Quotes from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“I liked learning things. How numbers worked together to explain the stars. How molecules made the world. All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“Most days I was impossible. Like a unicorn.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“When I reached her, she was a star, pulling me into her orbit”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“Your family is real, but mine isn't? Real people with real feelings, but my family isn't real to you. You think. I'm a character. A story. Those women you talk about. Not real people to you. Stupid women. I'm real. I'm as real as you are. My family is real like your family.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“I wanted a fairy tale ending for Wavy, because if she could find happiness, there would be hope for me, too.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“I love you. I love you all the way.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“You can look up keening in the dictionary, but you don’t know what it means until you hear somebody having their heart ripped out.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“I liked to play at tragedy, but she drank it out of her baby bottle.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“Truth was she took care of him as much as he did her. There was a few times when he was younger that I thought to myself, One of these days, he ain’t gonna show up for work, ’cause he’ll be at home with a gun in his mouth. I had an uncle did that. Jesse Joe was a man with a deep streak of lonely, until Wavy came along.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“You make people interested in you by keeping secrets, not by passing them out like candy at Halloween.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“Feeling dead was better than when my heart hurt. Sometimes I thought it might burn through my ribs while I was asleep, and smolder in the sheets until the whole house caught fire.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“Girl that age ought not to have so many troubles, but she did. Looking at it that way, them two was about made for each other.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“Sometimes waiting and being disappointed was good, to remind me he didn't belong to me. Nothing belonged to me.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“That’s not the only thing love means. You just got your mind in the gutter.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“From Alpha Centauri, we were twin stars, side by side.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“Summer had so many tricks. The nights lasted longer than the days, even though the angle of the Earth’s axis meant that was impossible. The night couldn’t be longer, but summer made it seem that way. Summer sneaked time for me, taking a minute from February, three minutes from English class in March, ten whole minutes from a boring Thursday in April. Summer stole time to give me another hour under the stars with Kellen.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“I was moving forward into space, but i would never come home again”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“Nothing belongs to you. It didn’t matter that Grandma gave the cookbook to me. All Mama had to do was hold it in her hands and it was hers.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“That’s the problem with the Christmas story: most of the roles are for boys. The only girl is there because men can’t have babies.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“I was lying on the tracks under a train I was in love with.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“Now you know, okay? From here on out, only you. I promise.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“I love you, Wavy. I love you." I said it until she relaxed. "Now put your ring back on.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“After Liam and Butch took Kellen away, I thought about how he left spaces for me when he talked. If I saw him again, I decided I might put words in those spaces.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“Mr. Arsenikos said if you knew the constellations you would never get lost. You could always find your way home.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“I could have told him there was no sense in rushing toward being dead. It would find you soon
enough, and before it did there were pleasures to make your heart hurt less. If I lay very still in bed at night, I remembered how Grandma’s house smelled. The taste of mint ice cream on Kellen’s tongue. Donal jumping on the bed to wake me up.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“That’s what church was to Wavy: a set of games she didn’t quite understand.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“We didn't need to talk. We just laid there watching falling stars go streaking white through all that darkness.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“That night I first saw you, I was going too fast. There I was rubbernecking at you and dumped the bike. Wrecked me up. I don’t want to wreck us up like that. I don’t want you to get hurt.” She”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“I’d been going along thinking I was Shakespeare, but I’d written myself out of the play.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“I could have told him there was no sense in rushing toward being dead. It would find you soon enough, and before it did there were pleasures to make your heart hurt less.”
― Bryn Greenwood, quote from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

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Popular quotes

“Always the same faces, the same surroundings, the same conversations, the same problems. The more it changes, the more it repeats itself. In the end, you feel as if you’re dying alive.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from The Mandarins

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― Bruce D. Perry, quote from The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook

“He looked as handsome as ever and even bigger than she remembered, if that was possible. Did he grow or something? No, probably not. He’s just freaking huge is all. She wished the Kindred weren’t so physically imposing. Sylvan’s shoulders were fully twice as broad as her own and the muscles bulging under his uniform shirt made it clear he was strong enough to break her in half with one hand. Not that she thought he would hurt her but it certainly would have been easier to kiss him if he was more normal sized instead of being so ginormous. He was wearing black tight fitting pants identical to Baird’s, but instead of deep crimson, the material of his uniform shirt was a pale azure blue that complemented his eyes. His hair was a darker shade of blond than Olivia’s and it was still cut short and spiky. Looking at him, Sophie couldn’t help thinking that despite the severe cut, his hair looked like it would be soft to touch. In fact, she could almost feel the feathery brush of those blond spikes whispering against her fingers… She snapped out of the strange fantasy in time to realize two things. One, the ceremony was almost over—in fact, Baird had Olivia bent over one arm and was kissing her for all he was worth. And two, she’d been staring at Sylvan and he was staring right back with an unreadable look in his pale eyes. Sophie dropped her gaze quickly, feeling her cheeks get even hotter.”
― Evangeline Anderson, quote from Hunted

“Julius rose to his feet. The towel dropped, showering cut brown hair over Monna Alessandra's elegant tiles. His hair, finely tailored, clung to a thick-boned face with slanting eyes and a blunt profile which would have looked well on a coin. Tobie, who had almost no hair, gazed at him sadly.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Spring of the Ram

“The people welcome a new da yas if they were certain of liking it, the shopkeepers pull up their blinds serene in the expectation of good trade, the workers go happily to their work, the people who have sat up all night in night clubs go happily to their rest, the orchestra of motor-car horns, of clanking trams, of whistling policemen tunes up for the daily symphony, and everywhere is joy.”
― Nancy Mitford, quote from The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.