like to really love someone? To really fit in or belong somewhere? She was quick, and a good mimic, so she learned at an early age to give the impression of a normal, happy girl, but inside she had always been lonely. — Fannie Flagg

When I have an idea, I share it with everyone. People say someone will steal my idea, but it's not like I invented something that will replace the toilet. I tell people to get their feedback. Will they buy it, help me improve it, or tell me it's already been done? If someone else is excited, he or she might buy into the business. — Cameron Johnson

She took a deep breath and let herself become someone else. An imitation of herself who was calm, even in a situation like this. — Brandon Sanderson

Toward the end of their relationship she'd told him once, "I wish I could give you what you're looking for, but I don't know what it is. There's a part of you that you keep closed off from everyone, including me. Its as if I'm not the one you're really with. Your mind is on someone else." He tried to deny it, but she didn't believe him. "I'm a woman - I know these things. When you look at me sometimes, I know you're seeing someone else. Its like you keep waiting for her to pop out of thin air to take you away from all this ... — Nicholas Sparks

She started to rise, for she feared Dash might become angry, lose his temper as he had before with Finn, but this Dash, this man who was struggling to find his footing, planted his feet solidly on the deck.
"She married someone else, Finn," he said quietly. "There was no battle to fight once she'd done that. I'd lost, and sometimes when you lose, there is nothing you can do but move on."
Finn sighed and shook his head, the arguments and problems of adults far beyond his ken, but he still persisted, struggling to understand. "Did you?"
"Did I what?"
"Move on? After you lost her?"
Again, Dash shook his head. "Nay, I didn't. Not at all."
"'Cause you loved her?"
Dash looked away. "Aye. Without her, I lost my course and sailed about the seas rather like the Dutchman. — Elizabeth Boyle

But there was a part of her that wondered what would happen if she let them all in on the secretthat
some mornings, it was hard to get out of bed and put on someone else's smile; that she was
standing on air, a fake who laughed at all the right jokes and whispered all the right gossip and
attracted the right guy, a fake who had nearly forgotten what it felt like to be real ... and who, when
you got right down to it, didn't want to remember, because it hurt even more than this. — Jodi Picoult

Bertie's gaze fell there and his blue eyes widened. "Deuce take you, Jess," he said crossly. "Can't a fellow trust you for a moment? How many times do I have to tell you to leave my friends alone?"

Miss Trent coolly withdrew her hand.

Trent gave Dain an apologetic look. "Don't pay it any mind, Dain. She does that to all the chaps. I don't know why she does it, when she don't want 'em. Just like them fool cats of Aunt Louisa's. Go to all the bother of catching a mouse, and then the confounded things won't eat 'em. Just leave the corpses lying about for someone else to pick up."

Miss Trent's lips quivered. — Loretta Chase

After months of separation her friends still catalyzed her thoughts and challenged her opinions and wrangled with her emotions, and she was relieved to see that they still slid into the familiar patterns, the comfortable ruts of long-established personalities. It was nice but it also worried her. Could there be room for growth? How could you change around the people that knew you best, who knew you backwards and forwards and knew you so well that they defined themselves by you and you by them? How could you possibly evolve, like really evolve and become a whole person all on your own, when your own makeup was inextricably intertwined with someone else's perception of themselves? — Katie Neipris

Clarissa will be bereaved, deeply lonely, but she will not die. She will be too much in love with life, with London. Virginia imagines someone else, yes, someone strong of body but frail-minded; someone with a touch of genius, of poetry, ground under by the wheels of the world, by war and government, by doctors; a someone who is, technically speaking insane, because that person sees meaning everywhere, knows that trees are sentient beings and sparrows sing in Greek. Yes, someone like that. Clarissa, sane Clarissa -exultant, ordinary Clarissa - will go on, loving London, loving her life of ordinary pleasures, and someone else, a deranged poet, a visonary, will be the one to die. — Michael Cunningham

Then there was someone else I met,
whose face and voice I can't forget,
and the memory of her
is like a jail I'm trapped inside,
or maybe she is something I just use
to hold my real life at a distance. — Tony Hoagland

What is it with young women and exclamation points and smiley faces! So afraid of appearing somber, always wanting to appear light and happy and sparkling, even when they are dying inside. Not ever being able to escape the mask that smiles. She wants to write, really write someday. But she is not fully formed. So she does not write. Not really. Unless attempting to live is a form of attempting to write. The agony of becoming. This is what she experiences. The young girl. She would like to be someone, anyone else. She wants, vaguely, to be something more than she is. But she does not know what that is, or how one goes about doing such a thing. — Kate Zambreno

