Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
She tried to be someone people liked. She tried to be someone people disliked. But all I became was someone who didn't succeed with anything I tried to be.
Instead, we just sat there, together but really apart, watching a show about a stranger and all her secrets, while keeping our own to ourselves, as always.
Look at it this way: I might be saying you're fat, but at least I'm not punching you in the face.' Are those the only options?' Not always. Just sometimes.
I wanted to tell him so. Find the right words, string them together in the ideal way, knowing that here they would have the best chance of sounding perfect.
But I'd long ago learned not to be picky in farewells. They weren't guaranteed or promised. You were lucky, more than blessed, if you got a good-bye at all.
I can say I made a lot of mistakes, but I don't regret things. Because at least I didn't spend a life standing outside, wondering what living would be like.
What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed there, regardless.
I waited. Because with Eli, he was never trying to get you to finish for him. He always knew where he was going, even if it took a little while to get there.
Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn't make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you're doing it out of fear.
Morning would come before we knew it. It always did. But we still had the night, and for now, we were together, so I just closed my eyes and drank it all in.
Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that, despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise.
In school, writing was the only thing that really came naturally to me, but it wasn't until college that I realized that I could do it for more than just fun.
We were willing to do so much for the people we loved, even if it meant hurting ourselves. Maybe that, in the end, was what love- all kinds- was really about.
Once I’m done with a book, I’m done! I’m just not a sequel kind of girl. By the time I’ve finished a book I’ve read it so many times that it’s time to move on.
It's a big deal when you finally get the chance to do the one thing you want to do - need to do - more than anything. It can kind of scare the crap out of you.
There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.
This was how I was dealing with everyone and everything lately, taking the good when it came, and the bad the same way, knowing each would pass in its own time.
As he heard me approach, he quickly leaped up, grabbing a nearby loaf of bread and holding it in front of him as if struck by a sudden desire to make a sandwich.
Pretend to be a delinquent?" I asked clarifying. "You can do it," Dave advised me. "Just don't smile, and try to look like you're considering stealing something.
The bottom line is, what defines you isn't how many times you crash, but the number of times you get back on the bike. As long as it's one more. you're all good.
But you don’t have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.” “You don’t have to assume the worst about everyone, either. The world isn’t always out to get you.
I don't know. Just because someone's pretty doesn't mean she's decent. Or vice versa. I'm not into appearances. I like flaws, I think they make things interesting.
It's a great compliment that people think they're fast reads. It's always funny to me because it takes so long to get a book (written) -- for me, it's never quick.
I didn't want to leave things the way we had, unresolved, ... and tried to tell myself he cared about me enough not to look elsewhere for what I wasn't giving him.
Looking back, it seemed like it should have been harder to lose someone, or have them lose you, especially when they were in the same state, only a few towns over.
It was like reaching for someone's hand, then missing their fingers, or even their arm, and hitting their shoulder instead. But no matter. You hang on tight anyway.
I wondered again why the right thing always seemed to be met with so much resistance, when you'd think it would be the easier path. You had to fight to be virtuous.
There were endless ways to spend your days, I knew that, none of them right or wrong. But given the chance for a real do-over, another way around, who would say no?
He's getting dumped. And he doesn't even know it yet. He's probably eating a cheeseburger or flossing or picking up his dry cleaning, and he has no idea. No inkling.
I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.
I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered.
"I just don't know," I said, my voice sounding bumby, not like mine, "how do you help someone who doesn't want your help. What do you do when you can't do anything?"
Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static, or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.
That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened - good, bad, or anywhere in between - it was always, if nothing else, all your own.
In a way, I was almost happy to see her. The worst part of me, out in the flesh. Blinking back at me in the dim light, daring me to call her a name other than my own.
I understood now. This voice, the one that had been trying to get my attention all this time, calling out to me, begging me to hear it - it wasn't Will's. It was mine.
It was so weird, because usually I was totally nervous talking to guys. But Eli was different. He made me want to say more, not less. Which was maybe not a good thing.
Life is long. Just because you don't get your chance right when you want or expect it doesn't mean it won't come. Fate doesn't punch a time clock or consult a schedule.
Because now, I didn't care what they thought. It wasn't new, this realization that I would never be like them. What was different now was that I was glad. Macy page 199
I had no illusions about love anymore. It came, it went, it left casualties or it didn't. People weren't meant to be together forever, regardless of what the songs say.
You want to take me to a movie?" I asked. "Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off.
Look, the point is there's no way to be a hundred percent sure about anyone or anything. So you're left with a choice. Either hope for the best or just expect the worst.
I hoped this was true. Even if it wasn‟t, all I could do was hand over what I could, with the hope of something in return. But of course, this was easier said than done.
All I'd wanted for so long was for someone to explain everything that had happened to me in this same way. To label it neatly on a page: this leads to this leads to this.
My dad is a retired Shakespeare professor, my mother a retired classicist. Suffice to say I grew up in a house full of books, where reading was encouraged if not required.
I am not breaking my rules,' I snapped, hating that I'd ended up on the advice-recieving end of things, jumping from Dear Remy to Confused in Cincinnati all in one summer.
I thought again how you could never really know what you were seeing with just a glance, in motion, passing by. Good or bad, right or wrong. There was always so much more.
I didnt pay atteniton to times or distance, instead focusing on how it felt just to be in motion, knowing it wasn't about the finish line but how I got there that mattered.
But for now, I just sat there on the bed and listened to my song. The one that had been written for me by a man who knew me not at all, now sung by the one who knew me best.
I'd seen another shade of him, and if it had been light where we were now, he'd have seen the same of me. So I was grateful, as I had been so often in my life, for the dark.