513 Quotes by Penny Reid

I also came from a notable family – my mother was a US senator, my father was the dean of the college of medicine at UCLA, and my maternal grandfather was an astronaut.

Do you honestly think God would make a creature as lovely and talented and good as your sister, and then make the way she looks something sinful? Something to be ashamed of? No. He wouldn’t. If anything, your sister – her face, her body, her mind, and her heart – give glory to Him. And she shouldn’t be hidden. You don’t hide something that remarkable away from the world, like your parents have done, like you want to do. That’s the true sin.

We’re not pumpkins. We’re stunning autumn gourds.

All people are broken, Shelly. No one is perfect. Some seek help. Some don’t. But no one is ever fixed by another person. We can only work on ourselves. We are – using your analogy – our own refrigerators, no one else’s.

The rain, like the flame, is dangerous. But you don’t realize its power until it’s too late.

I didn’t tell her, because I didn’t think it would help, but all people are lost, to varying degrees. I suspected that it’s only when we love others – through purpose, friendship, romance, or any combination thereof – that we become found.

You’ll be tactile, and I’ll be clingy, and we’ll be very happy just as long as we sleep in a twin bed and call each other seventeen hundred times a day.

Over the years I’d learned absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. The heart becomes wary, somnolent and cynical during periods of prolonged absence, burdened with cares and fears borne in solitude. However, absence does make the body greedy and irrationally amorous with frustrated need.

Love was never enough, not without mutual respect and a great deal of drudgery and effort. And even then, it wasn’t enough. Wanting each other, being open to change, pushing each other to improve and grow – for the better – working to deserve each other, was the key. I loved him and I always would. But that was the easy part. Working to deserve him and demanding that he work to deserve me, everyday – that was hard. But he was worth it. And I was worth it.