Picture Perfect Quotes

“Our future selves are only as good as our past selves believe we can be”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“Nick grinned, swooping in for another kiss and then leaning back and scruffing his hair up. “Harriet Manners, I’m about to give you six stamps. Then I’m going to write something on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope with your address on it.”
“OK …” “Then I’m going to put the envelope on the floor and spin us as fast as I can. As soon as either of us manage to stick a stamp on it, I’m going to race to the postbox and post it unless you can catch me first. If you win, you can read it.”
Nick was obviously faster than me, but he didn’t know where the nearest postbox was. “Deal,” I agreed, yawning and rubbing my eyes.
“But why six stamps?”
“Just wait and see.”
A few seconds later, I understood.
As we spun in circles with our hands stretched out, one of my stamps got stuck to the ground at least a metre away from the envelope. Another ended up on a daisy. A third somehow got stuck to the roundabout.
One of Nick’s ended up on his nose.
And every time we both missed, we laughed harder and harder and our kisses got dizzier and dizzier until the whole world was a giggling, kissing, spinning blur.
Finally, when we both had one stamp left, I stopped giggling. I had to win this.
So I swallowed, wiped my eyes and took a few deep breaths.
Then I reached out my hand.
“Too late!” Nick yelled as I opened my eyes again. “Got it, Manners!” And he jumped off the still-spinning roundabout with the envelope held high over his head.
So I promptly leapt off too.
Straight into a bush. Thanks to a destabilised vestibular system – which is the upper portion of the inner ear – the ground wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
Nick, in the meantime, had ended up flat on his back on the grass next to me.
With a small shout I leant down and kissed him hard on the lips. “HA!” I shouted, grabbing the envelope off him and trying to rip it open.
“I don’t think so,” he grinned, jumping up and wrapping one arm round my waist while he retrieved it again. Then he started running in a zigzag towards the postbox.
A few seconds later, I wobbled after him.
And we stumbled wonkily down the road, giggling and pulling at each other’s T-shirts and hanging on to tree trunks and kissing as we each fought for the prize.
Finally, he picked me up and, without any effort, popped me on top of a high wall.
Like Humpty Dumpty.
Or some kind of really unathletic cat.
“Hey!” I shouted as he whipped the envelope out of my hands and started sprinting towards the postbox at the bottom of the road. “That’s not fair!”
“Course it is,” he shouted back. “All’s fair in love and war.”
And Nick kissed the envelope then put it in the postbox with a flourish.
I had to wait three days.
Three days of lingering by the front door. Three days of lifting up the doormat, just in case it had accidentally slipped under there.
Finally, the letter arrived: crumpled and stained with grass.
Ha. Told you I was faster.
LBxx”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“You know, I've worked out that if I lived on Mercury I'd be sixty-six years old tomorrow. I'd be twenty-six on Venus, and half a year old on Saturn. I'm only sixteen because I'm on this planet.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“They say fiction is the closest well ever get from magic. Open a book and an entire world will pop out and it doesn't matter if it's dragons or Victorian children or wizards. You are immediately someone else and somewhere else”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“Apparently humans share fifty per cent of their DNA with bananas. My father is a constant reminder of that.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“The sad fact is, there are 7.220.400.641 people on the planet, but right now I haven't got a single one to talk to.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“I can change my plans. But I can't change my family.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“They say fiction is the closest we ever get to magic. Forget top hats and rabbits: open a book and an entire world will pop out. And it doesn't matter if it's dragons or Victorian orphans or wizards. You are immediately somewhere else and someone else. Transported. It's not like that with textbooks.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“They say that life is just a blank chain, and precious moments are the beads we hang off it to make it beautiful.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“Why do you always rescue me?" — "Every Cinderella needs a fairy godmother. But sometimes your fairy godmother needs you right back.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“My Best Friend and I have spent plenty of time together, despite me being in my First Ever Relationship. This is because friends should always come first.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“Also," Bunty adds cheerfully, "how many cats did you have when you left?"
"One," Annabel says, putting her hand over her face.
"You have three now." Bunty swings hrt bag over her shoulder. "See you at Christmas, lovelies!"
And my grandmother disappears as abruptly as she arrived.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“And this way, l'll leave everything behind before it gets the chance to do the same to me.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“Love puts itself first, and makes its own plans. It maps you out instead. Maybe that's what makes it perfect”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“Our future selves are only as good as our past selves believe we can be.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“Every Cinderella needs a fairy godmother, Baby-baby Panda,” he says, shrugging and putting his sunglasses on. “But sometimes your fairy godmother”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“The blue whale has a heart big enough for a human to crawl through its ventricles.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“I want to talk to you about something."
"About what?"
"Anything," I say, beaming at the tiny, faraway sky. "I just want to talk to you, Nick. About anything at all.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“It's not the end, Table Girl. We're just hitting pause.
LBxx
PS ILY”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“Apparently, a butterfly's wings are actually transparent, but thousands of tiny scales reflect light at different wavelengths. In my stomach now, I can suddenly feel them: glinting and flickering inside me. Every color of the rainbow.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“You're a silly sausage, you know that?" Dad says, kissing the top of my head.
I can think of less nice ways to put it.
"Yes," | agree in a tiny voice. "I am unfortunately the silliest of all sausages”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“The etymology of the word friend comes from the Proto-Germanic word frijand, which means to love. Love and friendship: friendship and love. They come from the same place.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“Is that.." I swallow as my entire body begins fizzing. "Is that them?"
"Yes," Toby says. "Or no. That's a very vague question, Harriet. They wouldn't let you into the FBI with that kind of approach. I've checked."
"One day," Nat says, sighing, returning from the office, "you're going to answer a question like a normal person, Toby, and we'll all pass out from shock.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“I tell Nick everything.
Well, not everything, obviously.
I'm not insane.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“Of all the things I love about Nick, this is what I love most. I love his calmness. I love the way my brain spirals out of control while next to it his moves in a straight and steady path. As if I'm a little tugboat in a storm, being thrown about by the waves and the currents, and he's the big ship I'm anchored to for safety.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“KENDERALL TAKES US UP TO Fred's to "replenish."
It's a café on the ninth floor of Barneys, it's very expensive and glamorous, and it confuses me immensely because Fred has an apostrophe but Barney doesn't so I'm not entirely sure what belongs to whom.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“We even consider going into the church, and then change our minds because they've altered their sign to say:
DON'T LET WORRIES KILL YOU.
LET THE CHURCH HELP.
Frankly, that's a little too ambiguous for my liking.”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect

“Reason to move to New York: I don't to get left behind”
― Holly Smale, Picture Perfect