In college, I had a course in Latin, and one day the word "divorce" came up. I always figured it came from some root that meant "divide." In truth, it comes from "divertere," which means "to divert."
I believe that. All divorce does is divert you, taking you away from everything you thought you knew and everything you thought you wanted and steering you into all kinds of other stuff, like discussions about your mother's girdle and whether she should marry someone else. — Mitch Albom

Really she was just like everyone else, she wanted to love someone. Even better if they loved you in return. She was considering getting a cat. She didn't really like cats though. That might be a bit of a problem. Quite liked dogs. — Kate Atkinson

Iannis: [writing to Corelli] Antonio, I do not know if this letter will reach you, or even if you are alive. Perhaps someone else sent your record, and that is why we found no note. I would like to say that Pelagia is happy, but she is full of tears she will not let fall, and of a grief no doctor can mend. She blames herself for the pain we have suffered, and perhaps the same is true for you. You know I am not a religious man, but I believe this: if there is a wound, we must try to heal it. If there is someone whose pain we can cure, we must search till we find them. If the gods have chosen that we should survive, it will be for a reason. — Louis De Bernieres

The elevator came to a jerking halt and the doors slid open. A young vault manager was waiting for us. She looked up and then froze in fear, dropping the papers she was holding. I don't remember much else about her, but I'll never forget her scream. It wasn't even particularly memorable. Like most, it started like a high-pitched yelp and ended in hysterical sobbing. The timing was what threw me off. During most robberies, it takes a few seconds before someone lets out a yelp. Sometimes there is even this strange pregnant silence through the whole thing because everyone's too shocked and scared to move. But not this time. As soon as the elevator doors opened up, the woman started screaming.

I grabbed her by the hair and threw her into one of the teller windows. — Roger Hobbs

She belonged to the common type: without ever really thinking it over in detail, she had considered herself a woman like the rest, with no reason for anything to happen to her that didn't also happen to all other women. It was as if this sort of thing happened to someone else, to an absolute someone else, which is to say, as if it didn't happen to anyone. — Cesar Aira

And suddenly she was so strange he couldn't believe he knew her at all. He was in someone else's house, like those other jokes people told of the gentleman, drunk, coming home late late at night, unlocking the wrong door, entering a wrong room, and bedding with a stranger and getting up early and going to work and neither of them the wiser. — Ray Bradbury

Standing alone at the railing is Four. Though he's not an initiate anymore, most of the Dauntless use this day to come together with their families. Either his family doesn't like to come together, or he wasn't originally a Dauntless. Which faction could he have come from? "There's one of my instructors." I lean closer to say. "He's kind of intimidating." "He's handsome," she says. I find myself nodding without thinking. She laughs and lifts her arm from my shoulders. I want to steer her away from him, but just as I'm about to suggest that we go somewhere else, he looks over his shoulder. His eyes widen at the sight of my mother. She offers him her hand. "Hello. My name is Natalie," she says. "I'm Beatrice's mother." I have never seen my mother shake hands with someone. Four eases his hand into hers, looking stiff, and shakes it twice. The gesture looks unnatural for both of them. No, Four was not originally Dauntless if he doesn't shake hands easily. — Veronica Roth

Today she had felt like a child forced to play grownup in a cavernous nineteenth-century house with someone else's furniture, someone else's past. Though not forced, she thought hastily. David had been scrupulously fair about that. It had been a joint decision. Except that David had thought of it, David had been the one enthused about it, and David had a way of leading you along on the ragged edge of his enthusiasm until you were someplace you hadn't planned to be, wondering how you got there. — William Gay

When she looked at herself in her wedding photographs, Ammu felt the woman that looked back at her was someone else. A foolish jewelled bride. Her silk sunset-coloured sari shot with gold. Rings on every finger. White dots of sandalwood paste over her arched eye-brows. Looking at herself like this, Ammu's soft mouth would twist into a small, bitter smile at the memory - not of the wedding itself so much as the fact that she had permitted herself to be so painstakingly decorated before being led to the gallows. It seemed so absurd. So futile.
Like polishing firewood. — Arundhati Roy

It's easy to point out someone else's mistake, harder to recognize your own. Especially because most people - except the lucky few like ourselves - are forced to live with their mistakes. So they learn to justify their mistakes, build on them, until they can look back and convince themselves that their mistake was inevitable all along, a good choice, in fact. An unwed teenage mother can look back at her unexpected pregnancy fondly six years down the road once the child's out of her hair and in school all day. She wouldn't dare go back and fix that mistake because it's become part of her life. — Andrea Lochen

