Bill Konigsberg Quotes
-
That’s when I felt it. One thin finger. Gently touching my thigh. I kept talking about how alpha loses two protons and two neutrons, like his finger wasn’t on my thigh. And I think he liked that, because he kept asking questions, as if his finger weren’t on my thigh.
-
For dessert, Mom ordered us carob-chip cookies sweetened with fruit juice, which were about as delectable as that sounds. After we finished eating, we made sure to give the waitress all our food and dirty napkins so they could be composted.
-
That was the thing about Ben. He could get away with saying shit like that. I totally couldn’t. I wasn’t big or masculine enough. In my mind, anyway. But Ben could get all agape on your ass, and you’d just sit there like, huh. Agape. Interesting.
-
We hugged, and my dad cried a little. I don't have a macho-type dad, who hunts and fishes and collects guns. He's sensitive and caring. He drives me crazy most of the time, but I do admire that he's not afraid to show his "feminine side.”
-
More and more these days, I'm realizing that I might be crazy, but I'm loved too. I don't think I ever really knew that before, but I do now.
-
I think anyone who stops at a gas station at night is up to no good. I think that if cops want to stop drunk driving, they should hide out in the bushes at the Taco Bell drive-through. I think if you're a guy and you pull down your pants and the girl you're with starts texting, you have a small penis.
-
We drive, and I'm thinking about users and abusers, like my mom says. The time my dad swung me around by my feet and I got hurt, and how he told me to man up. Who came up with that? Who came up with all those rules and ideas about how a guy's gotta be?
-
There were about a thousand things I liked better than this part, in which we talked about women like they were just things. I tried to imagine what it would be like if gay were normal and all of us were gay. Would we objectify men in the same way?
-
He was an amazing guy, really. Totally himself. Totally unapologetic about having all these different sides of his personality that didn’t quite mesh. He didn’t care what people saw, and at that moment, the envy was so powerful, I wanted to punch him in the face.
-
When trust is violated, it's like you're left with an empty piggy bank. Building trust again, she said, is like putting big, fat nickels into the slot. They clank against the bottom, and that sound is jarring. But in order to heal, you have to keep adding those nickels, and soon enough, there will be coins to cushion the nickel's fall and make the sound not so grating.
-
I don't know. I mean, it's not all beautifully harmonic, this world we find ourselves in. Clearly. There's shit music, and sometimes the melody goes away completely. There's silence and dissonant chord that cringe your ears. But the synchronicity of a perfectly created chorus? And the fact that you never know when one is coming? And that amazing feeling, the first time you hear a song and now it's going to be with you forever? I have to think that's worth everything.
-
It needs to be said that sometimes my mom forgets important details when she talks. Like the time she told us she was considering leather (couches, it turns out), or when I was little and she said, "Here's a napkin to put your balls in" (the Atomic Fireballs that I was eating, she meant).
-
And during, I realized that the labels didn’t matter, because when two people feel that sort of pull toward each other, it just works, and the only label that mattered was that I was in love. Totally, fully, ecstatically.
-
As I said, it wasn't even a gay thing. But it made me think how hard some kids have it with their families. Me, I could show up as Lady GaGa dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, and Mom would be like, "How was your day, honey?" That's just not the case for most kids.
-
I believe in yogurt because it’s creamy and a good use of milk that would otherwise go sour. Think about it: Where does all the sour milk go? That goes for people too. Not that we ferment, though I guess we do lactate, but everyone has skills and desires that go unused and unmet, and they sour. How can we make yogurt of these soured attributes? How do we make something delicious, how do we salvage them? I was like, dude, how in the world did you manage to bring human lactation into your oral report? If I ever said anything half that creative, half that unusual, my best friends would divorce my ass. How can a guy be so comfortable with being weird?
-
I think it's okay to just say who you are without it being final or something. I mean, none of us are finished products. We change. We keep changing. We won't be finished products 'til the day we die'.
-
Like, did you know that LGBT kids are 8.4 times more likely than straight kids to attempt suicide? And 50 percent of LGBT kids are rejected by their parents? That between 20 and 40 percent of homeless teens say they’re gay, lesbian, or transgender, and that up to 50 percent of the guy teens have sold their bodies to support themselves?
-
Some things you remember, and some you forget. Of the things you remember, you have to wonder what’s real and what’s translated into a memory from a story you heard.
-
And I think it's thanks to Jordan. I would never have done any of this if I hadn't met him, and if he hadn't showed me how to be real and serious with another guy.
-
I worry sometimes that our world actually values a lack of intelligence. Like we are considered normal if we spend our time thinking about what one of the Kardashians wears to a party, and we are considered strange if we wonder whether a bee’s parents grieve if said bee dives into the Central Park Reservoir and never makes it back to the hive.
-
And perhaps the best answer is not to tolerate differences, not even to accept them. But to celebrate them. Maybe then those who are different would feel more loved, and less, well, tolerated.
-
Having no room of my own to "take care of things" had begun to weigh on me. I wondered if storing up semen would have a health impact on me, positive or negative, like shinier hair or weight gain.
-
I turned to Rafe and swam (and sunk) in his hazel eyes.
-
Sitting in a church makes you no more of a Christ follower than sitting in a Ford dealership makes you a Mustang owner.