Quotes from Grasshopper Jungle

“All good books are about everything, abbreviated.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“I love how, whenever you tell me a story, you go backwards and forwards and tell me everything else that could possibly be happening in every direction, like an explosion. Like a flower blooming.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“Stupid people should never read books.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“Do you think I'm queer, Rob?" I asked.

"I don't care if you're queer," Robby said. "Queer is just a word. Like orange. I know who you are. There's no one word for that.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“Sometimes it is perfectly acceptable to decide not to decide, to remain confused and wide-eyed about the next thing that will pop up in the road you build.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“History provides a compelling argument that every scientist who tinkers around with unstoppable shit needs a reliable flamethrower.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“Coffee is a girl who never tells a boy no.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“We made this stupid rule and this stupid rule.
Boys are not allowed to love each other.
Then we painted a bison on the wall.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“You must be crazy, after all, if a bird loves you.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“We killed this big hairy thing and that big hairy thing. And that was our day. You know what I mean.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“History does show that boys who dance are far more likely to pass along their genes than boys who don't.

Boys who dance are genetic volcanoes.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“Well, if I'm going to get beat up for being queer, at least I'd like to know one time what it feels like to be kissed."

"Um. I guess you deserve that. You know. Everyone deserves to not feel alone.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“Here is what the end of the world looks like:

It looks like a child running out into the road, eyes focused only on some destination ahead - the future, which is on the other side - and the child fails to notice the speeding truck that is there, on that same road, in the present.

This is what the end of the world looks like.

All roads cross here.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“Everyone on every road that crossed beneath the point of my pen was always going to do the same things over and over and over.

I was confused.

How could I be in love with a girl and a boy, at the same time?

I was trapped forever.

You know what I mean.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“History does show that nothing means a hell of a lot more than nothing when teenagers talk. In this case, Robby knew it meant that I did not want to talk about it, so he left me alone.

Robby Brees was such a good friend.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“I was going to do something I'd never done, and see things I could not understand and never believed existed.

This is history, and it is also the truth.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“It was warm, and outside the sound of insects in the night was electric.
The music sounded better than anything I'd ever heard.
I had never been so happy in my life.
I played with the little silver medal against my bare chest.
I wrote poetry while we sat there like that in the dark and talked about our favorite poems and books and laughed and smoked.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“They were both so beautiful, and their sound, as we said them to each other above the music, made our chests fill up with something electric and buzzing, like love and magic.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“You know, if they ever gave a Nobel Prize for avoiding work, every year some white guy in Iowa would get a million bucks and a trip to Sweden.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“You could never get everything in a book. Good books are always about everything.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“There is something inside all boys that drives us to go away again and again and again.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“History chews up sexually uncertain boys, and spits us out as recycled, generic greeting cards for lonely old men.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“History shows that an examination of the personal collection of titles in any man’s library will provide something of a glimpse into his soul.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“To me, hearing that those girls gave my brother Eric a blow job sounded very nice.

History shows that all boys consider blow job to be a nice-sounding set of words.

I thought a blow job was putting your face in front of an air conditioner, which is something all nine-year-old boys love to do, even though Eric did not look like he had been cooled off very much.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“All roads lead past shooting ranges, liquor stores, and gay bars. Wanderlust is part of the American Spirit.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“History is full of decapitations, and Iowa is no exception.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“History shows that erections happen at the worst possible times, and they stick around until someone else notices them. Often, it is either a librarian or an English teacher, like Mrs. Edith Mitchell.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“Robby called me Porcupine because of how I wore my hair. I didn't mind. Everyone else called me Austin.
Austin Szerba.
It is Polish.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“Hungry Jack’s real name was Charles R. Hoofard.

He was born in Indianapolis in 1950.

In 1950, Harry S. Truman was president of the United States.

Harry Truman, as far as I can tell, also never took a shit in his life.

In 1950, the same year that a boy named Charles R. Hoofard was born in Indianapolis, President Harry S. Truman sent military assistance to the French. They were trying to maintain their French Catholic colony in Vietnam. That military aid would grow and blossom to the point that a boy with wanderlust from Indiana named Charles R. Hoofard ultimately took time out from fucking whatever he wanted to fuck to participate in the killing of an entire village of women, elderly people, and children.

