Quotes from Every Exquisite Thing

“Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have to do it.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“And then one day you will look for you in the mirror and you’ll no longer be able to identify yourself—you’ll only see everyone else. You’ll know that you did what they wanted you to do. You will have assimilated. And you will hate yourself for it, because it will be too late.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“People enter our lives for a season, a reason, or a lifetime.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“I knew that I had reached the end of childhood once I realized that adults in my life didn't know anymore than I did.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“Far too often, people are woefully predictable. And I know many things. It's a curse. Here's something else I know: You are not doomed to be your parents. You can break the cycle. You can be whoever you want to be. But you will pay a price. You parents and everyone else will punish you if you choose to be you and not them. That's the price of your freedom. The cage is unlocked, but everyone is too scared to walk out because they whack you when you try, and they whack you hard. They want you to be scared, too. They want you to stay in the cage. But once you are a few steps beyond the trapdoor, they can't reach you anymore, so the whacking stops. That's another secret: They're too afraid to follow. They adore their own cages.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“There are a lot of lonely kids in this world, but the problem is they don’t know about each other.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“There are no such things as fictional characters.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“Sometimes you just have to pick a direction and make mistakes. Then you use what you learn from your failure to pick new, better directions so you can make more mistakes and keep learning.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“And so maybe it isn't the motivating factors that matter so much as simply participating - thrusting your best true, authentic self into the universe with wild abandon. Maybe yielding to our true nature propels us forward into the great unknown, toward targets that we haven't even dreamed up yet but exist nonetheless.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“We live in our heads... which can be very scary places. We forget that we are not just and I, but a she and a you, too. We forget to see ourselves as others see us. For some people, the problem is narcissism - meaning they are selfish, too self-absorbed. But I think that your problem is that you are too selfless. You care about the needs of others more than you care about your own needs. You are strong for them even when it's a detriment to your own well-being.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“There are seven billion people in the world and you have only experienced twenty thousand at the most. And those twenty thousand were fairly homogenous. Your experiences with people have been largely dictated by your parents' choices. The neighborhood in which they chose to purchase a house. Where they sent you to school. And maybe those choices weren't the best for you. Maybe you don't fit in where you are now... There are seven billion other people out there. Seven billion. Are you really pessimistic enough to believe that you wouldn't get along with any of them?”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“Then we talked a lot about our parents and how we didn't want to become them, but we had no other role models--or "maps," Alex kept saying. "My father is a terrible map, mostly because he doesn't ever lead me anywhere." And I thought about my parents being maps that led to places I didn't want to go-- and it made a shocking amount of sense, using the word maps to describe parents. If almost made you feel like you could fold Mom and Dad up and lock them away in the glove compartment of your car and just joyride for the rest of your life maybe.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“I mean - when was the last time someone asked if you were happy and then looked you in the eyes in a way that made you feel as though they actually gave a shit about your response?”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“You must sometimes pay a high price for individuality, especially if you are a woman.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“I loved him like I loved walking through summer grass barefoot, like I loved a warm mug in my palms, like I loved driving on a long road as the sun sets in the distance. It was a good, safe, simple sort of friendship—well, at first, anyway.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“A life lived well gets messy,”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“I'm waiting for the stars to pop through the black above, waiting for the future to wash over me like so many salty waves - some as turbulent as my thoughts and some as velvety as a good kiss.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“I knew that I had reached the end of childhood once I realized that the adults in my life didn't know any more than I did - and then in a flash I knew that everything that had preceded that exact moment was a sort of game played by the so-called adults who winked at each other when you weren't looking...people who pretended to be things they were not, like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, athletic coaches, teachers, our heroes, too. But the sad truth was they they were no better than we were, and more often than not, they were much worse because they had been here on this planet longer than we had and therefore were able to collect more vices, worries, and sadness.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“Maybe the goal in America is to have an easy life, and so we find it too disgraceful to tell the truth. I meet a lot of people in my line of work, and I can say with utmost certainty--life is pretty hard for almost all of them.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“There are no guarantees when it comes to such treacherous things as friendship. It’s a tricky business.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“Maybe you held back for too long and then you had to explode. Maybe there was no middle ground left. Sometimes we need to get violent with our words because no one is listening otherwise.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“Don't you ever feel like you want to quit doing something everyone else makes you feel like you're supposed to keep doing? Didn't you ever just simply want to...stop?”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“There is a price to pay for pushing beyond everyone else’s answers, and what I’m finding out is that I’m more than willing to pay it.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“When I look at my father, I can see that he doesn't get it, either, and right then and there, I realize that there's a big part of me that my parents will never get no matter how many therapy sessions we attend - even if we have a million and one conversations about who I am.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“It didn’t seem like everyone could or should be honest at the same time—like maybe the structure of the world wasn’t built to handle such mass amounts of truth.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“You don't have to have it all figured out now or ever. We're all just bumbling through, really. But you'll find something to be passionate about. You just need to leave high school and your town behind.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“So I wore the lesbian comments like a mask that kept everything I really loved private and safe and beyond the dirty grasp of the people who didn't know the real, true me and never would.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“How did high schools all over the country decide that athletes needed pep rallies to boost their pride and self-esteem? Isn't it enough that people actually pay money to see these kids compete in games? That people cheer from the sidelines? And they get their names in the paper? Why don't they take all the lonely ghost floaters in every high school and have a pep rally for them? Make all the most popular kids in school sit on the hard bleachers and cheer until their asses hurt like hell?”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

“It's okay to love people who aren't perfect. People who still have work to do on themselves.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Every Exquisite Thing

About the author

Popular quotes

“He was like a drug and what did you do with drugs You pushed them as far away as possible.”
― Colleen Houck, quote from Tiger's Curse

“. . . clumsiness is often mated with a love of solitude.”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from Orlando

“Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from Shakespeare's Sonnets

“I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
― Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, quote from The Bhagavad Gita

“The vampire is not a bad man, and he loves you”
― Charlaine Harris, quote from Dead and Gone

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.