She imagined the reading she did now as like climbing inside one of those deep old beds she'd seen in a museum, with a sliding door to close behind you: even as she was suffering with a book and could hardly bear it, felt as if her heart would crack with emotion or with outrage at injustice, the act of reading it enclosed and saved her. Sometimes when she moved back out of the book and into her own life, just for a moment she could see her circumstances with a new interest and clarity, as if they were happening to someone else. — Tessa Hadley

Kate slid to her knees, pulling the child's head to her breast, her mouth in its hair. "Pippa. Pippa, we're awful fools. What Father means is that truly nothing we have ever done can harm us, and Mr. Crawford has mixed us up with someone else. But you know what unstable-looking parents you have. He doesn't believe us, but he says he'll believe you. It's not very flattering," said Kate, looking at her daughter with bright eyes, "but you seem to be the one in the family with an honest sort of face, and your father and I must just be thankful for it. Go over to him, darling. I'll be behind you. And just speak," she said with an edge like a razor. "Just speak as you would to the dog. — Dorothy Dunnett

Shit ... this was a bad idea. A pure-blooded, bonded male vampire about to watch his shellan feed someone else. Holy hell, when the Scribe Virgin had suggested Beth come down, V had assumed it was for ceremonial purposes, not so she could be a vein. But what was the choice? Butch was going to suck Marissa dry and not have enough and there wasn't another female in the house who could do the job: Mary was still human and Bella was pregnant.
Besides, like dealing with Rhage or Z would be any easier? For the beast, they'd need a tranq gun the size of a cannon and Z ... well, shit. — J.R. Ward

Is anyone anywhere happy? No, not unless they are living in a dream or in an artifice that they or someone else has made. For a time I was lulled in the arms of a blind organism with breasts full of champagne and nipples made of caviar. I thought she was true, and that the true was the beautiful. But the true is the ugly mixed up everywhere, like a peck of dirt scattered through your life. The true is that there is no security, no artifice to stop the unsavory changes, the rat race, the death unwish - the winged chariot, the horns and the motors, the Devil in the clock. Love is a desperate artifice to take the place of those two original parents who turned out not to be omnisciently right gods, but a rather pedestrian pair of muddled suburbanites who, no matter how bumbling they tried, never could quite understand how or why you grew up to your 21st birthday. — Sylvia Plath

It was really rather wretched that you couldn't will yourself to fall in love, for the very effort can keep falling at bay. Nor could you will yourself to stay that way. Least of all could you will yourself NOT to fall in love, for thus far whatever meager resistance she had put up had only made the compulsion more intense. So you were perpetually tyrannized by a feeling that came and went as it pleased, like a cat with its own pet door. How much more agreeable, if love were something that you stirred up from a reliable recipe, or elected, however perversely, to pour down the drain. Still, there was nothing for it. The popular expression notwithstanding, love was not something you made. Nor could you dispose of the stuff once manifested because it was inconvenient, or even because it was wicked, and ruining your life, and, by the by, someone else's. — Lionel Shriver

Sara reached over and rubbed Holly's arm for a moment. Then she pulled back and asked, "Have you ever heard the Christmas song, Mary, Did You Know?" Holly looked up, into her friend's clear blue eyes. She shook her head and Sara continued. "It's a beautiful song about the Savior's mother, Mary. The singers ask if when she held baby Jesus, if she knew what His life would be like or that He would be her Savior and the Savior of the world. I think every mother is like Mary. Not in the fact that we gave birth to the Savior, but that when we have a child, we never know what his future holds, how he'll change our lives or someone else's life. — Danyelle Ferguson

A new beginning done right," she said out loud, because everyone knew that saying it out loud made it true. "You hear that, karma?" She glanced upward through her slightly leaky sunroof into a dark sky, where storm clouds tumbled together like a dryer full of gray wool blankets. "This time, I'm gong to be strong." Like Katharine Hepburn. Like Ingrid Bergman ."So go torture someone else and leave me alone."
A bolt of lightning blinded her, followed by a boom of thunder that nearly had her jerking out of her skin. "Okay, so I meant pretty please leave me alone."
-Maddie — Jill Shalvis

I didn't like the way he looked at you." "How did he look at me?" Allie asks warily. "Like you were his entire world." She frowns. "And that's a bad thing?" "Damn right it is. Nobody should ever be someone else's entire world. That's not healthy, AJ. If your whole life is centered on one thing - one person - whatcha going to be left with if that person goes away? Absolutely nothing." He gruffly reiterates, "Not healthy. — Elle Kennedy

Then, in a whisper, Sam said, "I met someone else."

