Gabrielle Zevin Quotes

Oh, all stories are the same, aren't they? Men and women fall in love or out of love. People are born; people die. It al ends happily or it all ends sadly, and the difference matters only to the people involved.

You love being Ruby's mother, but loving Ruby does not stop you from wanting things for yourself.

Speak up,' says Myrna who has a fuzzy white caterpillar of a moustache. 'My hearing's not so good.'
'I WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD.'
Liz turns to Thandi. 'I thought you said you didn't remember how you got the hole in your head.'
Thandi apologizes. 'I just remembered.'
'Shot in the head!' Florence-scratchy-voice says. 'Oy, that's rough.'
'Aw, it's nothing special. Happens pretty regularly where I'm from,' Thandi says.
'WHAT?' asks Myrna with the moustache. 'Say it toward my left ear, that's the good one.'
'I SAID, "IT'S NOTHING SPECIAL,"' Thandi yells

Other people's parents are often a delight.

On Elsewhere we fool ourselves into thinking we know what will be just because we know the amount of time we have left. We know this, but we never really know what will be. We never know what will happen...

We must fill our infinite days with something.

I wish I could tell you to always follow your heart, but I think it is bad advice. You have a heart, yes, it is true, but also a brain and also a soul. I've come to believe that we love with our brains as much as our hearts. Real Love is not just instinct, but intent...... From year to year, you may not always be the same Jane. This is perfectly normal. A Jane is many Janes in a lifetime.

You couldn't be old and still be wrong about as many things as she'd been wrong about, and it was a kind of immaturity to call yourself old before you were.

The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.

It had not been a lonely childhood, though many of her intimates had been somewhat less than real.

How much of your life had been happenstance? How much of your life had been a roll of the big polyhedral die in the sky? But then, weren't all lives that way? Who could say, in the end, that they had chosen any of it?

You know this girl.
Her hair is neither long nor short nor light nor dark. She parts it precisely in the middle.
She sits precisely in the middle of the classroom, and when she used to ride the school bus, she sat precisely in the middle of that, too.
She joins clubs, but is never the president of them. Sometimes she is the secretary; usually, just a member. When asked, she has been known to paints sets for the school play.
She always has a date to the dance, but is never anyone's first choice. In point of fact, she's nobody's first choice for anything. Her best friend became her best friend when another girl moved away.
She has a group of girls she eats lunch with every day, but God, how they bore her. Sometimes, when she can't stand it anymore, she eats in the library instead. Truth be told, she prefers books to people, and the librarian always seems happy to see her.
She knows there are other people who have it worse — she isn't poor or ugly or friendless or teased. Of course, she's also aware that the reason no one teases is because no one ever notices her.
This isn't to say she doesn't have qualities.
She is pretty, maybe, if anyone would bother to look. And she gets good enough grades. And she doesn't drink and drive. And she says NO to drugs. And she is always where she says she will be. And she calls when she's going to be late. And she feels a little, just a little, dead inside.
She thinks, You think you know me, but you don't.
She thinks, None of you has any idea about all the things in my heart.
She thinks, None of you has any idea how really and truly beautiful I am.
She thinks, See me. See me. See me.
Sometimes she thinks she will scream.
Sometimes she imagines sticking her head in an oven.
But she doesn't.
She just writes it all down in her journal and waits.
She is waiting for someone to see.

Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you're the only person in the room.

His heart is too full, and no words to release it.

A truly magnificent thing about the way the brain was coded, Sam thought, was that it could say "Excuse me" while meaning "Screw you.