I’d QUOTES

1 " He looked at me like I was the stars when all I’d ever felt like was the dark nothingness between them. "

2 " In a way, it was the same as any normal break up. You took what was yours …. and I kept what I’d had from before we were together…
You took my heart …. and I had nothing… "

― Ranata Suzuki

3 " How many times did we pass each other before we met? If only I’d known…. I would have searched for you endlessly.
If only I’d found you before it was already too late. "

― Ranata Suzuki

4 " At that point in time, there were three things in life that I knew for certain: (1) I was a girl who’d never met a site she couldn’t hack or a code she couldn’t break, (2) I had a roundhouse that could put a grown man in the hospital, and (3) I would without question chop off my own hands before I’d come within five feet of a pom-pom "

― Jennifer Lynn Barnes , Perfect Cover (The Squad, #1)

5 " In my mind, she was Lebkuchen Spice—ironic, Germanic, sexy, and off beat. And, mein Gott, the girl could bake a damn fine cookie … to the point that I wanted to answer her What do you want for Christmas? with a simple More cookies, please!

But no. She warned me not to be a smart-ass, and while that answer was totally sincere, I was afraid she would think I was joking or,
worse, kissing up.

It was a hard question, especially if I had to batten down the sarcasm. I mean, there was the beauty pageant answer of world peace, although I’d probably have to render it in the beauty pageant spelling of world peas. I could play the boo-hoo orphan card and wish for my whole family to be together, but that was the last thing I wanted, especially at this late date. "

― David Levithan , Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily, #1)

6 " Griffin Hansbury, who was born female but underwent a sex change after graduating from college, has another well-informed view of the powers of testosterone. “The world just changes,” he said. “The most overwhelming feeling was the incredible increase in libido and change in the way I perceived women.” Before the hormone treatments, Hansbury said, an attractive woman in the street would provoke an internal narrative: “She’s attractive. I’d like to meet her.” But after the injections, no more narrative. Any attractive quality in a woman, “nice ankles or something,” was enough to “flood my mind with aggressive pornographic images, just one after another…Everything I looked at, everything I touched turned to sex.” He concluded, “I felt like a monster a lot of the time. It made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot. "

― Christopher Ryan

7 " i want the moon tattooed on my wristsmy grandmother keeps asking me to pray, i don’t have the heart to tell her that mypoems are the only God i have left in memy mother keeps leaving without saying goodbyei wish she’d let me cut my hair in the 7th grade,maybe i’d know how to deal with loss by nowi told myself i’d stop kissing boys who didn’t know my namei said, i’d stop picking at my bones like broken decorations,i’d quit with the smoking and the drunken poems, and when i said things like “my bones are heavy” i would only mean itas a good thingheavy bones can’t be broken,you can’t break heavy bones "

8 " It’s a new era at the Chateau.” Antoine said with a wry smile. “Never thought I’d have a wolf shifter here as a guest.” "

9 " You are my heaven. I just never knew I’d find it here on Earth. "

― Nancee Cain , Tempting Jo

10 " There was no other way to say it. After being heartbroken for so long, I had made myself completely numb inside. Maybe not from physical pain, but anything emotional, yes. Sexual pleasure? Numb to that, too. I’d have been a great actress. After all, I had the perfect, mind-blowing orgasm down to an art. Suppose I deserve an Oscar for that. "

― Jennifer Salaiz

11 " In my time,” he said, “they believed in witches. Are you a witch, Honor, that you make me say these things to you?”
Causing him to rip open wounds that had stayed safely scabbed over for so long that, most of the time, he managed to forget they existed.
Her hands, so very, very gentle, continued to hold his face as she tugged him down until their foreheads touched.
“I’m no witch, Dmitri. If I was, I’d know how to fix you. "

― Nalini Singh , Archangel's Blade (Guild Hunter, #4)

12 " I felt it. I heard the snap of my heart tearing in half. It wasn’t a messy, dirty rip like I’d expected, but a smooth, clean line that knew just where to break to hurt me the most. "

― T.L. Martin , Touched by Death

13 " JAMIE'S SONG 'Million Years/Billion Deaths':

Every beat of my heart says,
‘Who’d wanna be a heart?’
Every cell in my body,
Wants to split apart.

Though I know I have to be strong.
And I’m sure I won’t have to wait long.

But when each day lasts forever,
And when every night lasts much longer,
Tell me how am I supposed to go on?

