Top 527 Quotes & Sayings by Lisa Kleypas

I'd gone to Wellesley College, an amazing women's college where the students were encouraged to follow our dreams. However, after I graduated and had a historical romance published, more than a few people indicated that, in some way, my career choice was a 'waste' of so much education.

I will admit, I once launched myself at Julie Garwood for a hug, hoping some of her magic would rub off on me... and I have fangirl crushes on Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Linda Howard, and Kresley Cole, among many others.

I have always been an obsessive reader - I remember going back and forth to the local library with stacks of books taller than I was.

I always counsel aspiring novelists that passion is the most important quality for a writer to possess - technique can be taught, but that relentless desire to write has to come from within.

This is not Tolstoy. I don't want to know what critics and professors think of what I'm writing. It might hurt my feelings.

The way glass can be molded or blown or cut into any kind of shape made me think about how we as people - our characters or souls - can be shaped or changed by outside influences.

It's difficult for most of us to be completely honest with ourselves - we hate to admit how vulnerable or needful we are.

We all know that being able to express deep emotion can literally save a person's life, and suppressing emotion can kill you both spiritually and physically.

When something terrible happens, how you react determines who you are from then on.

No matter what your profession is, it's good to scare yourself a little from time to time! It's crucial to keep challenging yourself and to learn from people who are more accomplished than you are.

Before I write the first page of a novel, I spend a long time creating detailed backgrounds for my characters. I imagine the experiences that have formed them, what makes them happy, angry, fearful, and what they yearn for.

I grew up being very shy, very much a bookworm, and I remember desperately wondering how to be accepted by the popular kids.

My ultimate crush may be Judith McNaught - I met her once more than 20 years ago, and she was incredibly kind and encouraging to me. I adore that woman. But I also fangirl over aspiring or beginning authors, because every time I talk with them, I'm so energized and inspired.

Love is always a leap into the unknown. You can try to control as many variables, and understand a situation as you can, but you're still jumping off a cliff and hoping that someone catches you.

Why is life so difficult for some people and not for others? Why do some people have to struggle so much?

If I listened to your advice, I'd be making your mistakes instead of my own.

You have to rely on whatever sparks you have inside.

Most men don't seem to get that telling a pissed-off woman to calm down is like throwing gunpowder on a fire.” ~ Liberty Jones

Sometimes life has a cruel sense of humor, giving you the thing you always wanted at the worst time possible.

I want to fill every part of you, breathe the air from your lungs and leave my handprints on your soul. I want to give you more pleasure than you can bear.

Women. You'll interpret anything as love. You see a man wearing an idiotic expression, and you assume he's been struck by Cupid's arrow when in reality, he's digesting a bad turnip.

Because one day of something wonderful is better than a forever of nothing special.

It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep...a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis.

Shock is a merciful condition. It allows you to get through disaster with a necessary distance between you and your feelings.

Dear Lord,” she said in a strangled whisper. “I can bear it for a while...but please don't let it hurt forever.

If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.

Bad divorce?" Hardy asked, his gaze falling to my hands. I realized I was clutching my purse in a death grip. “No, the divorce was great,” I said. “It was the marriage that sucked.

The next time you face a room full of strangers . . . you might tell yourself that some of them are just friends waiting to be found.

I love you, he thought, looking at Win. I love every part of you, every thought and word...the entire complex, fascinating bundle of all the things you are. I want you with ten different kinds of need at once. I love all the seasons of you, the way you are now, the thought of how much more beautiful you'll be in the decades to come. I love you for being the answer to every question my heart could ask.

Getting to a higher spiritual level is like increasing your credit score. You get a lot more points for sinning and repenting than if you have no credit history at all.

The question, love, is whether you want me enough to take the risk.

Opening up to the wrong person is like putting ammo in their hands.

Over the years I’ve collected a thousand memories of you, every glimpse, every word you’ve ever said to me. All those visits to your family’s home, those dinners and holidays—I could hardly wait to walk through the front door and see you.” The corners of his mouth quirked with reminiscent amusement. “You, in the middle of that brash, bull-headed lot…I love watching you deal with your family. You’ve always been everything I thought a woman should be. And I have wanted you every second of my life since we first met.

Sometimes a woman needs a man for company, no matter how useless he is.

You are your own worst enemy. If you can learn to stop expecting impossible perfection, in yourself and others, you may find the happiness that has always eluded you.

I think in a moment of weakness, you might surprise yourself.

What does your gut tell you?" "My gut and I aren't currently speaking to each other

I’ve never heard of a man being so eager to confess to the parent of a girl he’s just ruined

There's only one thing a bully respected: bigger bully.

There were times in life when you had to take a risk that might end in failure. Because otherwise you would be haunted by what you hadn’t done... the paths you hadn’t taken, the things you hadn’t experienced.

There are some experiences in life they haven't invented the right words for.

Where's your instruction manual?" I asked him. "What's the baby customer-service number?

And it occurred to me that friendship was a lot more dependable, not to mention long-lasting, than love.

But I hadn't known what love was. And I wondered how you could ever be sure, when you thought you loved someone, if you really did.

... He didn't know how to say good-bye. His throat ached from the strain of holding back his emotions. “I don't want to leave you,” he said humbly, reaching for her cold, stiff hands. Emma lowered her head, her tears falling freely. “I'll never see you again, will I?” He shook his head. “Not in this lifetime,” he said hoarsely. She pulled her hands away and wrapped her arms around his neck. He felt her wet lashes brush his cheek. “Then I'll wait a hundred years,” she whispered. “Or a thousand, if I must. Remember that, Nikki. I'll be waiting for you to come to me.

Weddings are never about the bride and groom, weddings are public platforms for dysfunctional families.

But it was too late now. A lifetime too late. A million wishes too late.

Most lives are not distinguished by great achievements. They are measured by an infinite number of small ones. Each time you do a kindness for someone or bring a smile to his face, it gives your life meaning. Never doubt your value, little friend. The world would be a dismal place without you in it. (tweaked version of a passage from Scandal in Spring)

I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.

I figured if I told it to myself often enough, I would start believing it.

But the absence of tears wasn't the same as an absence of feeling.

Rest against my heart. Let me watch over your dreams. And know that tomorrow morning, and every morning after that, you'll awaken next to someone who loves you.

I want you to admit just once what you feel for me. I want to know if you'll miss me even a little. If you'll remember me. If you're sorry for anything.

Make your choice and accept the consequences.

You could run to the farthest corners of the earth. There's no place you could go where I wouldn't love you. Nothing you could do to stop me.

I like pessimists. They’re always the ones who bring life jackets for the boat.

Mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.

A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.

I want you any way I can get you. Not because you’re beautiful or clever or kind or adorable, although devil knows you’re all those things. I want you because there’s no one else like you, and I don’t ever want to start a day without seeing you.

The problem with chasing after happiness was that it wasn't a destination you could reach. It was something that happened along the way.