“There will be other lives.
There will be other lives for nervous boys with sweaty palms, for bittersweet fumblings in the backseats of cars, for caps and gowns in royal blue and crimson, for mothers clasping pretty pearl necklaces around daughters' unlined necks, for your full name read aloud in an auditorium, for brand-new suitcases transporting you to strange new people in strange new lands.
And there will be other lives for unpaid debts, for one-night stands, for Prague and Paris, for painful shoes with pointy toes, for indecision and revisions.
And there will be other lives for fathers walking daughters down aisles.
And there will be other lives for sweet babies with skin like milk.
And there will be other lives for a man you don't recognize, for a face in a mirror that is no longer yours, for the funerals of intimates, for shrinking, for teeth that fall out, for hair on your chin, for forgetting everything. Everything.
Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human's life is a beautiful mess.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“But I believe good things happen everyday. I believe good things happen even when bad things happen. And I believe on a happy day like today, we can still feel a little sad. And that's life, isn't it?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“On, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human life is a beautiful mess.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“It’s difficult to ever go back to the same places or people. You turn away, even for a moment, and when you turn back around, everything’s changed.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“No one actually needs another person or another person's love to survive. Love is when we have irrationally convinced ourselves that we do.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“People, you'll find, aren't usually all good or bad. Sometimes they're just a little bit good and a whole lot bad. And sometimes they're mostly good with a dash of bad. And most of us, well, we fall in the middle somewhere.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“A life isn't measured in hours and minutes. It's the quality, not the length.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“Sorry but nothing of much importance ever happened to me...I'm just a girl who forgot to look both ways before crossing the street.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“As many have discovered, it is entirely possible (although not particularly desirable) to love two people with all your heart. It is entirely possible to long for two lives, to feel that one life can't come close to containing it all.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“The scent is sweet and meloncholy. A bit like dying, a bit like falling in love.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“And when she dreams, she dreams of a girl who was lost at sea but one day found the shore.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“Why do two people fall in love? It's a mystery.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“If you are going to forgive a person, Liz decides, it is best to do it sooner rather than later. Later, Liz knows from experience, could be sooner than you thought.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“Intimacy doesn't have all that much to do with backseats of cars. Real intimacy is brushing your teeth together.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“On Elsewhere we fool ourselves into thinking we know what will be just because we know the amount of time we have left. We know this, but we never really know what will be. We never know what will happen...”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“I'm allergic to sad memories. It's the worst.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“In my humble opinion, love is when a person believes that he, she or it can't live without some other he, she or it...I said believes. No one actually needs another person or another person's live to survive. Love, Lizzie, is when we have irrationally convinced ourselves that we do.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“ The baby, a girl, is born at 6:24 a.m.
She weighs six pounds, ten ounces.
The mother takes the baby in her arms and asks her, "Who are you, my little one?"
And in response, this baby, who is Liz and not Liz at the same time, laughs.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“I have so much paperwork. I'm afraid my paperwork has paperwork.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“Did you know that there are over three hundred words for love in canine?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“It's hard to believe. Where does the times go?' Betty sighs. 'I've always hated that phrase. It makes it would like time went on a holiday, and is expected back any day now. Time flies is another one I hate. Apparently, time does quite a bit of traveling, though.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“What are you reading?" Owen asks.
"Charlotte's Web," Liz says. "It's really sad. One of the main characters just died."
"You ought to read the book from end to beginning," Owen jokes. "That way, no one dies, and it's always a happy ending.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“Betty inhales sharply, 'It's just I thought I had lost you forever.'
Oh, Betty, don't you know there's no such thing as forever?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“There's the tree with the branches that everyone sees, and then there's the upside-down root tree, growing the opposite way. So Earth is the branches, growing in opposing but perfect symmetry. The branches don't think much about the roots, and maybe the roots don't think much about the branches, but all the time, they're connected by the trunk, you know?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“Saying you're through with romance is like saying you're done with living, Betty. Life is better with a little romance, you know.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“Liz looks at the tissue box, which is decorated with drawings of snowmen engaged in various holiday activities. One of the snowmen is happily placing a smiling rack of gingerbread men in an oven. Baking gingerbread men, or any cooking for that matter, is probably close to suicide for a snowman, Liz thinks. Why would a snowman voluntarily engage in an activity that would in all likelihood melt him? Can snowmen even eat? Liz glares at the box.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“Oh," says Owen, "but I would have, you know."
"I know you would have," says Liz, "and knowing you would have is nearly as good.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“Liz, I like you very much," he says.
"Oh," she says, "I like you very much, too!"
Owen is not sure if she means "O" for Owen, or just plan "Oh." He is not sure what difference it would make in either case. He feels the needs to clarify. "When I said 'I like you very much,' I actually meant 'I love you.'"
"O," she says, "I actually meant the same thing." She closes the car door behind her.
"Well," he says to himself, driving back to his apartment, "isn't that something?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
Gabrielle Zevin
Born place: The United States
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“I think that others can drive a creature to naughtiness, always accusing and blaming them. After a while it must make the creature unhappy and drive him...to be naughty, because nobody expects them to be good...”
― Brian Jacques, quote from Outcast of Redwall
“Life is always like that—twenty minutes of misery for every two seconds of joy. So, be everlastingly grateful for those rare two seconds and appreciate; appreciate what good you can find, no matter what the cost.”
― V.C. Andrews, quote from If There Be Thorns
“What’s killing him is the idea that I will die unhappy, in a miserable marriage. He hates that my life isn’t ending on a good note… So I told him that he’s a good man and was the love of my life, both of which are true. I tried to tell him all the things I hadn’t told him before… Mostly, I wanted him to understand the real reason I’d thought our marriage was over. It was over because we forgot to stay in love. Both of us.”
― Marisa de los Santos, quote from Belong to Me
“Are you going to distract me by playing footsie?"
"Absolutely, princess," he says with a wink.
"Then I won't remember a thing."
"It's a samurai training technique," he teases, spinning the test prep book toward him. "I distract you as much as possible right now." He slides the book into his lap. "And you'll learn how to test through anything.”
― Tera Lynn Childs, quote from Fins Are Forever
“there was no such thing as collective guilt. But we Germans have been told for twenty years that we are all guilty. Do you believe that?”
― Frederick Forsyth, quote from The Odessa File
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The DiabolicBookQuoters 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.
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