-
I did learn something about insanity while I was down there. People go crazy, not because they are crazy, but because it's the best available option at the time.
Gabrielle Zevin -
It's hard to believe. Where does the times go?' Betty sighs. 'I've always hated that phrase. It makes it would like time went on a holiday, and is expected back any day now. Time flies is another one I hate. Apparently, time does quite a bit of traveling, though.
Gabrielle Zevin
-
It was strange, really. A couple months ago, I had thought I couldn’t live without him. Apparently I could.
Gabrielle Zevin -
The things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life
Gabrielle Zevin -
The theme of the dance was "Great Romances," or some such nonsense. There were projections of supposedly great couples from the past on the walls of the gym. Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Hermione and Ron, Bonnie and Clyde, etc.
Gabrielle Zevin -
On, 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 life is a beautiful mess.
Gabrielle Zevin -
There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.
Gabrielle Zevin -
Oh," says Owen, "but I would have, you know." "I know you would have," says Liz, "and knowing you would have is nearly as good.
Gabrielle Zevin
-
Sorry but nothing of much importance ever happened to me...I'm just a girl who forgot to look both ways before crossing the street.
Gabrielle Zevin -
But in my defense, I knew enough about her to know I wanted to know everything else; I knew as much about her as she wanted me to know; I knew as much about her as anyone ever knows about anyone. And isn't love just curiosity at the beginning anyway?
Gabrielle Zevin -
The baby, a girl, is born at 6:24 a.m. She weighs six pounds, ten ounces. The mother takes the baby in her arms and asks her, "Who are you, my little one?" And in response, this baby, who is Liz and not Liz at the same time, laughs.
Gabrielle Zevin -
if you were older you might agree with me. you might say that real love steals nothing. you might say that real love leaves a person intact. you would be wrong, jane. love is a greedy toddler who knows only the word 'mine.
Gabrielle Zevin -
There's a pleasure to loving someone even when you know there's no chance in them loving you back. The pain I felt let me know I was still alive.
Gabrielle Zevin -
When I was in my twenties and broke, I'd buy books before food. A meal will sustain you for a few hours, a good book will sustain you for life.
Gabrielle Zevin
-
Ask two people to tell you anything, you’ll get two versions. Even easy things like directions, let alone important or semi-controversial topics like why a fight started or what a person was generally like. If you don’t know something for yourself, you just can’t be sure.
Gabrielle Zevin -
Someday, we’ll run into each other again, I know it. Maybe I’ll be older and smarter and just plain better. If that happens, that’s when I’ll deserve you. But now, at this moment, you can’t hook your boat to mine, because I’m liable to sink us both.
Gabrielle Zevin -
I know you did, lass. You're the toughest girl I know." "'Lass'? Where did that come from?" "I don't know. I just felt the urge to call you that.
Gabrielle Zevin -
My heart was a little bit broken, but I still had to go to school. I buttoned my dress shirt over it and my winter coat, too. I hoped it didn't show too much.
Gabrielle Zevin -
For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn't mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known.
Gabrielle Zevin -
Intimacy doesn't have all that much to do with backseats of cars. Real intimacy is brushing your teeth together.
Gabrielle Zevin
-
Dance with me,' Win said. 'I know I'm probably making a fool of myself. You're probably thinking, how many times do I have to reject this guy? Can't he take a hint?' I shook my head. 'But somehow I don't even care. I see you in your red dress, standing by the punch table, and something in me wants to keep trying. I think, she is a person worth knowing.
Gabrielle Zevin -
Each period had required me to be a slightly different person, and that was exhausting. I wondered if school had always felt this way and whether it was like this for everone.
Gabrielle Zevin -
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.
Gabrielle Zevin -
People, you'll find, aren't usually all good or bad. Sometimes they're just a little bit good and a whole lot bad. And sometimes they're mostly good with a dash of bad. And most of us, well, we fall in the middle somewhere.
Gabrielle Zevin