History is full of shit like that.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

“I do not know why, because that is not my job, but history shows that every time a teenage boy opens a permanent marker, he will first sniff it before deciding how to go about defacing the planet.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Grasshopper Jungle

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Popular quotes

“Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of the moon and the colors of the dawn and dusk.”
― Barry López, quote from Arctic Dreams

“Ireland, like Ukraine, is a largely rural country which suffers from its proximity to a more powerful industrialised neighbour. Ireland’s contribution to the history of tractors is the genius engineer Harry Ferguson, who was born in 1884, near Belfast.
Ferguson was a clever and mischievous man, who also had a passion for aviation. It is said that he was the first man in Great Britain to build and fly his own aircraft in 1909. But he soon came to believe that improving efficiency of food production would be his unique service to mankind. Harry Ferguson’s first two-furrow plough was attached to the chassis of the Ford Model T car converted into a tractor, aptly named Eros. This plough was mounted on the rear of the tractor, and through ingenious use of balance springs it could be raised or lowered by the driver using a lever beside his seat. Ford, meanwhile, was developing its own tractors. The Ferguson design was more advanced, and made use of hydraulic linkage, but Ferguson knew that despite his engineering genius, he could not achieve his dream on his own. He needed a larger company to produce his design. So he made an informal agreement with Henry Ford, sealed only by a handshake. This Ford-Ferguson partnership gave to the world a new type of Fordson tractor far superior to any that had been known before, and the precursor of all modern-type tractors. However, this agreement by a handshake collapsed in 1947 when Henry Ford II took over the empire of his father, and started to produce a new Ford 8N tractor, using the Ferguson system. Ferguson’s open and cheerful nature was no match for the ruthless mentality of the American businessman. The matter was decided in court in 1951. Ferguson claimed $240 million, but was awarded only $9.25 million. Undaunted in spirit, Ferguson had a new idea. He approached the Standard Motor Company at Coventry with a plan, to adapt the Vanguard car for use as tractor. But this design had to be modified, because petrol was still rationed in the post-war period. The biggest challenge for Ferguson was the move from petrol-driven to diesel-driven engines and his success gave rise to the famous TE-20, of which more than half a million were built in the UK. Ferguson will be remembered for bringing together two great engineering stories of our time, the tractor and the family car, agriculture and transport, both of which have contributed so richly to the well-being of mankind.”
― Marina Lewycka, quote from A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“There on the landing sits the typewriter. It is clogged with dust, the ribbon dried and flimsy. Looking at it gives Felix a feeling close to vertigo. He realises he can replicate in his head the exact sound it used to make. The clac-clac-a-clac of the metal letters hitting the paper, the ribbon raising itself each time to make the impression. The machine-gun fire of it, when the work was going well. The stops and pauses when it wasn't, to allow for a sigh, a draw on a cigarette. The ding every time the carriage reached its limit. The whirr as the page was snatched out, then the rolling ratcheting as a new one was wound in.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from The Hand That First Held Mine

“I jumped up and "casually" strolled a bit closer. I blinked my eyes in the sun. It couldn't be, could it? But it was.
Gabe.
...
"You know, if you're going to stalk someone, you should be less obvious."
I wheeled around. It was Todd. He'd snuck up on me.
He said, "For starters, try not to standing in the middle of a field, gawking at your prey."
I kicked at a dusty clump of grass. "Gawking? I... I'm... not gawking. I was just watching your girlfired putting the moves on someone else. Jealous?"
"Oh Gabe Webber?" Todd laughed. "Uh...no."
I shielded my eyes from the sun. "Why? What's wrong with Gabe Webber?"
"Nothing. As in, there's nothing there. He has the personality of dry toast."
How dare he insult my Gabe? "Oh yes. I forgot. You prefer the company of assholes and jerks. As they say, 'Birds of a feather...'"
"That must be why you hang around.”
― Kristin Walker, quote from A Match Made in High School

“A journey of observation must leave as much as possible to chance. Random movement is the best plan for maximum observation”
― Tahir Shah, quote from Sorcerer's Apprentice

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