Top 100 Anna Godbersen Quotes
#1. Her life, she realized, had all the charm of a steel trap.
Anna Godbersen
#2. 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
#3. There was no pleasure like being envied on a mass scale.
Anna Godbersen
#4. 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
#5. I know it's going to sound funny, but I know you've been hanging around with that Billie Marsh, so maybe it won't be strange after all. Would you be my best man - or, I don't know, my best lady?
Anna Godbersen
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. We have glimpsed in it the future of high society: wealth without class.
Anna Godbersen
#10. I've always believed in savoring the moments. In the end, they are the only things we'll have.
Anna Godbersen
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. You don't need to marry a man with millions. You only need to be your exquisite self.
Anna Godbersen
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. She had had no idea what it would do to her seeing him in a suit.
Anna Godbersen
#20. I can't imagine what my life was before. I can't imagine ever being without you for very long again.
Anna Godbersen
#21. For the lesson was clear-one did not poke around at night, not unless one wanted to see ghosts.
Anna Godbersen
#22. And in that part of the world the darkness could go on and on forever, as though there would never be light again. She hadn't ever been able to tolerate that very well.
Anna Godbersen
#23. She was realizing for the first time in her life what agony it was to experience such unquiet beneath an impeccable veneer.
Anna Godbersen
#24. It had been too much for Edith to take and she had gone to her room so that her nieces wouldn't see her cry anymore.
Anna Godbersen
#25. The two men moved to either side of his shoulders, close enough that Henry smelled the smell of men who did not spend their days looking after hereditary silver.
Anna Godbersen
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. Recurrent memories of Henry Schoonmaker were the most exciting thing to happen in her conscious mind these days.
Anna Godbersen
#29. When girls use the brightness of their eyes or the softness of their skin, they have an uncommon advantage in getting what they want.
Anna Godbersen
#30. 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
#31. 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
#32. 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
#33. 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
#34. From far away, on a clear day, she saw how all those mighty mansions were only temporary delusions, and how fashion would march on, and the chateaus and palazzos of American merchants would fall to the wrecking ball so that department stores might rise above.
Anna Godbersen
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. Edith who had still not fully recovered from the debauchery at the Hayeses' had glaced at the letter before dinner but she apparently lacked the energy to pry. "Oh to be young as you " was all she'd said before going to bed early.
Anna Godbersen
#39. They will stop calling brides beautiful after today - you have simply set the standard too high,' he said.
Anna Godbersen
#40. 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
#41. Henry wondered not for the first time if her blood ran red or black.
Anna Godbersen
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. Sometimes ends are in fact beginnings; beginnings ends.
Anna Godbersen
#45. As she always did on any really important day, Penelope Hayes wore red.
Anna Godbersen
#46. Henry's worldly goal at the moment was drinking enough beer to be happy and forgetful.
Anna Godbersen
#48. Even when a girl is married she still never completely leaves her mother and father's home.
Anna Godbersen
#49. 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
#50. 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
#51. She felt so much aware of her own beauty it seemed inconceivable that everybody else wouldn't notice the difference too.
Anna Godbersen
#52. Maybe Leland would appear there by chance in the morning his chin freshly shaved against his stiff new collar and upon seeing his love in such duress would spring into action. Maybe he would even carry her out like a princess in a bedtime story.
Anna Godbersen
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. The headiest loves were the loves that couldn't be.
Anna Godbersen
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. I tell you Schoonmaker she doesn't know what she has. That's the heart of it. She's like some wild creature who hasn't a clue the worth of its coat.
Anna Godbersen
#59. 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
#60. It was disgraceful but also romantic enough to make Lina's heart turn.
Anna Godbersen
#61. Instead, he sat in the parlor of his family's Fifth Avenue mansion, growing older by the minute just like everybody else.
Anna Godbersen
#62. 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
#63. 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
#64. 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
#66. 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
#67. Marriage is a mystery that one would be wise not to solve too hastily.
Marve De Jong, Love And Other Follies Of The Great Families Of Old New York
Anna Godbersen
#68. She should have know that villains often come with pretty faces.
Anna Godbersen
#69. But in that moment she realized how false most smiles were and what a tremendous waste of time.
Anna Godbersen
#70. No- it was the best. Kind of joint where everyone checked their worries at the door. The beer was cold, the jokes came easy, we could smell the ocean, and everyone was always happy to be there.
Anna Godbersen
#71. That was the way love was, she guessed-it left you always unsteady on your feet.
Anna Godbersen
#72. Elizabeth had followed her heart, and no one ever regrets that.
Anna Godbersen
#73. 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
#74. That kind of love is always changing, you can never plant your feet on it. Trust me there will be others. But those kinds of affairs-you can't ever count on them like blood.
Anna Godbersen
#75. Oh yes, well, I find myself unconventional everywhere.
Anna Godbersen
#76. It's the craziest thing, but I can't stop thinking about you.
Anna Godbersen
#77. Always stay sharp on railways and cruise ships for transit has a way of making everything clear.
Anna Godbersen
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. It is easy to forget now, how effervescent and free we all felt that summer.
Anna Godbersen
#81. It was like the color of his eyes, she supposed - not quite one shade or another, and utterly unlike anyone else's.
Anna Godbersen
#82. 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
#83. They were a society whose chief vocations were to entertain and be entertained ...
Anna Godbersen
#84. 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
#85. She had rarely been near Henry since then, and the sight of him now was like a concentrated dose.
Anna Godbersen
#86. 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
#87. 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
#88. But there was nothing like a little chest-beating to remind a man where his true feelings lay.
Anna Godbersen
#89. 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
#90. What did it matter anyway that she was so much lovelier than the other girls when Henry was so blind.
Anna Godbersen
#92. Love is all right, as things go, but lovers can be a terrible waste of a girl's time.
Anna Godbersen
#93. Teddy risked a look backward and nodded as he handed Henry his hat. The two men shook hands and then walked past each other Teddy moving in the direction of Henry's room and Henry the hat pulled down over his face toward the Cutting carriage that was waiting by the curb.
Anna Godbersen
#94. Heart-stopping envy is the sincerest form of flattery.
Anna Godbersen
#95. I am a good leader; I know how to explain men to themselves.
Anna Godbersen
#96. 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
#97. Among her other talents were forgetting what she did not like and ignoring what she preferred not to see.
Anna Godbersen
#99. Property has ever been a fluid concept
just ask the wife of the Wall Street speculator who writes her party invitations on Marie Antoinette's escritoire.
Anna Godbersen
#100. To look in the face of hard things and keep moving forward - that's what one has to do.
Anna Godbersen
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