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“I likened her to the slender PSYCHÉ and judged that the perfection of her face ennobled everything unclean around her: The dusty hems of her bunched-up skirt, the worn straps of her nightshirt; the blackened soles of her bare feet [...] All this and the pungent air! Ô this night, sweet pungent night! "HÉBÉ" may come but a season. But this girl's season would know a hot spring
and an Indian summer.”
― Roman Payne

“God hides great things in little things. In every young girl, God hides a great woman; in every young boy, He hides a great man; in a small seed, He hides a big forest! A little is never inadequate if God's hands are its creator! Don't despise little things!”
― Israelmore Ayivor, The Great Hand Book of Quotes

“I was so much more powerful than anyone knew. I was an animal learning to fight back, instinctively, fiercely. I was a brave girl. I was a fit fox.

I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“I no longer needed to peel myself of my skin, or to hide. To Dash the colorless ephemeral things that existed just beneath my surface were as vivid as the beauty marks he traced on my cheek.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“... allow me to be an old man for a moment and to remind a young girl who is used to being impulsive that there can be none of that anymore.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“To be loved by a pure young girl, to be the first to reveal to her the strange mystery of love, is indeed a great happiness, but it is the simplest thing in the world. To take captive a heart which has had no experience of attack, is to enter an unfortified and ungarrisoned city. Education, family feeling, the sense of duty, the family, are strong sentinels, but there are no sentinels so vigilant as not to be deceived by a girl of sixteen to whom nature, by the voice of the man she loves, gives the first counsels of love, all the more ardent because they seem so pure.”
― Alexandre Dumas fils, La dame aux camélias

“I was the director of my life, it was already true, and I would soon lead myself to my dreamed-of destinations.

It was the task of my one thousand miles of solitude.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Ever since she was a young girl, [Patricia Highsmith] had felt an extraordinary empathy for animals, particularly cats. The creatures, she said, 'provide something for writers that humans cannot: companionship that makes no demands or intrusions, that is as restful and ever-changing as a tranquil sea that barely moves'. Her affection for cats was 'a constant as was feline companionship wherever her domestic situation permitted,' says Kingsley. 'As for animals in general, she saw them as individual personalities often better behaved, and endowed with more dignity and honesty than humans. Cruelty to or neglect of any helpless living creature could turn her incandescent with rage.' Janice Robertson remembers how [...] Highsmith was walking through the streets of Soho when she saw a wounded pigeon lying in the gutter. 'Pat decided there and then that this pigeon should be rescued,' says Janice. 'Although I think Roland persuaded her that it was past saving, she really was distraught. She couldn't bear to see animals hurt.' Bruno Sager, Highsmith's carer at the end of her life, recalls the delicacy with which the writer would take hold of a spider which had crawled into the house, making sure to deposit it safely in her garden. 'For her human beings were strange - she thought she would never understand them - and perhaps that is why she liked cats and snails so much,' he says.”
― Andrew Wilson, Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι

“To be loved by a pure young girl, to be the first to reveal to her the strange mystery of love, is indeed a great happiness, but it is the simplest thing in the world. To take captive a heart which has had no experience of attack, is to enter an unfortified and ungarrisoned city. Education, family feeling, the sense of duty, the family, are strong sentinels, but there are no sentinels so vigilant as not to be deceived by a girl of sixteen to whom nature, by the voice of the man she loves, gives the first counsels of love, all the more ardent because they seem so pure.

The more a girl believes in goodness, the more easily will she give way, if not to her lover, at least to love, for being without mistrust she is without force, and to win her love is a triumph that can be gained by any young man of five-and-twenty. See how young girls are watched and guarded! The walls of convents are not high enough, mothers have no locks strong enough, religion has no duties constant enough, to shut these charming birds in their cages, cages not even strewn with flowers. Then how surely must they desire the world which is hidden from them, how surely must they find it tempting, how surely must they listen to the first voice which comes to tell its secrets through their bars, and bless the hand which is the first to raise a corner of the mysterious veil!”
― Alexandre Dumas fils, La dame aux camélias

“Then Sunny St. James will take over the world. Or at least my little corner of it.”
― Ashley Herring Blake, The Mighty Heart of Sunny St. James

“Once upon a long ago time I was a girl with hopeful halos in my eyes—not unlike you—not a typical beauty but beautiful nonetheless, as all young girls tend to be in their prime, even if they don’t tend to know it.”
― Shannon Celebi, Small Town Demons

“Ani saw herself clearly in that moment, as a face in darkness gains sudden dimensions in a flash of lightning - a young girl, a silly thing, a lapdog, a broken mare.”
― Shannon Hale

“I had feared this end, wondered where I would go from it, from the moment I first stepped on this footpath in the desert. But I found I was not afraid of reaching it now. I was happy. I hadn't found every answer for where I was going, but I now had all I needed to take these next steps. I knew I would do what I needed to become a writer now.”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“There was so little I wanted to carry. Packing my backpack took me all of four minutes”
― Aspen Matis, Girl in the Woods: A Memoir

“Seconds later, a girl emerged from the stairwell, her feet barely tapping the floor. I stepped back, shocked. She wasn't a fifty-year-old lady. She wasn't my daughter. She wasn't Robert either. She was fifteen, if that. Her cheeks were the color of brick. I opened the door. She was wearing a rain jacket, and her hands were hidden in her sleeves.
"Sorry," she said. "The subway was so slow. I got out at Ninety-Sixth Street and walked."
Her voice was deeper than I would have thought. She took off a hat that looked too big for her, all flaps and flannel. She was long-necked, reddish-haired, and freckled, but olive in the skin, as if she'd been shaded. Her eyes were light blue, like ancient sea glass. She took off her sneakers without using her hands and then leaned over and placed them neatly by the door. They were flat as pancakes, with shoelaces that didn't match. She was wearing socks with white bugs on them. She curled her toes when she saw me looking.
"You know they eat them in Thailand?" she said. "Oven-baked with green curry."
"Socks?" I asked.
"No," she said and the sides of her cheeks lifted into a smile. "Crickets on my socks.”
― Jessica Soffer, Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots

“He grinned, feeling as young as he once did in Vashti's presence. Esther brought back the joys of youth, and he felt a sense of deep gratitude and satisfaction that he had listened to his servants when they suggested the contest that had brought her to him. He would not admit to her his deep need, nor how well she fulfilled that in him, but he felt it just the same.”
― Jill Eileen Smith, Star of Persia:

“She knew the land in the way a child knows the land, with an intimacy and fantasy few adults have ever managed.
She knew where the sycamores had been hollowed out by lightning and become secret hideouts. She knew where the mushrooms were likeliest to raise their pale heads in fairy rings, and where fool's gold shimmered below the surface of the creek.”
― Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

“Is anyone gonna invent a Richter scale to measure the magnitude of emotions in a young girl’s heart?”
― Zidrou, The Adoption

“Now hear me. Before the end,
you will pluck snowdrops at
midwinter, die by your own
choosing, and weep for a
nightingale.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale