Quotes from Bone Gap

Laura Ruby ·  345 pages

Rating: (19.5K votes)


“Funny how you notice how beautiful things are just when you're about to leave them.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“But wasn't that love? Seeing what no one else could?”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“There will be boys who will tell you you're beautiful, but only a few will see you.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“What have you got against people?"
Finn hated crowds. Thousands of people bumping and churning. "Too many opinions.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“Scarecrows weren't meant to scare the crows, they were meant to scare the corn. It was enough to give a person nightmares. Otherwise, why would so many horror movies have cornfields in them?”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap



“Because we don't have your typical gaps around here. Not gaps made of rocks or mountains. We have gaps in the world. In the space of things. So many places to lose yourself, if you believe that they're there. You can slip into the gap and never find your way out. Or maybe you don't want to find your way out.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“Thinking that you can't protect the ones you love, you have to hope they're smart enough to save themselves.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“I wanted you to choose this. To choose me. But it isn't always possible for two people to want the same thing. I want you, and that will have to be enough for both of us.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“She had no intention of breaking anyone's heart, except maybe her own.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“When she was little, someone gave her some weird book called The Wife Store. It was about a very lonely man who decided that he wanted to get married. So he went to the wife store, where endless women lined enormous shelves. He picked himself a wife and bought her. She was bagged up and put in a cart. He took her home. After that, the two of them went to the children store to buy a few kids.
Petey read this book over and over. Not because she liked it, but because she kept waiting for the story to change, kept waiting for the day she'd turn the page and a woman would get to the husband store. She kept waiting for justice. But, of course, the story never changed. She never got justice. If Petey were keeping one of her lists of the things she hated, she wold have to add: the fact that there was no justice. But The Wife Store was still on her shelf at home, if only to remind her that there were assholes in the world who would write such things, believe such things.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap



“I'm sorry,' Finn mumbled, a global apology for everything he was, and everything he was not, and all the ways he couldn't let it go.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“I've never understood why people choose to do the things that are hardest for them.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“He was tired of everyone believing they knew everything there was to know about him, as if a person never grew, a person never changed, a person was born a weird and dreamy little kid with too-red lips and stayed that way forever just to keep things simple for everyone else.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“Abruptly, she let go of his wrists and allowed him to push her to her knees. She looked up, waited for his smile.

And then she punched him in the nuts.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“Propose a theory to explain one of there eternal mysteries: Mona Lisa's smile, crop circles, or Velveeta.

Here is a theory of love:
you find a sister, you gain
a brother; you lose
a sister, you lose
a brother; you lose a cat,
you find a girl, you kiss
a girl, you find the cat,
you hope
that there is nothing left to lose, and
all there is, is there to find.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap



“The nice part about living in a small town is that when you don’t know what you’re doing, someone else does. —ANONYMOUS”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“You will see the world. You will have love affairs with boys who see past a pretty face. You will be strong. You will call and tell me about it.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“Compose a haiku in honor of a person you admire. You are spiky spring, humming summer, wings that beat back ghosts of winter.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“In despair, he left that farm and came to Bone Gap when it was a huge expanse of empty fields, drawn here by the grass and the bees and the strange sensation that this was a magical place, that the bones of the world were little looser here, double-jointed, twisting back on themselves, leaving spaces one could slip into and hide.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“He preferred her barefoot, he said. She had such lovely feet. Roza didn’t agree. What was lovely about feet that could not take you anywhere? What was lovely about feet that could not run?”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap



“Once, a young man lost his wife and went to the Land of Dead to find her. He said his life wasn't worth living without her, and played the loveliest song to prove it. The song was so moving, the Lord of the Dead granted his request, though he had never done it before. He said the young man could go, and his wife would follow him, she would be right behind him. But he couldn't look back at her, he had to trust she was there. But he didn't. He didn't trust, he looked back, and so the woman had to stay. Obviously, he didn't love her the way he said he did. But then, I have found that people never love the way they say they do. They can't. They are just people. Full of lies and sentiment and fear. There is no reason for you to leave here, and no way for you to go. No one will come for you, and even if they did, I am not the sentimental sort.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“People say the word 'nice' and they mean 'boring.' A lot of times nice is boring. But that's not what I mean. Roza was nice and not boring at all.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“And I was thinking that it was so weird that the world could keep turning. I mean, that honey would still need to be delivered and vegetables would have to be picked and laundry would need to be done when I was so miserable.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“Hoping so hard that there was one boy out there who wanted you as much as you wanted him, because you wouldn't know what you would do with yourself if this were not true.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“Do you have a girl? Where’s your girl? Where’s your girl?” “She’s her own girl,”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap



“Finn fell asleep draped in Kittens and dreamed that the corn walked the earth on skinny white roots, liked to joke with the crows, and wasn't afraid of anything.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“I have found that people never love the way they say they do. They can't. They are just people. Full of lies and sentiment and fear.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“Finn drifted around, rootless and aimless as dandelion fluff in the wind.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


“How do you know which one's the queen?'
'She's bigger than the others,' said Mel.
'That doesn't always help,' Petey said, 'I can't always find her.'
'Because she's not that much bigger," said Mel. 'You don't rely on her size as much as you try to use the way she moves. It's hard to describe. It's as if she walks in a more determined way' She pulled off her hat and smoothed her long, straight hair. 'She's got a big job. Babies to bear. Workers to inspire. A colony to manage. She moves like that. Like she's a woman with a plan. The best way to see her is to let your eyes lose their focus, let things get a bit fuzzy on you. See the bees as a whole rather than individuals. When you do that, you understand the entire pattern. The queen's movements will stick out because they're so different from everyone else's.”
― Laura Ruby, quote from Bone Gap


About the author

Popular quotes

“It doesn't matter that she shouldn't, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.”
― Naomi Alderman, quote from The Power


“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


“Now discontent nibbled at him - not painfully, but constantly. Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the bastard Time. The end of life is now not so terribly far away - you can see it the way you see the finish line when you come into the stretch - and your mind says, "Have I worked enough? Have I eaten enough? Have I loved enough?" All of these, of course, are the foundation of man's greatest curse, and perhaps his greatest glory. "What has my life meant so far, and what can it mean in the time left to me?" And now we're coming to the wicked, poisoned dart: "What have I contributed in the Great Ledger? What am I worth?" And this isn't vanity or ambition. Men seem to be born with a debt they can never pay no matter how hard they try. It piles up ahead of them. Man owes something to man. If he ignores the debt it poisons him, and if he tries to make payments the debt only increases, and the quality of his gift is the measure of the man.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from Sweet Thursday


“Neither the heart cut by a sliver of glass in a wasteland of thorns, nor the atrocious waters seen in the corners of certain houses, waters like eyelids and eyes, could hold your waist in my hands when my heart lifts its oak trees toward your unbreakable thread of snow.   Night sugar, spirit of crowns, redeemed human blood, your kisses banish me, and a surge of water with remnants of the sea strikes the silences that wait for you surrounding the worn-out chairs, wearing doors away.”
― Pablo Neruda, quote from Residence on Earth


“When I reach the end of one row, I continue straight on away from the barn and the farm and the road. I walk until I come to a pile of hay bales and plop myself down. The sun is bright and the air is sharp. In the distance I hear the lowing of cows. It's so peaceful here.

"Merry Christmas, " I whisper to myself. "Merry Christmas, Nate.”
― Lisa Ann Sandell, quote from A Map of the Known World


Interesting books

The Wonder Spot
(6.4K)
The Wonder Spot
by Melissa Bank
The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out
(28.6K)
The Ragamuffin Gospe...
by Brennan Manning
No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II
(33K)
No Ordinary Time: Fr...
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
A Girl's Guide to Vampires
(11.5K)
A Girl's Guide to Va...
by Katie MacAlister
Disclosure
(62.3K)
Disclosure
by Michael Crichton
The Mabinogion
(5.5K)

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.