Gabrielle Zevin Quotes

A place ain't a place without a bookstore,

Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again.

There is a time for any fledgling artist where one's taste exceeds one's abilities. The only way to get through this period is to make things anyway.

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

My brain said no.

But my heart!

I was crying a little for the boy I had wanted him to be and the boy he hadn't turned out to be.

It was strange, really. A couple months ago, I had thought I couldn't live without him. Apparently I could.

What makes a person want to shiver in a train station for nothing more than the promise of a secret image? But then, what makes a person drive down an unmarked road in the middle of the night? Maybe it was the willingness to play that hinted at a tender, eternally newborn part in all humans. Maybe it was the willingness to play that kept one from despair.

Why are the cute ones always such sociopaths?
"Win doesn't seem like so much of a sociopath," I replied without thinking.
"Oh, really? So, you think he's cute, do you? At least you're admitting it now."
I shook my head. Scarlet was incorrigible.
"Admitting it is the first step, Annie.

In reading Twain, I often suspect he is having more fun than I am.

There will be other lives.
There will be other lives for nervous boys with sweaty palms, for bittersweet fumblings in the backseats of cars, for caps and gowns in royal blue and crimson, for mothers clasping pretty pearl necklaces around daughters' unlined necks, for your full name read aloud in an auditorium, for brand-new suitcases transporting you to strange new people in strange new lands.
And there will be other lives for unpaid debts, for one-night stands, for Prague and Paris, for painful shoes with pointy toes, for indecision and revisions.
And there will be other lives for fathers walking daughters down aisles.
And there will be other lives for sweet babies with skin like milk.
And there will be other lives for a man you don't recognize, for a face in a mirror that is no longer yours, for the funerals of intimates, for shrinking, for teeth that fall out, for hair on your chin, for forgetting everything. Everything.
Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human's life is a beautiful mess.

We all live at that intersection of art and technology. That’s where games live, in a really easy way to see.

It was such a sweet, sad song with such sweet, sad lyrics. Old-fashioned a little, but also timeless.

He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness, but then he determines it's love. Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother. It's completely gotten in the way of his plan to drink himself to death, to drive his business to ruin. The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.

...love, he thinks. What a bother. It's completely gotten in the way of his plan to drink himself to death, to drive his business to ruin. The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.
No, the most annoying thing about it is that he's even started to like Elmo.