Home > Work > The Romance Reader's Guide to Life
1 " The route to our highest hopes tends to run right through some dark, booby-trapped places. A girl needs a map and a light to steer her; she might need a flamethrower or a cannon as well. She might need a pirate lover. "
― Sharon Pywell , The Romance Reader's Guide to Life
2 " Electra Gates would never concern herself with how much lard should be in pie dough, I thought; but then, I was not Electra Gates. I wanted pie, something that didn't seem to interest romantic heroines. "
3 " If you've ever been treated like a goddess, I'll tell you, it messes with your judgment. You forget, if you ever knew it to begin with, that lots of goddesses end up sacrificed on some altar or other. "
4 " But back to 1939, a year with carefully parceled-out coal and lots of vegetable dinners. We told her that ponies don’t fit in Santa’s sleigh and they made reindeer nervous, but she went ahead and wrote PONEE on her Christmas list anyhow, all capitals andan illustration of the kind of pony she wanted directly below the list: a little piebald stocky thing with ears that looked like a rabbit’s. She picked out a name and hada serious talk with the ice man, who had a gray gelding named Bonehead, about hay and grain and stabling. When once again there was a package with home-knitted mittens under the tree instead of a PONEE, she stuffed them with paper, had me help her sew button eyes on them, and arranged for the two mittens to fall in love by supper andbe married by bedtime. By Epiphany she’d dressed empty thread spools in ribbons and toilet paper and made them the mittens’ children. I helped her. "
5 " Snyder who had made Jane cry by hiding her favorite plastic horse and telling herthat it had died in the night. That was Snyder to a tee, senselessly mean in very little ways. I say it was a senseless meanness because being mean didn’t make him any happier. If you’re going to hide a plastic horse and tell its owner it’s dead, you should at least get some pleasure from it. Otherwise what are you doing? That was my enduring question—what was he doing? "
6 " A person only gets to be more of what they are as they get old. "
