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

About the author

Popular quotes

“Wishing is the beginning of imagination. They practice wishing when they are young things, and then -when they have grown - they have a developed imagination. Which can do some harm - greed, that kind of thing - but more often does them some good. They can imagine that things might be different. Might be other than they seem. Could be better.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy

“Squatted beside the fire, with the warmth of it upon his face and hands, he felt a smug contentment that seemed strangely out of place--the contentment of a man who had reduced his needs to the strictly basic--and with the contentment came a full-bodied confidence that was just as out of place.”
― Clifford D. Simak, quote from Time Is the Simplest Thing

“He looked like a pissed-off fallen angel in the middle of Armageddon.”
― Rebecca Zanetti, quote from Sweet Revenge

“People like you don’t go mad, Vi. They’re quiet on the outside and loud on the inside and sane as the day is long”
― April Genevieve Tucholke, quote from Between the Spark and the Burn

“Love me so I know I am at least as important as anything you have ever wanted.”
― Dorothy Allison, quote from Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

Interesting books

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.