Just like that, Darcy's world melted and distorted into something she no longer recognized. His words hung like poison in the air, and she held her breath, afraid to breathe it in. — D.A. Rhine

I don't know where this pressure came from. I can't blame my parents because it has always felt internal. Like any other parent, my mother celebrated the A grades and the less-than-A grades she felt there was no need to tell anybody about. But not acknowledging the effort that ended in a less than perfect result impacted me as a child. If I didn't win, then we wouldn't tell anyone that I had even competed to save us the embarrassment of acknowledging that someone else was better. Keeping the secret made me think that losing was something to be ashamed of, and that unless I was sure I was going to be the champion there was no point in trying. And there was certainly no point to just having fun. — Portia De Rossi

Ephraim, it's an incredibly intimate thing to share one of your favorite books with someone else. I think so, anyway."
"How do you mean?"
"Your father gave me a book on our second date, the first gift he ever gave me." She turned to the front page and studied it. "When you give someone a book, it's lie saying: 'I'm trusting you with something that means a lot to me.' It doesn't matter whether you like it or not, though it helps if you do. What matters is that you understand why she likes it. Why she gave it to you. — E.C. Myers

Youth is like a fickle girlfriend. We can't understand or value her until she goes off with someone else, never to return. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Would you like to dance?" She arched a delicate brow. "With you?" He reached for his drink. "I'll take that as a no." "Feel free to ask someone else, Murphy." He wasn't leaving her now, even if he wanted to dance with someone else - and he didn't. — Denise Hunter

I looked her up and down. She wouldn't meet my eyes. I didn't recognize her anymore. She was nothing like the image of her I had in my head. Her features meant nothing to me; she was someone else. — Yasmina Khadra

I have heard that sometimes when a person has an operation to transplant someone else's heart or liver or kidney into his body, his tastes in foods change, or his favorite colors, as if the organ has brought with it some memory of its life before, as if it holds within it a whole past that must find a place within its new host. This is the way I carry Lexy inside me. Since the moment she took up residency within me, she has lent her own color to the way I see and hear and taste, so that by now I can barely distinguish between the world as it seemed before and the way it seems now. I cannot say what air tasted like before I knew her or how the city smelled as I walked its streets at night. I have only one tongue in my head and one pair of eyes, and I stopped being able to trust them a long time ago. — Carolyn Parkhurst

Belatedly, she realized something else. "Do you ... have anything?" He didn't seem to have recovered from her last comment. "But do you mean - wait, do I have what?" She slitted her eyes at him. "Something important." "Like what? The phone number for the White House?" A moment later, under her withering glare, realization dawned. "Oh." His was the expression of someone who has run out of gas in the middle of the desert, miles from help. "I ... — Cassandra Clare

He could not tell her that he was angry because she did not love him. Even he could not utter such foolishness. Certainly, he did not love her. He did not love anyone except perhaps Isaac and a very few of his other children. Yet he wanted Anyanwu to be like his many other women and treat him like a god in human form, competing for his attention no matter how repugnant his latest body nor even whether he might be looking for a new body. They knew he took women almost as readily as he took men. Especially, he took women who had already given him what he wanted of them
usually several children. They served him and never thought they might be his next victims. Someone else. Not them. — Octavia E. Butler

Has anyone else here seen or fought a nightmare?"
Marshal Spence Neumann lifted his head. "Seen one. Swear to God it looked like my ex-wife for a second."
A chuckle rumbled within the group. Someone mumbled, "She was a nightmare. — Erin Kellison

Deborah looked at me with a frown, and I frowned back. What Alana said made sense, of course, especially to someone untroubled by human feelings, like I used to be. It was clinically cold reasoning, serpentine but clear, and that certainly fit what we were coming to know about Alana. And yet - something was wrong with it, whether it was the way she said it or something else, I couldn't say; it didn't quite add up for me. — Jeff Lindsay

Writing jokes for others is like having babies for someone else. It's sad. Like the woman who gives up her baby but needs to be close so she secretly becomes the maid in the household. — Emo Philips

I'm sorry," she says.
I wheel around. "You know, you're a total know-it-all. And it's incredibly rude sometimes; I mean, you're not perfect either, and you act like it's my fault but it's not my fault for being quiet or your fault for being a know-it-all. It's not your problem or my problem; it's their problem. They're the demented ones, not us, so don't take it out on me, because the only thing that holds things together for me is having someone else on the Not Demented Team. — John Green

