Gabrielle Zevin Quotes

A glimmer of a notion of a nothing of a whisper of a figment of an idea.

It's so funny you should say this, because if you were one of my students, you'd be wearing your pain like a badge of honor. This generation doesn't hide anything from anyone. My class talks a lot about their traumas. And how their traumas inform their games. They, honest to God, think their traumas are the most interesting thing about them. I sound like I'm making fun, and I am a little, but I don't mean to be. They're so different from us, really. Their standards are higher; they call bullshit on so much of the sexism and racism that I, at least, just lived with. But that's also made them kind of, well, humorless. I hate people who talk about generational differences like it's an actual thing, and here I am, doing it. It doesn't make sense. How alike were you to anyone we grew up with, you know?

I do not like postmodernism, postapocalyptic settings, postmortem narrators, or magic realism. I rarely respond to supposedly clever formal devices, multiple fonts, pictures where they shouldn't be — basically, gimmicks of any kind. I find literary fiction about the Holocaust or any other major world tragedy to be distasteful — nonfiction only, please. I do not like genre mash-ups à la the literary detective novel or the literary fantasy. Literary should be literary, and genre should be genre, and crossbreeding rarely results in anything satisfying. I do not like children's books, especially ones with orphans, and I prefer not to clutter my shelves with young adult. I do not like anything over four hundred pages or under one hundred fifty pages. I am repulsed by ghostwritten novels by reality television stars, celebrity picture books, sports memoirs, movie tie-in editions, novelty items, and — I imagine this goes without saying — vampires.

The most successful people are also the most able to change their mindsets.

You try again. You fail better.

What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.

My life is in these books. Read these and know my heart. We are not quire novels. We are not quite short stories. In the end, we are collected works.

...reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives.

If you are going to forgive a person, Liz decides, it is best to do it sooner rather than later. Later, Liz knows from experience, could be sooner than you thought.

Zweisamkeit' is the feeling of being alone even when you're with other people." Simon turned to look in his husband's eyes. "Before I met you, I felt this constantly. I felt it with my family, my friends, and every boyfriend I ever had. I felt it so often that I thought this was the nature of living. To be alive was to accept that you were fundamentally alone." Simon's eyes were moist. "I know I'm impossible, and I know you don't care about German words or marriage. All I can say is, I love you and thank you for marrying me anyway.

Love you," Maya says. "Yes, she keeps saying that," A.J. says. "I warned her about giving love that hasn't yet been earned, but honestly, I think it's the influence of that insidious Elmo. He loves everyone, you know?

A question I've thought about a great deal is why it is so much easier to write about the things we dislike/hate/acknowledge to be flawed than the things we love.

It's a well-known fact that hate shows up on your face once you're forty.

The day my father shook my hand, I knew I was a writer.

Chocolate doesn't solve everything, Nana."
"It solves a whole heck of a lot, though.