Candace Bushnell

“Should," I suddenly recal myself saying to Samantha and Miranda, "is the worst word in the English language. People always thing thing 'should' be a certain way, and when they're not, they're disappointed.”

“I can't wait to get out of the house. I can't wait to get out of here. I've been telling myself this all week. The 'getting out of here' part is unspecified, though. Maybe I simply want to get away from life”

“Who am I supposed to be again? Just be yourself. But who am I?”

“If you smile, even if you’re feeling bad, the action of the muscles will trick your brain into thinking you’re happy”

“Guys are like dogs: they never notice if you've changed your hair, but they can sense when there's another guy sniffing around their territory”

“You can get used to anything, I guess, if you've been there enough.”

“Maybe some women aren't meant to be tamed. Maybe they just need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with them. -Carrie Bradshaw”

“The car was on the FDR drive now and, turning her head, she glanced out at the bleak brown buildings of the projects that stretched for blocks along the drive. Something inside her sank at the sight of all that sameness, and she suddenly felt defeated.She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. In the past year, she'd started experiencing these moments of desperate emptiness, as if nothing really mattered, nothing was ever going to change, there was nothing new; and she could see her life stretching before her--one endless long day after the next, in which every day was essentially the same. Meanwhile, time was marching on, and all that was happening to her was that she was getting older and smaller, and one day she would be no bigger than a dot, and then she would simply disappear. Poof! Like a small leaf burned up under a magnifying glass in the sun. These feelings were shocking to her, because she'd never experienced world-weariness before. She'd never had time. All her life, she'd been striving and striving to become this thing that was herself--the entity that was Nico O'Neilly. And then, one morning, time had caught up with her and she had woken up and realized that she was there. She had arrived at her destination, and she had everything she'd worked so hard for: a stunning career, a loving (well, sort of) husband, whom she respected, and a beautiful eleven-year-old daughter whom she adored.She should have been thrilled. But instead, she felt tired. Like all those things belonged to someone else.”

“It was ironic, but when you scratched the surface, most successful men were working for one thing only--to retire--and the sooner the better. Whereas women were the complete opposite. She had never heard a woman say she was working so she could retire to a desert island or to live on a boat. It was probably, she thought, because most women didn't think they deserved to do nothing.”

“The most important thing in business is a persona, Nico,' he was fond of saying. 'People want to know immediately what they're dealing with. And when they think about you, you've got to stand out in their minds--like one of those characters in a novel.”

“Out of all the neighborhoods in Manhattan, Soho in particular had the charged atmosphere of a movie set, populated with passersby who looked like extras from Central Casting, so perfectly did they fit into this environment. There was the feeling of everything being not quite real, or too perfectly cliched to actually be true, and it began to rain in a fine, misty drizzle from a black patent leather sky.”

“The city was different back then--poor and crumbling--kept alive only by the gritty determination and steely cynicism of its occupants. But underneath the dirt was the apple-cheeked optimism of possibility, and while she worked, the whole city seemed to throb along with her.”

“The heart wants what the heart wants," she says, somewhat cryptically. I purse my lips in disapproval. "You'd think the heart would know better.”

“Like me, he has a searing belief that books are sacred. They might not be to other people, but when you have a passion, you hold on to it. You defend it. You dont pretend it isn't important at the risk of offending others." -Carrie.”

“Love is dangerous, if you know it's dangerous, that makes you treasure it, and you'll work harder to keep it.”

“If you believe in love, you're setting yourself up to be disappointed.”

“I can safely conclude that we are single because we want to be.”

“Should, is the worst wordin the English language. People always think things "should" be a certain way, and when they'renot, they're disappointed.”

“You choose the end of the summer to fall in love with this guybecause secretly, you don’t want it to last.”

“I'm not ashamed of anything I've done.Shame is a useless emotion.”

“It's hard to be careful, though, when you feel indestructible.”

“sometimes the best thing to do is topretend it didn't happen”

“I'm certainly not going to put my life on hold for him.”

“I don't consider my work a job. I consider it a career. And youdon't quit a career.”

“The heart wants what the heart wants”

“maybe he's falling in love with the idea of falling in love with me. Maybe he wants to be in love with someone and I've ended up in the right place at the right time.”

“Why do magazines do this to women? It'sall about creating insecurity. Trying to make women feel like they're not good enough. And when women don't feel like they're good enough, guess what? Men win. That's how they keep us down.”

“All men are a disappointment. No matter what anyone says.”

“Maybe all men are a drug. Sometimes they bring you down and sometimes, like now, they get you so high.”

“So much of being a woman is telling lies”

“Funny always makes the bad things go away.”

“Money follows art. Money wants what it can't buy. Class and talent. And remember while there's a talent for making money, it takes real talent to know how to spend it.”

“- I don't want to be a writer so I can write about my life. I want to be a writer to escape from it. + Then you shouldn't be a writer.”

“In life,there are only four kinds of girls: The girl who played with fire.The girl who opened Pandora's Box.The girl who gave Adam the apple.And the girl whose best friend stole her boyfriend.”

“. . . She was obsessed with clothes and status, how she never gave a thought to being responsible for her own actions, or even what she might do for anyone else-making her the ultimate example of all that was wrong and misguided about young women today.”

“Retribution is tricky. . . . The insult isn't usually worth the risk of punishment. And eventually one learns that karma has a surprising way of taking care of these situations. All you have to do is sit back and watch.”

“His mother had become impossible, as, he supposed, all elderly people were when they refused to accept that their lives had to change.”

“It's always the people who don't want things who get them.”

“Grace was one of those types who never changed but only aged and had no apparent expectations or ambitions other than the wish that her life should remain the same.”

“That's the difference between girls and women: Girls find men fascinating. Women know better.”

“What if I'm a princess on another planet? And no one on this planet knows it?”

“... he was juggling issues and solving problems, which was why his brain had no space left for memories.”

“Men, Babies, it doesn't matter...we're soulmates”

“When it comes to people -- don't write about who you know; but what you know of human nature.”

“Whoever we are here, we might be princesses somewhere else. Or writers. Or scientists. Or presidents. Or whatever the hell we want to be that everyone else says we can't.”

“Sometimes I think all the trouble in the world is caused by men. If there were no men, women would always be happy. ~Carrie”

“A writer must be fearless. A writer has to be like a clawed animal."-The Carrie Diaries pg. 337”

“Better alone than badly accompanied.”

“It was scary how a girl couldn't live without friends.”

“If a woman could take care of herself, would she still need a man? Would she even want one? And if she didn't want a man, what kind of woman would she be? Would she even be a woman? Because it seemed if you were a woman, the only thing you were really supposed to want was a man.”