The heroine might be unsure. And the reader. But I don’t think the author should be.

I’ve done nothing for the past five years but try to be the hero who protects her. The problem? Heroines don’t need protecting.

Protector and destroyer were two sides of the same coin. Who knew which one would come out in a toss-up?

It does not take a great supernatural heroine or magical hero to save the world.We all save it every day, and we all destroy it — in our own small ways — by every choice...

Imagination only comes when you privilege the subconscious, when you make delay and procrastination work for you.

I could not recall the last time I had been so flagrantly insulted.Don’t make enemies, I told myself.Swallow your pride.Hold your tongue.But the fact was, I had real difficulty with those particular virtues.

There’s always enough retribution to be dealt.

I like to call her Doctor Fisher.

In my experience, when a woman’s cruelty is combined with love and devotion, it is almost always without exception an act performed not out of treachery, but as a painful self-sacrifice for the good of...

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.

. I felt the sun graze my face as I sped further and further from it all. The only negative part about running was that at some point I knew I’d have to stop. I’d...

Wanderess, Wanderess, weave us a story of seduction and ruse. Heroic be the Wanderess, the world be her muse.’…I jot this phrase of invocation in my old leather-bound notebook on a bright, cold morning at...

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.

The thought of talking about it made Pueblo’s gut ache, but then he thought of everything that Amy had been through – not that she’d told him her version yet. She had balls of steel,...

The day came when she discovered sex, sensuality, and literature; she said, ‘I submit! Let my life be henceforth ruled by poetry. Let me reign as the queen of my dreams until I become nothing...

Dear Diary, the Heroine never cries.

Do you suppose kissing is like riding a bicycle?

I’ve never liked being looked at like I was a hero. I always wind up letting someone down. Sometimes I get lucky. Sometimes the only person who gets hurt is me.

You haven’t lived till you’ve played Scrabble in a psych ward.

Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation. All have been, or at least all have believed...

I’m a damsel, I’m in distress, I can handle this. Have a nice day!

I refused to believe that someone who had a voice that angelic could be bad. I knew it was illogical to think that way, but I had to believe in something good.

And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine’s portion – to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears. And lucky may she think herself, if...

A glad zest and hopefulness might be inspired even in the most jaded and ennui-cursed, were there in our homes such simple, truthful natures as that of my heroine, and it is in the sphere...

Curiosity was getting the better of me.

The Coward will run away from danger, only to strike in the dark. The Heroine will run through the dark, even though she knows the coward is waiting to strike.

When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.

We like the wrong sorts of girls, they wrote. They are usually the ones worth writing about.

Living in that castle was like being condemned to Hell before I’d even had the opportunity to sin.

Jane Austen had created six heroines, each quite different, and that gave Charlotte courage. There wasn’t just one kind of woman to be.

People who love do the impossible all the time.

Don’t you agree? Swordplay is a dance of sorts, an understanding of the logical, most sophisticated next step. Except that in a fight, one must take the unexpected step. In dance it is all about...