Anna Godbersen famous quotes

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Jealousy #Heart #People

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Gentleman #Moments #Acknowledge

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Heartbreak #Betrayal #Broken

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

#Best Friend #Crush #Sunset

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Summer #Morning #Laughter

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Girl #Mother #Two

All really interesting girls invent themselves.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Girl #Interesting #Really Interesting

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

#Moments #Ends #Savoring

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Morning #Energy #Purpose

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Running #Pain #Tired

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

#Thinking About You #Thinking

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

#Important #Red

Ah well that I can't tell you." Diana ducked her head so that the brim of her bonnet covered her face. "Some things must remain a mystery and for now I think I'll keep my opinion of you and your compliments to myself.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Thinking #Faces #Opinion

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Men #Two #Hair

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

#Feet #Way

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Sleep #Might #Rooms

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Long #Secret #Values

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Promise #Use #Plenty

She felt so much aware of her own beauty it seemed inconceivable that everybody else wouldn't notice the difference too.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Differences

She was a vision in a white gown her dark hair forming a hazy halo around her rosy heart-shaped face. Her long lashes fluttered to touch her cheeks and then her eyes opened fully in his direction. Her small round mouth flexed in an immediate and knowing smile. That's the girl I'm going to marry Henry thought.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Girl #Eye #Heart

She found herself longing for home-not just for the hotel but for New York and all the real novels that she could lose herself in there.
-- Anna Godbersen

#New York #Real #Home

That was how the heroine of a book would play it and Diana was still writing her own story the best heroines she'd always believed took their fate into their own hands.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Book #Writing #Fate

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Believe #Heart #Men

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Heart #Race #Deflation

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

#Way #Ships #Cruise

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Winning #Men #Wife

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#New York #Interesting #Looks

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

#Men #Self #Needs

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

#Waste #Wasting Time #Moments

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

#Summer #Wish #Would Be

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

#Long #Imagine #Without You

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Mother #Gay #Night

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Girl #Stars #Eye

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Girl #Boys #Cities

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

#Talent #Forget

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Girl #Dream #Eye

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Girl #New York #Cities

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
-- Anna Godbersen

#Pain #Sorry #Your Side

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Eye #Ceilings #Irony

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Girl #Sleep #Night

There was no pleasure like being envied on a mass scale.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Envy #Pleasure #Scales

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Girl #Lying #Party

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

#Moving #Looks #Faces

Don't go looking for boys in the dark They will say pretty things then leave you with scars. Do go looking for boys in the park For that is where the true gentlemen are.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Life #Dark #Boys

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Eye #Tree #Everyday

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Afterlife #Flaws #Made

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

#Diana #Novel

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

#Girl #Love Is #Waste

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Home #Flirting #Voice

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Girl #Real #Heart

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Husband #May #Waking

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

#Chiefs #Vocation

Oh yes, well, I find myself unconventional everywhere.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Unconventional #Wells

...she considered herself unconventional...
-- Anna Godbersen

#Unconventional

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

#Guilt #Diana #Wrongdoing

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Trials #World #Salvation

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

#Wrongdoing

The headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.
-- Anna Godbersen

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

#Fifth Avenue #Growing #Minutes

Heart-stopping envy is the sincerest form of flattery.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Heart #Envy #Stopping

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Unexpected #Ends

Henry shook his head, 'I was drunk,' he said, trying to sound both ashamed and firm in this belief. He remembered the rosebush incident very clearly, of course, but he knew that sneaking into the bedroom window of his fiancee's little sister wasn't something he wanted to explain to his father. Sometimes, Henry reflected, being taken for a perpetual drunk was sort of convenient.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Father #Taken #Drunk

It had been an awful thing to lose Henry the first time, to matrimony, but to discover what a false front he was capable of was another kind of blow, and it had left her almost speechless. Then there was the fury with herself—for she had known what Henry’s love was, and still she had gone back to suffer a little more at his hands.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Blow #Hands #Suffering

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

#Steel #Charm #Traps

Already she could feel the stunning weight of a lifetime of regret for letting him go, and she knew that it was enought to bury her alive.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Regret #Alive #Weight

It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Summer #Forget #Easy

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

#Life #Too Much #Dangerous

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

#Faces #Villain #Should

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Order #Peers #Dry

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

#Sight

She had had no idea what it would do to her seeing him in a suit.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Ideas #Suits

They will stop calling brides beautiful after today—you have simply set the standard too high,' he said.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Beautiful #Calling #Today

It seemed to her as though everything that was good and true had been blasted out of the world. All those things had been crushed destroyed made to disappear.
-- Anna Godbersen

#World #Disappear #Made

She was trying to sound tough and impatient, but she knew that vulnerable desire to be wooed was still brimming in her tone.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Desire #Trying #Tone

Good night.' Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Good Night #Beach #Moving

A man is made in the rough-and-tumble of the world a lady emerges from the flossy back rooms of her own imagination.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Men #Imagination #World

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.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Choices #Window #Difficult

Henry closed his eyes and imagined the sweet petulant woundedness with which she had stared at him on the beach. He felt a little proud that she could love him.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Sweet #Beach #Eye

She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Strong #Writing #Character

Even when a girl is married she still never completely leaves her mother and father's home.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Marriage #Girl #Mother

A young lady's most natural ally is her sister although sometimes our own relatives are as inscrutable to us as an antipodean.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Allies #Sometimes #Natural

Henry turned his hat in his hands but went on looking at Diana in a way that made her want to crawl into his arms and stay there forever.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Hands #Forever #Way

They were all dressed in their finest as though life really were some magical stage play in which every moment ought to be illuminated with its own bright spotlight.
-- Anna Godbersen

#Play #Spotlight #Moments