Anna Godbersen Quotes

How she wished she had Elizabeth to herself for a little so they could discuss what Henry's real intentions were and also how high and mighty Penelope had acted at lunch and what a tremendous insult it was that she'd come at all and did anyone really think she was beautiful with those oversize features anyway.
Anna Godbersen
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
Do not 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
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
What a privilege it is to live now, at just this moment, and to be able to go anywhere....
Anna Godbersen
The best heroines, she'd always believed, took their fate into their own hands.
Anna Godbersen
There was no pleasure like being envied on a mass scale.
Anna Godbersen
Heart-stopping envy is the sincerest form of flattery.
Anna Godbersen
I've always believed in savoring the moments. In the end, they are the only things we'll have.
Anna Godbersen
Slowly the sky turned from the color of cornflower to that of hyacinth, and the Ferris wheel at Coney Island appeared like a ring of diamonds against the twilight. New York-that city made of canyons between tall buildings, and ornate houses filled with glittering things that might trap a girl forever-was nothing more than a few dots on an infinite landscape. The atmosphere was crystalline and afforded her a perfect view. Only from this place was she able to see how limited the city was, after everything, and how wide open the world could all of a sudden become.
Anna Godbersen
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
Before her angry impulses got the better of her, she admonished herself that she was born to win and that one did not win by throwing temper tantrums--at least not outside of one's own home, which could result in vicious, spurious rumors.
Anna Godbersen
One did not win by throwing temper tantrums.
Anna Godbersen
As she always did on any really important day, Penelope Hayes wore red.
Anna Godbersen
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
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
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
Things only looked wrong when there was someone to see you.
Anna Godbersen
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
All really interesting girls invent themselves.
Anna Godbersen
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
Instead, he sat in the parlor of his family's Fifth Avenue mansion, growing older by the minute just like everybody else.
Anna Godbersen
She now saw that she wanted a boy to do more than follow her in blind devotion. She wanted a boy to challenge her, to tell her about things she'd never thought of, to show her new points of view.
Anna Godbersen
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
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
It was like the color of his eyes, she supposed - not quite one shade or another, and utterly unlike anyone else's.
Anna Godbersen
Henry wondered not for the first time if her blood ran red or black.
Anna Godbersen
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
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
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
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
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
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
I can't imagine what my life was before. I can't imagine ever being without you for very long again.
Anna Godbersen
I know that I might die but that seems a happier end than being without you and anyway it seems to me that looking in the face of hard things and still being able to move forward even when the end includes grave danger and the possibility of death is the mark of a man.
Anna Godbersen
It was disgraceful but also romantic enough to make Lina's heart turn.
Anna Godbersen
Our era has produced many great men--- robber barons, masters of innovation, beast of business---whose staggering wealth, incomparable ruthlessness and personal legends would seem to prove they are dominant species but then one has a look at their son, and doubts the theory of evolution entirely. -DR. Bertrand Legmam Cooper, Problems of Science and Society, Posted by One Who Has Known Both, 1900
Anna Godbersen
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
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
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
Love is all right, as things go, but lovers can be a terrible waste of a girl's time.
Anna Godbersen
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
It occurred to him, for the first time, that it did unflattering things to a person when affection was taken away from them. For there had been a time when she had seemed gorgeous, and fun, and all of her naughtiness had had for him a kind of irresistible pull. It was only after he decided he didn't want her anymore that she became a shrew, and obliterated his memory of the girl she used to be.
Anna Godbersen
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
Elizabeth who was only partially visible to her stared out the window very much awake as though she were contemplating the end of man.
Anna Godbersen
It's the craziest thing, but I can't stop thinking about you.
Anna Godbersen
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
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
She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose.
Anna Godbersen
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
We have glimpsed in it the future of high society: wealth without class.
Anna Godbersen
Travel always excited her--the strong and unfamiliar smells, the movement, the anxiety of arrival and departure times, she shouting of conductors, the idea of her tired old self changed by ever new surroundings.
Anna Godbersen
Always stay sharp on railways and cruise ships for transit has a way of making everything clear.
Anna Godbersen
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
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
Living too much in one's head can be dangerous.
Anna Godbersen
She thought of Henry and Diana on the stoop gazing at each other with the confusion and sadness of two puppies who have just stumbled into their first puddle and not yet come to understand what has happened to them and found that she wanted to lie extravagantly.
Anna Godbersen
Darling, don't be silly, your whole future is ahead of you. All you have to do is go out there and ask for a part- something small and reasonable just to start with. From there, no one can stop you. Don't feel bad about anything you've done, and for God's sake, have fun.
Anna Godbersen
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
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