But if each moment with you,
Lasts as long as these lonely nights do,
Then I’d wait a million years for you.
Yes, I’ll wait a million years for you.
And I’ll die a billion deaths to get to you.
To get to you…

Every breath I take whispers,
‘Who’d wanna be in love?’
Every vein in my body,
Has bled dry, my love.

Though I know I have to be strong.
And I’m sure I won’t have to wait long.

But when each day lasts forever,
And when every night lasts much longer,
Tell me how am I supposed to go on?

But if each moment with you,
Lasts as long as these lonely nights do,
Then I’d wait a million years for you.
Yes, I’ll wait a million years for you.
And I’ll die a billion deaths to get to you.
To get to you… "

― Neha Yazmin , Every Little Piece of Us (Soulmates Saga, #3)

14 " Is autism a disease?

If a woman asked me right now, “but wouldn’t you rather be cured?” I’d reply, “would you like to be cured of being a woman?”

Autism, like womanhood, is painful, and difficult, and not made easy by the structure of our society. But it is who we are.

There are treatments that can make certain aspects easier, yes. But there is no whole cure because there is no whole disease.

Some women take birth control to reduce the effects of PMS or PMDD, to stop their bodies from being so at odds with the world, to make living just a little more easy, a little more comfortable. But it is not for every woman, it does not change the fact that they are a woman, and it does not change the sexism that they face every day, all the problems that result from the fact of society being built to serve people who are not them.

I’d like treatments for autistic people to be seen in the same light. Medicine’s priority should be to improve quality of life, not to make a person more palatable to society.

Society must be forced to deal with these people because these people will not be easily consigned to oblivion. "

― Irene Wendy Wode

15 " For all my life, I had been passive when faced with dangers. I was stunned as I swam to find that I had, for the first time in my history, asserted myself and been truly heard—respected. It felt monumental, I was buzzing with adrenaline. It was as if I’d become someone else entirely.

I had escaped a kidnapper. It finally felt real. My body unclenched tension in the balmy pool.

I was proud of the strength I’d found. I was the one who asserted he take me back; I caused him to listen. I was no longer a passive Doll Girl, trapped. This was me learning I could trust my voice—I’d used it, and it finally worked! I was triumphant. This escape showed me: I had grown, and grown vividly. "

― Aspen Matis , Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

16 " His palm presses against my cheek, stroking away stray strands of hair, “Eve, I’ve never been so scared. The thought that I’d never get to see you again, to apologise for the way I treated you, I couldn’t bear it. When they dragged you out I was so relieved, knowing that I had a chance to get you back.” He squeezes me tightly against his body as he admits, “I can’t lose you Eve. Them taking you made everything so clear. I love you and I thought I wasn’t going to get the chance to prove how much. I couldn’t let that happen. "

― Angela Louise McGurk , Absolution (The Vampire Alliance, #1)

17 " If I wanted to go to bed at ten o’clock I did. If I wanted to go to bed at six p.m., I did. I woke at sunrise because the new sun lit my eyes. The sun was my clock; my body my pace-keeper. I started walking when I wanted, kept going until precisely when I wanted to stop.

When I was tired, feeling like stopping but wanting to persist, I’d listen to Blood On The Tracks. "

― Aspen Matis , Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

18 " From that unremarkable gap in dense northern forest, I could finally see clearly that if I hadn’t walked away from school, through devastating beauty alone on the Pacific Crest Trail, met rattlesnakes and bears, fording frigid and remote rivers as deep as I am tall—feeling terror and the gratitude that followed the realization that I’d survived rape—I’d have remained lost, maybe for my whole life. The trail had shown me how to change.

This is the story of how my recklessness became my salvation.

I wrote it. "

― Aspen Matis , Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

19 " It took me almost two thousand miles in the woods to see I had to do some hard work that wasn’t simply walking—that I needed to begin respecting my own body’s boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me.

Moving forward, I wanted rules.

First—when I felt unsafe I’d leave, immediately. The first time, not the tenth time. Not after a hundred red flags smacked in wind violently, clear as trail signs pointing the way to SNAKES. Not after I’d been bitten—the violation. If I wasn’t interested, I would reject the man blatantly. "

― Aspen Matis , Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

20 " I’m so drunk,” I said through the bathroom door, though it wasn’t true. I’d declared it to him in my anxiety to take pressure and responsibility off of myself for what I wanted to do next. I had already decided I at least wanted to kiss him, be held. Yet my desire surprised me. I felt the weight of shame not only on rape now, but on sex too. I was confused by it. I felt unready to hold myself responsible for the decision if I slept with him. "

― Aspen Matis , Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

1
2