Home > Work > Plain Bad Heroines
1 " Too much had happened that night, too much had happened before that night, and so too much climbed into bed with them, sat heavily upon them, and kept them up and thinking, even if they did not say the things they were thinking to each other. "
― Emily M. Danforth , Plain Bad Heroines
2 " Eleanor Faderman knew many books. But never before had she read a book that seemed to know her. "
3 " I like it so much better when nobody expects anything from me and then I surprise them by delivering anything at all." "That bar’s so low you’re gonna stub your toe on it. "
4 " Alex saw very clearly how dangerous a book like Mary’s could become in the hands of such impressionable girls, such privileged girls: girls who kissed and fondled and laughed as they read each other passages out in the woods; girls whose parents' social standing had taught them that there was nothing at all in the world they could not subjugate, purchase, or ignore; girls who set fires only to watch as others tried, and failed, to put them out. "
5 " Don’t find yourself regretting this. You’re much too young to haunt your own life. "
6 " That version, as with so many of the stories we tell about our history, erased a woman- a plain, bad heroine- in favor of a less messy and more palatable yarn about two feuding brothers from New England. "
7 " I'd rather we didn´t speak anymore. Let's just wait together in unhappy silence. "
8 " I never disclose my real desires or the texture of my soul. "
9 " troubling are the deaths of older people submerged in deep regret. "
10 " She was not unhappy. But she was alone. Her parents had once seen so much of the world, they had lived in it. But when they'd taught her about what they'd seen and done, it had not made their child want to seek it out for herself. She was content in this cottage on her own land by the water. "
11 " And so every day of my life I am playing a part; "
12 " Isn’t that what the swell of a crush is, after all? Recognizing the flush of truth in all the love clichés? "
13 " To Be, Rather Than to Seem, "
14 " Death was certain, but it was not imminent. "
15 " Clara’s parents, on the other hand, were fourth-generation Americans shaped predominately by the conventions of their gilded social class. A few smart investments—steel and timber did the trick—and they’d watched their inherited wealth grow to numbers so high that even they could scarcely conceive of them. As such, they had a fastidious respect for the orderly following of the rules and systems from which they benefited. It all made them feel quite secure in the correctness of their position within the social order, and security was Clara’s mother’s favorite feeling, outranked only by virtuous womanhood. (She was cousin Charles’s favorite aunt, after all.) "
16 " She was a person like this: full of opinion and firm standing, she planted her flag in more topics than you could quite believe she could actually care about. "
17 " My bright smile haunts no one. I shoot no opaque glances from my eyes, which are not like the sea by any means. I have never eaten any viands, and my appetite for what I do eat is most excellent. And my voice has never yet, to my knowledge, been full of tears.No, I am not a heroine. "
18 " What I find consistently scary is ambiguity, uncertain footing. Is the shadow on my floor my imagination, or a trick of the light, or something else, something malevolent or supernatural? How much am I willing to let myself give in to my fear, to believe? "
19 " The possibilities of this life are magnificent," Audrey says.- "
20 " This felt a whole lot like phone flirting to Merritt, Readers, but judge as you will (because of course you will). "
