“This is how we reveal ourselves: these tiny flashes of discomfort, the reactions we can’t hide.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Love fails for a million reasons - distance, infidelity, pride, religion, money, illness. Why is this story any more worthy?
It felt like it was. It felt important. Living in this town is suffocating in so many ways.
But if a tree falls in the woods, maybe it makes no sound.
And if a boy falls for the bishop's closeted son, maybe it makes no story.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“I don’t actually care if you break my heart, Sebastian. I went into this knowing it could happen and I gave it to you anyway. But I don’t want you to break your own. You have so much space in your heart for your church, but does it have space for you?”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“He pauses, and I know what’s coming before he even says it, and it’s like the sun chose this moment to press through the dense branches of the tree. “I’m totally gay.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“The things that I love about you aren't going to go away when you go on your book tour, and they're not going to go away when you go on your mission. I'll still be here, and I'll still be thinking about all those things. I'll still be working on being a better person, a better friend, a better son. I'll still be wondering what it would be like to be a better boyfriend for you. And you will be on your mission, thinking about how much you wish your weren't gay.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“He is never going to be here, I thought. He is never coming back.
Was I okay with it? No. But missing him every day for the rest of my life was still easier than the fight Sebastian had: to stuff himself inside a box every morning and tuck that box inside his heart and pray that his heart kept beating around the obstacle. Every day I could go to class as exactly the person I am, and meet new people, and come outside later for some fresh air and Frisbee. Every day I would be grateful that no one who matters to me questions whether I am too masculine, too feminine, too open, too closed.
Every day I would be grateful for what I have, and that I can be who I am without judgment.
So every day I would fight for Sebastian, and people in the same boat, who don’t have what I do, who struggle to find themselves in a world that tells them white and straight and narrow gets first pick in the schoolyard game of life.
My chest was congested with regret, and relief, and resolve. Give me more of those, I thought to whoever was listening—whether it was God, or Oz, or the three sisters of Fate. Give me those moments where I think he’s coming back. I can take the hurt. The reminder that he’s not coming back—and why—will keep me fighting.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“My brain is such a traitorous beast.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Our eyes snag, and hold. His are green and yellow, with these razor-sharp flecks of brown. I feel like I've taken a running leap off a cliff and have no idea how deep the water is.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“But this is your life, and it will stretch out before you, and you are the only person who can make it whatever you want it to be.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Light bursts behind my closed eyes, so intensely I nearly hear the popping sound. It's my brain melting, or my world ending, or maybe we've just been hit by a meteor and this is the rapture and I'm given one last perfect moment before I'm sent to purgatory and he;s sent somewhere much, much better.
It isn't his first kiss - I know that - but it's his first real one.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Maybe I'm crying because I'm terrified that he's come here to do more damage, to reactivate what I feel only to let me down easy again, missionary style.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“We don't rehash the question of my sexuality, but I feel its presence like a third person in the room, sitting in the dark corner, eavesdropping on our conversation.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Inside my chest, my lungs are wild animals, clawing at the cage.
"Oh, man," Autumn mumbles from beside me. "His smile makes me stupid."
Her words are a dim echo of my own thoughts: His smile ruins me. The feeling makes me uneasy, a dramatic lurch that tells me I need to have him or I won't be okay.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“He shakes his head, and I think this moment, right here, is when it really hits me that Sebastian's identity isn't queer. It's not gay. It's not even soccer player or boyfriend or son. It’s Mormon.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“His voice is both low and quiet, and it has this hypnotic rhythm to it. I wonder whether someday he'll give sermons with that voice, whether he'll throw down judgement with that voice.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“High school is such an incestuous little pool.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“We're only three class sessions in and I'm already behind? And to hear it from him? This buttoned-up Bible-thumper I can't get out of my head?”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“To her, not packing our lunches every day or joining the PTA is a feminist rallying cry.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“I am a monster beneath him, with arching hips, an octopus with hands everywhere at once. I don't think anything in the history of time has felt this good.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Oh my God, Tanner! Do you really care what kind of underwear he’s got on? Let’s talk about your goddamn outline!”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“You're so lucky and you don't even know it.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“It isn't his first kiss - I know that - but it's his first real one.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“He's not recruiting me to the oiled-up Gay Bliss Club of Northern Utah, but to the LDS Church.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“He shakes his head, and I think this moment, right here, is when it really hits me that Sebastian's identity is a queer. It's not gay. It's not even soccer player or boyfriend or son. It’s Mormon.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
Christina Lauren
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“God gave the requirement for the death penalty in Genesis 9:6 at the beginning of human society after the flood, when methods of collecting evidence and the certainty of proof were far less reliable than they are today. Yet God still gave the command to fallible human beings, not requiring that they be omniscient to carry it out, but only expecting that they act responsibly and seek to avoid further injustice as they carried it out. Among the people of Israel, a failure to carry out the death penalty when God had commanded it was to “pollute the land” and “defile” it before God, for justice had not been done (see Num. 35:32–34).”
― Wayne A. Grudem, quote from Politics - According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture
“A big seizure just kind of grabs the inside of your skull and squeezes. It feels as if it's twisting and turning your brain all up and down and inside out. Have you ever heard a washing machine suddenly flip into that bang-bang-bang sound when it gets out of balance, or a chain saw when the chain breaks and gets caught up in the gears, or an animal like a cat, screeching in pain? Those are what seizures felt like when I was little.”
― Terry Trueman, quote from Stuck in Neutral
“As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.”
― Max Ehrmann, quote from Desiderata: Words For Life
“Tevekkül Allah'a! Köpeğin efendisi varsa kurdun da Tanrı'sı vardır.”
― Chingiz Aitmatov, quote from The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years
“I also read that spending time with a pedophile can be like a drug high. There was this girl who said it’s as if the pedophile lives in a fantastic kind of reality, and that fantasticness infects everything. Kind of like they’re children themselves, only full of the knowledge that children don’t have. Their imaginations are stronger than kids’ and they can build realities that small kids would never be able to dream up. They can make the child’s world… ecstatic somehow. And when it’s over, for people who’ve been through this, it’s like coming off of heroin and, for years, they can’t stop chasing the ghost of how it felt. One girl said that it’s like the earth is scorched and the grass won’t grow back. And the ground looks black and barren but inside it’s still burning.”
― Margaux Fragoso, quote from Tiger, Tiger: A Memoir
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Are You There God? I...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.
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