Once again I am being held hostage for my vagina," She sighs. "What is it with you aliens? Can't a girl just make her own decisions for once? Is that so freaking hard?"
"The khui has decided," I tell her.
She gives a small shake of her head. "It's always someone else's decision. When's it going to be mine?"
I watch her, frustrated. There is no decision to be made. The khui has decided. And yet... I don't like the way her words make me feel.
Or the defeat in her voice. Liz is a fighter. I don't want her to give up. — Ruby Dixon

Catherine Elizabeth MiddlEton, Kate, Waity Katie, Sizzler Sister, the Duchess of Cambridge, the High Street Duchess. The woman who has held all of these titles is fonder of some than of others, but it is important to remember that, over the years, each of these names has been bestowed on her by someone else. Because she is a naturally private person, others have often projected an image onto her, associated with one of these names, which is completely at odds with who she really is. Underneath, she has remained the same person throughout, and that person remains something of an enigma.
For over ten years she has been the person closest to the man who will one day be king, but she only slowly slipped into the public's consciousness, like the royal family's stealth missile. — Marcia Moody

My mother says that when Mrs. Rowley is mean, which is generally the case, it is really because she is just unhappy, and who could blame her with a husband like that ... She says this is really the only reason people are ever mean
they have something hurting inside of them, a claw of unhappiness scratching at their hearts, and it hurts them so much that sometimes they have to push it right out of their mouths to scratch someone else, just to give themselves a rest, a moment of relief. — Laura Moriarty

I lost myself immediately in one of the books, only emerging when the phone rang.
"Dashiell?" my father intoned. As if someone else with my voice might be answering the phone at my mother's apartment.
"Yes, Father?"
"Leeza and I would like to wish you a merry Christmas."
"Thank you, Father. And to you, as well."
[awkward pause]
[even more awkward pause]
"I hope your mother isn't giving you any trouble."
Oh, Father, I love it when you play this game.
"She told me if I clean all the ashes out of the grate, then I'll be able to help my sisters get ready for the ball."
"It's Christmas, Dashiell. Can't you give that attitude a rest?"
"Merry Christmas, Dad. And thanks for the presents."
"What presents?"
"I'm sorry - those were all from Mom, weren't they?"
"Dashiell ... "
"I gotta go. The gingerbread men are on — Rachel Cohn

The word felt good, liberating. So, I repeat it. "Fuck." Then, again. And again. Because it made me someone else, someone normal and happy, someone who used words like that, like St. John. I repeated it, over and over until she walked away, wounded. Then, I was glad. And still, I kept repeating it, because that was the only thing that kept me from crying. — Alex Flinn

With a boot on his chest, she used her free hand to search for the syringe he surely carried. Found it. Jabbed it into his thigh. Waited with the gun to his head until his eyes shut and his jaw went slack. Punched him just to be sure. The sedative would have been measured to heavily dose Neeva and her nearly half-weight to his, but at this point, what the fuck ever.
A group of pedestrians on the other side of the street had watched the entire scene. Munroe waved them on. "It's official business," she said, and whether they believed her or not, they moved on. Human nature was always more inclined to apathy, to avoiding
involvement, to seeing things as someone else's problem. People were easy like that. — Taylor Stevens

He glanced over at me. 'Scared? Of Reggie? What, she thinks he might force her to give up caffeine for real or something?'
'No,' I said.
'Of what, then?' he asked.
I paused, only just now realizing that the subject was hitting a little close to home. 'You know, getting hurt. Putting herself out there, opening up to someone.'
'Yeah,' he said, adding some cheese straws to the car, but risk is just part of relationships. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.'
I picked up a box of cheese straws, examinig it. 'Yeah,' I said. 'But it's not all about chance, either.'
'Meaning what?' he asked, taking the box from me and adding the rest.
'Just that, if you know ahead of time that there might an issue that dooms everything- like, say, you're incredibly controlling and independent, like Harriet- maybe it's better to acknowledge that and not waste your time. Or someone else's. — Sarah Dessen

Her eyes narrowed, but she wasn't yelling.
I think she liked me ... kind of. The way a mother would like an annoying spastic two year old who belonged to someone else. — Robyn Peterman

I press my lips to hers with such delicacy; I want her to feel everything she's ever deserved to feel at the hands of someone else. She deserves to feel beautiful. She deserves to feel important. She deserves to feel cared for. She deserves to feel respected. She deserves to feel like there's at least one other person in this world who accepts her for exactly who she is. — Colleen Hoover

