Quotes from Exit Kingdom

Joshua Gaylord ·  306 pages

Rating: (568 votes)


“To stop. To cease, just for a moment. To turn your back on the world, to close your eyes - to see the nothing that is not rather than the nothing that is everywhere around you. To just be quiet in your mind for a little minute.
There are paradises even yet on the abandoned plains of the earth -- and they are not filled with fecund flowering Edens but rather just with sweet unerring silences.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom


“Your life ain't a target for the world to shoot at. The world is a target for your life to shoot at.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom


“Stories that pander to your every readerly desire and whim are like overly loyal dogs that live for the simple glow of your approval. I'm a cat person. I like a little aloofness in my pets and my writing.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom


“I think maybe I was just waitin on the apocalypse so I would have something to occupy me.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom


“It's one of the happy things about a world gone so wrong: your personal freakishness don't stand out so much.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom



“Everyone's always tryin to find an entrance to the kingdom of heaven, she says. Me, I ain't so interested in entrances. All I want's a kingdom of exits.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom


“Honey, she says, honest ain’t the half of what I’m not.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom


“It never meant anything, Moses says. Not to the god above it and not to the earth below it. It never did. Not even when they first did it. But it’s the doin it that counts. It’s something. You draw imaginary lines. That’s what you do.
The Vestal looks at him kindly, a smile on her lips that seems affectionate--even maybe admiring.
Then what do you do with the lines? she asks.
And Moses looks at her straight and true. He says:
Then you pick one side or the other and you stand there.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom


About the author

Joshua Gaylord
Born place: Anaheim, California, The United States
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Popular quotes

“Words.

I’m surrounded by thousands of words. Maybe millions.

Cathedral. Mayonnaise. Pomegranate.
Mississippi. Neapolitan. Hippopotamus.
Silky. Terrifying. Iridescent.
Tickle. Sneeze. Wish. Worry.

Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes—each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.

Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs.

From the time I was really little—maybe just a few months old—words were like sweet, liquid gifts, and I drank them like lemonade. I could almost taste them. They made my jumbled thoughts and feelings have substance. My parents have always blanketed me with conversation. They chattered and babbled. They verbalized and vocalized. My father sang to me. My mother whispered her strength into my ear.

Every word my parents spoke to me or about me I absorbed and kept and remembered. All of them.

I have no idea how I untangled the complicated process of words and thought, but it happened quickly and naturally. By the time I was two, all my memories had words, and all my words had meanings.

But only in my head.

I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.”
― Sharon M. Draper, quote from Out of My Mind


“Kids grow up connected to nothing these days, plugged in and living lives boosted to them from other people.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, quote from Rant


“Inside every lump of coal there's a diamond waiting to get out.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Reaper Man


“Everyone is more than one thing,” said Kieran. “We are more than single actions we undertake, whether they be good or evil.”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from Lady Midnight


“They were always on the move.But in truth said bull we are all going nowhere”
― Kate DiCamillo, quote from The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane


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