Top 83 Quotes & Sayings by Anna Godbersen

That was the way love was, she guessed-it left you always unsteady on your feet.

Her life, she realized, had all the charm of a steel trap.

He was a mystery to her, and every time she tried to solve him it caused her a little more pain. But when she tired to give him up he pursued her in her thoughts, stronger each time.

Interesting" people were her favorite hobby. She collected them: the type who did gay things late at night and smoked cigarettes in mixed company, those would have most scandalized her own mother.

The world is such a marvel - it gave you trials, but if you were still and concentrated, if you tried to do the right thing, it always provided you with salvation.

So this was betrayal. It was like being left alone in the desert at dusk without water or warmth. It left your mouth dry and will broken. It sapped your tears and made you hollow.

Good girls hold their heads high by daylight, Their grace and their virtue soaring with kites, While bad girls slink along in their shame- Everyone stares at them, everyone blames. But those bad girls sleep soundly at night, Ne'er do their consciences wake them in a fright, While our good girls toss and they turn- They lay awake for those who will burn.

As she always did on any really important day, Penelope Hayes wore red.

THE LUXE IS . . . Pretty girls in pretty dresses, partying until dawn. Irresistible boys with mischievous smiles and dangerous intentions. White lies, dark secrets, and scandalous hookups. This is Manhattan in 1899.

That is what I want to tell you about: the girls with their short skirts and bright eyes and big-city dreams. The girls of 1929.

Though her emotions had not deviated from a jittery frailty she knew that in her own room she could at least attempt sleep and that if she dreamed she might then finally be with Henry.

All really interesting girls invent themselves.

Diana felt she was beginning to understand why, in all those novels she read, the headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.

Her heart the damned thing had begun to race and she only hoped that the rapid inflation and deflation of her chest wasn't visible beneath her fitted bodice.

But I wanted to tell you before I left how completely abjectly sorry I am for all the pain I have caused you and that if I die you were the one true love of my life. By the time you read this I will be gone but please know I am still always at your side.... Yours forever Henery William Schoonmaker

He was just like summer, and she loved summer. If she had any wish, it would be to live a lifetime of summers.

Well, if you weren't flirting with him"-his voice had now grown a little plaintive-"who was he, and what did you want with him anyway?" "If you are so determined to bore me, I may just have to go home." Astrid sighed carelessly, "What a shame, when I am wearing such a pretty dress.

He turned his dark eyes on the girl whom he had dreamed of so often over the previous months. Beside him, at that very moment of existence, at the heart of torrential downpour, she was exquisitely real, and she, too, seemed content to go on sitting there forever.

Oh yes, well, I find myself unconventional everywhere.

Living too much in one's head can be dangerous.

You love her," Teddy observed quietly. Henry replied with an uncharacteristic lack of irony: "Yes." Teddy's eyes shifted to the plaster interlacing that decorated the ceiling in curlicues. "Lord, you never make it easy, do you." "No.

I can't imagine what my life was before. I can't imagine ever being without you for very long again.

Always stay sharp on railways and cruise ships for transit has a way of making everything clear.

Girls," their mother interjected, "you must both stop being strange - it is unattractive. And don't forget your hats. It would be absolutely the end for me if you two came down with freckles at a time like this.

She was full of some strange energy that morning. Her every movement had purpose and life and she seemed to find satisfaction in every little thing.

Gossip is just a tool to distract people who have nothing better to do from feeling jealous of those few of us still remaining with noble hearts.

The value of secrets is ever fluctuating although ladies who have been in society for a long time learn that a secret kept can be worth more than a secret told.

It is a fact of big cities that one girl's darkest how is always another's moment of shining triumph, and New York is the biggest and cruelest city of them all.

Among her other talents were forgetting what she did not like and ignoring what she preferred not to see.

But in that moment she realized how false most smiles were and what a tremendous waste of time.

So this is how life was, she thought with a faint smile: It wore you down until you emerged at its wildest, most unexpected ends.

Diana knew it wouldn't be right, but then she told herself that things only looked wrong when there was someone to see you.

A young woman, newly wed, may find herself in the delightful position of wanting to do nothing without the company of her darling husband. She may indeed discover that she spends all her waking hours with her fellow to the exclusion of every other friend or family member. This is understandable, but wholly unacceptable, to society.

You don’t need to marry a man with millions. You only need to be your exquisite self.

The headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.

In New York there is always something to look at, but it is all infinitely more interesting through a window in the backseat of a limousine.

The living are made of nothing but flaws. The dead, with each passing day in the afterlife, become more and more impeccable to those who remain earthbound.

A lady must retain always her composure. Even in a rainstorm, she must appear joyous and dry. When she loses her composure, then the respect of her peers and her staff will follow in short order.

There was plenty of life left and if he had to he would use it all to get her back. The time had passed for making promises to her-all that was left for him was to act.

She should have know that villains often come with pretty faces.

They were a society whose chief vocations were to entertain and be entertained.

Things only looked wrong when there was someone to see you.

It is well known that a man, when wooing a lady to be his wife, must first win over the females she most confides in—her friends, of course, and her sister, if she has one.

I've always believed in savoring the moments. In the end, they are the only things we'll have.

It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer. Everything fades: the shimmer of gold over White Cove; the laughter in the night air; the lavender early morning light on the faces of skyscrapers, which had suddenly become so heroically tall. Every dawn seemed to promise fresh miracles, among other joys that are in short supply these days. And so I will try to tell you, while I still remember, how it was then, before everything changed-that final season of the era that roared.

The first stab of love is like a sunset, a blaze of color - oranges, pearly pinks, vibrant purples.

She considered herself unconventional.

Girls took to dressing like boys, and though women had obtained the vote, we had swiftly moved on to pursuing flashier freedoms: necking in cars and smoking cigarettes and walking down city streets in flesh colored stockings.

What was it about that short creature with her wild hair and spurious air of purity and why would anyone much less two men love her and to such disastrous ends.

Heart-stopping envy is the sincerest form of flattery.

After Henry's treatment of her she wasn't sure that men could honestly love women but she wanted to believe it. She wanted to be told pretty things and for the frightening clip of her heart to slow to something more reasonable.

We see our sins reflected everywhere: in the pallor of our intimates’ faces, in the scratching of tree branches against windows, in the strange movements of everyday objects. These may be messages from God or tricks of the eye, but in neither case are we permitted to ignore them.

She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose.

To look in the face of hard things and keep moving forward - that's what one has to do.

Instead, he sat in the parlor of his family's Fifth Avenue mansion, growing older by the minute just like everybody else.

It is a truth universally acknowledge that there will always be a gentleman to dance with, except at just the moment when you require one most.

It's the craziest thing, but I can't stop thinking about you.

Henry was thinking of the younger Holland sister of the way she could go from being an impetuous girl to a knowing woman in a few seconds and never lose the stars in her eyes.

Love is all right, as things go, but lovers can be a terrible waste of a girl's time.

Life was a short window and there was no sense in doing the wrong thing over and over even if it was so difficult to stop.