What's your version of the perfect guy?"
"I guess I'd like someone who proves he cares by his actions instead of just saying it all the time."
"That's reasonable."
"And I'd like someone who has his own life, too. You know I work a lot of hours at the hospital, and I like what I do. I imagine I'd come to resent a guy who expects me to work a nine-to-five schedule just because it fits his needs."
"Anything else?"
"But he still has to be - " she cut herself off.
"Good in bed? — Tami Lund

Once you start spending time together, you'll learn things about her that no one else could have told you. Things that you never would have suspected. Like the fact that she snores and has cold feet." He folded his arms and I caught his smile in my peripheral vision. Why was he smiling at me? Hey, was he referring to our nap on the cot? "Maybe you'll learn that she'd make a great doctor or that she has the capacity to care about people she barely knows." He took a dramatic pause, leaning against the wall. "Maybe you'll learn that she's not the spoiled princess you thought she was."
Maybe you'll learn that she'd rather have someone speak directly to her than about her," I said, folding my arms and leaning against the wall. — Suzanne Selfors

Then with Lucy [Hale], her little thing that I kind of learned from her is her country music because she's obsessed with country and at the beginning, I wasn't a huge fan of it, but I was listening to some songs that she plays in the hair and makeup room and she's also so funny, too. She does these character impersonations and they're just so funny. Made up characters of course, but she can switch into someone else so fast. I'm always laughing at Lucy and she's like a little Polly Pocket, you know? The tiny one. — Shay Mitchell

He didn't say so but Andy agreed with the bodyguard. A good-looking bird like this one didn't have to kill anyone. What she did she did for D's and if a guy gave her too much trouble she'd just walk out and find someone else with money. Not murder. — Harry Harrison

He threw her a distasteful look. "Uh ... meaning," he imitated her, "That Caia like totally isn't like a self-absorbed bimbo. She only like totally mashed people into pulp when someone else is in like total danger."
"I don't say like and totally that much, O-K!! — Samantha Young

And she thinks perhaps that is what love is: letting someone else see that part of you that shatters like glass...They will grow old together, broken together, and as long as they both don't completely shatter at the same time, they might find a way to pick each other off the ground. — Thomas Christopher Greene

A maiden was imprisoned in a stone tower. She loved a lord. Why? Ask the wind and the stars, ask the god of life; for no one else knows these things. And the lord was her friend and her lover; but time passed, and one fine day he saw someone else and his heart turned away. As a youth he loved the maiden. Often he called her his bliss and his dove, and her embrace was hot and heaving. He said, Give me your heart! And she did so. He said, May I ask you for something, my love? And she answered, in raptures, Yes. She gave him all, and yet he never thanked her. The other one he loved like a slave, like a madman and a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask life's mysterious god; for no one else knows these things. She gave him nothing, no, nothing did she give him, and yet he thanked her. She said, Give me your peace and your sanity. And he only grieved that she didn't ask for his life. And the maiden was put in the tower. . . . — Knut Hamsun

It only took Alexis a day to read a five-hundred page book. Fiction stories took her to another world where she could lose herself for a while in someone else's life.
Its funny how things like loans to pay back, a broken home and family, and a future to worry about meant nothing to characters who only had to worry about things like boys, beaches and fun. — Lindsay Chamberlin

Control yourself, she told herself forcibly. Become someone who can deal with this. She took a deep breath and let herself become someone else. An imitation of herself who was calm, even in a situation like this. It was a crude forgery, just a trick of the mind, but it worked. — Brandon Sanderson

Noa stared at her. She would always believe that he was someone else, that he wasn't himself but some fanciful idea of a foreign person; she would always feel like she was someone special because she had condescended to be with someone everyone else hated. His presence would prove to the world that she was a good person, an educated person, a liberal person. Noa didn't care about being Korean when he was with her; in fact, he didn't care about being Korean or Japanese with anyone. He wanted to be just himself, whatever that meant; he wanted to forget himself sometimes. But that wasn't possible. It would never be possible with her. — Min Jin Lee

For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.'
Really,' I said.
We're passive-aggressive people,' she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. 'Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now, for instance, I'm not speaking to two of my sisters and one brother ... At mine [my house], silence is golden. And common.'
To me,' Reggie said, picking up a bottle of Vitamin A and moving it thoughtfully from one hand to the other, 'family is, like, the wellspring of human energy. The place where all life begins.' ...
Harriet considered this as she took a sip of coffee. 'Huh,' she said. 'I guess when someone else does something worse. Then you need people on your side, so you make up with one person, jsut as you're getting pissed off at another.'
So it's an endless cycle,' I said.
I guess.' She took another sip. 'Coming together, falling apart. Isn't that what families are all about? — Sarah Dessen

