Book #32: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

This book. This book. It encapsulates so many themes in my life, so well. The thoughts within it left me scribbling down quotes from page one.

This book left me feeling whole and hopeful.

Love was also an easy word, used carelessly. Felons and creeps would offer it coated in sugar, and users could dangle it so enticingly that wouldn't notice it had things attached--heavy things, things like pity and need, that were as weighty as anchors and iron beams and just as impossible to get out from underneath. (1)

I was sort of the queen of good choices, ruled by niceness and doing the right thing. (2)

Or was I going to be someone who could only continue to stumble and flounder and search, which is what I really felt would happen, since Dad's words sounded as shiny and hollow as Christmas ornaments to me? (3)

I badly wished I could know my own truths and speak them, but they seemed out of reach, and it seemed better to be sure of yourself in secret. (3-4)

Maybe I just wanted to believe in love, even if I didn't all the way believe in me and Daniel Jarvis. (4)

There's something sort of sadistic and voyeuristic about teachers making you do family trees. Family trees should be private matters. No one would ask you to show your family's medical records or list of dirty secrets, and yet it's all there, divorces and marriages and babies, the most private stuff. Or maybe it only seems that way to those of us whose trees have broken branches and sawed-off limbs. (53)

I wanted to understand things, really understand them, in some way that was deep and solid, and yet my own niceness required that I keep skimming along the surface. (63)

I felt that sort of low, vague pissed-off that could turn global. You know, where you get a paper cut and curse not only the paper but the paper factories and the paper factory workers and pulp mills and trees. That's the thing about discontent--it's very flexible. It's perfectly content to invade wherever it happens to land. (72)

Years from then, after Barry, even, I finally learned that it was all right to say something wasn't working for me when it wasn't working. The world doesn't come crashing down when you speak the truth. (Olivia Thornton, 124)

We should not give away a moment to anyone who does not deserve it. (Elizabeth Bennett, 129)

"Trust should be used sparingly, like salt." (137)

We can be so large and then so small, and right then I felt like a tiny little figure sitting on that seat, with a whisper for a voice. (152-153)

The approach of the sea can do that to you, and so can the salty wetness of ocean air. That smell makes you feel that things are on the horizon, and I could feel the heaviness inside life, too, when I saw the glinty white water, sparkly with sun. The sea seemed patient and endless and wise. It was a visual sigh of relief. (161)

"There ought to be some Web site called 'Crap from My Ex dot com.' You could trade the Crock-Pot you got left with for someone else's eight-track player." (183)

Can you feel sentimental about something that never happened? Or that might happen but hasn't yet? Because that's what I felt then, riding in Frances Lee's truck. Jake's voice, soft and low, made everything seem important and full of meaning--EZ Storage places seemed full of meaning, and so did exit signs and flocks of crows and rest stops. Jake sang, and Sprout leaned her cheek against the window and Frances Lee drove with a smile and trick drivers honked and waved at Bob, and this was how we made our way to Elizabeth Bennett's house (mantel clock, hands stopped at 3:30), the second stop of our karmic quest. (184)

Sprout emerged from the bathroom. "The counter has gold glitter in it," she reported.

"Fancy," Frances Lee said. (209)

"I kept wondering what your kitchen looked like, and if you had a dog," Frances Lee said. "Where you went to school. He stopped coming over, but I didn't stop imagining." (213)

I thought about hands, all that they do in a lifetime--plant seeds in dirt, grasp hammers, hold babies, give pills to a loved one. I thought about Jake's own hands, what they'd already touched--beach sand, number 2 pencils, cool sheets, sudsy shampoo, steering wheels, and Christmas wrappings. And what they might one day touch. A hand, the curved space of a hip, smooth hair warmed by the sun. (226)

"A jar is just a jar except when it was in your kitchen growing up. An umbrella is an umbrella, except when the man you love stood under it during a hailstorm when he asked you to marry him," Olivia said, and sipped her tea. (231)

Can I just say one more thing? Ask for the best for yourself, ladies. (Joelle Giofranco, 247)

Long-kept objects were past moments where things felt sweet and right--a shell, curved and white, so full of hope still that it almost feels warm to the touch. (248)

Those questions you have? Whether he's the one, whether you feel about him the way you should, or whether the relationship is going okay?

When you're not sure whether you're in love with someone or not, the answer is not. (Heather Grove, 259)

"This doesn't have to be over," Jake whispered.

They were the best words I'd ever heard. (273)

And mom--I knew I would have to confess the this trip, but I still hoped we would hold this one piece away from her. I hoped Mom would never know we'd been here, in this neighborhood of fat elms and lilacs, suddenly familiar. Tidy brick Tudors with leaded windows and arched doorways. Cars parked along the street and lampposts--actual lampposts, with curved iron arms and round bulbs-- (279)

And when he sees you and he does not reach out, does not reach out but purposefully turns away, when he decides you are not good enough to love, when he does not see your goodness, your beauty, you will have a choice. To be devastated, or to let the truth it, finally, finally, all the way, all the way, all the way, until it fills you with its own strength, with its own knowledge--that love is light and not darkness, that love that is not good is not worthy of you, that love can only truly be given by those who are able, those with hearts of quality and with careful hands. (320)