The Girl Who Only Speaks in Quotes

Title: The Girl Who Only Speaks in Quotes

Genre: Literary Fiction / Poetic Romance

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The Girl Who Only Speaks in Quotes

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

That’s what she said when Mr. Laskin asked her to introduce herself on the first day of school.

Everyone laughed, unsure if she was joking or just odd. But she didn’t flinch. She just sat there, straight-backed in her denim jacket with scribbled song lyrics on the sleeves, her eyes scanning the classroom like a detective who already knew too much.

Her name was Evelyn. But people called her “Quotes Girl.”

No one ever heard her say anything original—not a single unscripted word. Whether it was Shakespeare or Dr. Seuss, Hemingway or Hannah Montana, she had a quote for everything.

When someone spilled orange juice on her shoes, she replied,

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

When asked why she never joined sports, she said,

"I’d rather be a comma than a full stop."

Some thought it was a joke. Others said she was trying too hard to be different. But I saw something else.

I was the boy who sat two rows behind her in literature class. The boy who stayed late in the library not because I loved books, but because she always stayed late too.

One rainy afternoon, I found her on the floor between shelves, tracing her fingers over the spine of The Bell Jar. She saw me and smiled.

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead."

Her voice was soft, a whisper pretending to be confident.

I leaned against the opposite shelf. “You really like Sylvia Plath?”

She nodded.

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.”

I laughed. “You always speak like that?”

"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."

(W.B. Yeats)

“That’s a yes.”

She closed the book, stood up, and tilted her head. Her eyes were curious, playful. But I noticed how tight she clutched her notebook. As if words were all she had.

We started spending time together—quietly, like leaves falling in October.

I'd ask her questions just to hear which quote she’d choose.

“What do you think about love?”

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."

“Do you trust people?”

"Trust is like a mirror, you can fix it if it's broken, but you can still see the crack in that... reflection."

One night, we sat beneath the cracked ceiling of the old train station. It was abandoned and half-gutted, but she called it "romantic decay.”

I handed her a pencil. “Write something. Anything. But it has to be yours.”

She hesitated.

Then, slowly, she wrote one sentence on the edge of the concrete wall:

“I’m scared my real voice will sound uglier than the ones I borrow.”

I didn't speak. Not because I didn’t have words, but because I finally understood what hers cost.

After that night, she began to mix in fragments of her own thoughts. Not often. Just sprinkles between the quotes, like stars peeking through city smog.

"Not all those who wander are lost,” she said once. Then paused. “But sometimes I wander just to hide.”

I watched as the other students started to mimic her, quoting movies or lines from books in group chats, thinking it was funny or quirky.

But they didn’t know what I knew.

They didn’t know about the therapist’s office she disappeared to every Friday after lunch. Or the day I found her crying behind the drama hall, her lips mouthing quotes, desperate to drown out her real voice.

"You don't have to be fearless, just don't let fear stop you," I told her.

She looked up.

“That one’s mine,” I added.

She smiled—genuinely, like sunlight on stained glass.

The more she trusted me, the more I heard her. And in those rare moments, when she dropped the quotes and just spoke, it felt like listening to a secret that had waited too long to be told.

On graduation day, she handed me a folded note. It read:

“Thank you for listening between the lines.”

—Evelyn, not Shakespeare

And just like that, she walked away. Not with a quote. Just silence.

But for the first time, it was hers.