Invitations not obligations: Our expectations of other people can be a big drain on our emotions. When we ask someone to do something, or, worse, have a belief that someone should do something and insist that he or she comply, it places a great stress on us. And the other person, noting our anxiety and insistence that they conform to our expectations, may actually become less inclined to respond as we like.
Instead, consider everything you want someone else to do to be an invitation that the other person may or may not choose to accept. Of course, if you are an employer or a parent who is trying to ensure a child's safety, you must have parameters and ground rules. Everyone else, however, should be released from the obligation of doing, being, living, and acting as you feel they should. — Will Bowen

Just curious. Like James and Victoria had been curious in the beginning? The thought of Victoria made me tremble, thought the one thing they seemed certain of was that it had not been her. Not this time. She would stick to her obsessed pattern. This was just someone else, a stranger. — Stephenie Meyer

She closes her eyes but can't fall to sleep, and so instead she conjures up again the substance of the dream ... Awake it doesn't take, though; it feels like someone else's life and she like a voyeur, watching from the outside. — Paul Murray

She didn't understand that. "How can anyone be afraid of love?"
"How can they not?" His face was completely aghast. "When you love someone ... truly love them, friend or lover, you lay your heart open to them. You give them a part of yourself that you give to no one else, and you let them inside a part of you that only they can hurt - you literally hand them the razor with a map of where to cut deepest and most painfully on your heart and soul. And when they do strike, it's crippling - like having your heart carved out. It leaves you naked and exposed, wondering what you did to make them want to hurt you so badly when all you did was love them. What is so wrong with you that no one can keep faith with you? That no one can love you? To have it happen once is bad enough ... but to have it repeated? Who in their right mind would not be terrified of that? — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I'm just glad that I'm the musical equivalent of a character actress, because blues singers can keep singing and having an audience at 35, and someone like Madonna's gonna have to find something else to do, 'cos I don't care how pointy those bras are that she wears, they're still gonna look a little odd when she's 55! — Bonnie Raitt

Most of all, she'd missed
feeling connected to someone else. Being a vital part of them - aching when they
were on a trip, knowing that someone was out there missing her and counting the
heartbeats until they were back together again. There was nothing else like
living and breathing for the smile of someone she loved. -leta — Sherrilyn Kenyon

A strange thing happened then. The Speaker agreed with her that she had made a mistake that night, and she knew when he said the words that it was true, that his judgment was correct. And yet she felt strangely healed, as if simply saying her mistake were enough to purge some of the pain of it. For the first time, then, she caught a glimpse of what the power of speaking might be. It wasn't a matter of confession, penance, and absolution, like the priests offered. It was something else entirely. Telling the story of who she was, and then realizing that she was no longer the same person. That she had made a mistake, and the mistake had changed her, and now she would not make the mistake again because she had become someone else, someone less afraid, someone more compassionate. — Orson Scott Card

Beatrix kept pace easily with Christopher as they headed toward the forest. It nagged at him to have someone else holding Albert's leash. Beatrix's assertiveness was like a pebble lodged in the toe of his shoe. And yet when she was near, it was impossible to feel detached from his surroundings. She had a knack of keeping him anchored in the present.
He couldn't stop watching how her legs and hips moved in those breeches. What was her family thinking, to allow her to dress this way? Even in private it was unacceptable. A humorless smile curved his lips as he reflected that he had at least one thing in common with Beatrix Hathaway--neither of them was in step with the rest of the world.
The difference was that he wanted to be.
It had been so easy for him, before the war. He had always known the right thing to do or say. Now the prospect of reentering polite society seemed rather like playing a game in which he had forgotten the rules. — Lisa Kleypas

They're still going to make fun of me," she blurted. "This fight doesn't change that. You can't start kicking people every time someone thinks I'm weird or ugly ... Promise me you won't try. Promise me that you'll try not to care."
He pulled on her hand again, and shook his head, gingerly.
"Because it doesn't matter to me, Park. If you like me," she said, "I swear to God, nothing else matters. — Rainbow Rowell

Got a job for you, Seven."
"Yeah?"
"I need you to find someone."
"Who?"
"A woman," I say. "About five and a half feet tall. Brown hair. Brown eyes."
"That describes half the women in New York."
"Yeah, well, the one I'm looking for is twenty-one or so," I say. "She's good-looking, kind of curvy for being so petite... got a red 'S' tattooed on her wrist..."
He stares at me, like he expects more information. "What else?"
I shrug, glancing at the high heels, flipping them over to look at the red soles. "She wears a size thirty-nine shoe."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
"Shouldn't be too hard," he says, blinking a few times as he looks at the ground. "Only a couple million people in the city."
"That's the spirit," I say, slapping him on the back. — J.M. Darhower

You're a rule person," he said.
"My sister was a cheater. It sort of became necessary."
"She cheated at this game?"
"She cheated ateverything ," I said. "When we played Monopoly, she always
insisted on being banker,
then helped herself to multiple loans and 'service fees' for every real estate
transaction. I was, like, ten or
eleven before I played at someone else's house and they told me you couldn't do
that."
He laughed, the sound seeming loud in all the quiet. I felt myself smiling,
remembering.
"During staring contests," I said, "she always blinked.Always . But then she'd
swear up and down she
hadn't, and make you go again, and again. And when we played Truth, she lied.
Blatantly. — Sarah Dessen

I wanted to touch her; just cup my hand over the curve of her cheek and tell her to make this moment last, because before she knew it she'd be like me, a witness to someone else's moment. — Jodi Picoult

She was scared. I pictured the police knocking, and here I was with a girl I'd been fucking the morning my wife went missing. I'd sought her out that day
I had never gone to her apartment since that first night, but I went right there that morning, because I'd spent hours with my heart pounding behind my ears, trying to get myself to say the words to Amy:
I want a divorce. I am in love with someone else. We have to end. I can't pretend to love you, I can't do the anniversary thing
it would actually be more wring than cheating on you in the first place (I know: debatable.)
But while I was gathering the guts, Amy had preempted me with her speech about still loving me (lying bitch!), and I lost my nerve. I felt like the ultimate cheat and coward, and
the catch-22
I craved Andie to make me feel better,
But Andie was no longer the antidote to my nerves. Quite the opposite.
The girl was wrapping herself around me even now, oblivious as a weed. — Gillian Flynn

Clem is my first dead body. I've heard again and again - mostly from friends who've lost other friends to AIDS - that it's essential to see the corpse of someone you love, especially someone who's died undeservedly young; how it will confirm the way nothing else can that he or she is no longer here. The body won't look like the person you know, the self of that person, at all. This tells you there has to be a soul because something's missing; what else could that something be? The first thing I know, when I see her, isthat this is not a piece of advice I will ever pass on. — Julia Glass

They both carried a million cracks beneath the skin. Even under the stark light of the fluorescents, it was hard to see which of them was more broken. But for the first time, she felt like she had to vanquish her mental illness not for herself but for someone else. Because she was broken with him, and if she fixed herself, maybe she could make him a little less broken, too. — Pam Godwin

She's trying to find herself. Some days I still wonder if I've found me. Maybe we never stop searching. Maybe we evolve the way seasons change, seamlessly without really knowing, not until all the leaves have fallen. This is who I am today. Tomorrow I may be the same. But in years, I'll be someone else. Someone I may like more. Someone I may like less. And that's okay. Because I'm still living. — Krista Ritchie

reminded me on Friday night that we aren't friends, Cressida, and I would like you to remember that now,' she snapped. 'So why don't you go and make someone else feel crap about their life and then when you're done with that, go and look for your boyfriend's chin, — Kate Forster

This was a woman who had long ago figured out she wasn't getting her own happily-ever-after. But, like all disappointed women, she still believed in it, just that it was meant for someone else. — Sarah Addison Allen

She is great," said Jared. "And beautiful. She's like a star to me, something bright and lovely seen from another world. She's someone else's sun. That's how all other girls are to me. You're my sun. — Sarah Rees Brennan

She was free, still, like a child, the way it is before you are seen and then after that you can never remember who you are unless someone else shows it to you. — Francesca Lia Block

For the last week or so it's like getting jabbed with a little needle every time I hear that word. Gram is trying to pretend how excited she is I'm finally in the eighth grade, like this is a really big deal. Which is a joke, because the only reason I got passed from seventh grade is because they figured this way the big butthead can be - quote - someone else's problem, thank God, we've had quite enough of Maxwell Kane - unquote. — Rodman Philbrick

Every person has a right to be unhappy, to suffer in peace without someone else telling her that she is acting like a spoiled brat. Without a certain someone telling her constantly that her life is the stuff that everyone else dreams about. Happiness is not a one-size-fits-all kind of thing. — Suzanne Selfors

Because of that she had never had enough energy to be herself, a person who, like everyone else in the world, needed other people in order to be happy. But other people were so difficult. They reacted in unpredictable ways, they surrounded themselves with defensive walls, they behaved just as she did, pretending they didn't care about anything. When someone more open to life appeared, they either rejected them outright or made them suffer, consigning them to being inferior, ingenuous. — Paulo Coelho