Quotes from Gus

Kim Holden ·  389 pages

Rating: (10.1K votes)


“There's something epic that happens every day if you look hard enough for it.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“You only get one chance at this circus called life. Don’t sit in the crowd watchin’ it happen. You jump right in and be the ringleader. That’s where you find your fire.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“How do you go back to doing what you did before, when half of you is gone forever?”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Some people wear their scars on the outside. Others wear them on the inside. Same difference. Your character, your heart, your essence, that’s what’s important, because that’s the real you. All the rest, our looks, the material stuff? It's just meaningless bullshit.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Epic is a state of mind.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus



“I think people find each other when they’re ready for them. When they need each other the most. And it’s in that time of need that the strongest relationships are formed.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“I’m at the tipping point of a transformation that began months ago, an intentional decision put in motion. And it feels so fucking good. I’ve come to the full realization that my happiness, my life, falls squarely on my shoulders. No one’s gonna do it for it me. I’m the one who makes it or breaks it.  It’s a choice.  A choice that demands action in exchange for reward. Idleness and complacency lead to mediocrity. Sometimes action is really fucking hard fought, but that’s when the payoff’s the highest.  That’s when great things happen.  Not good things … but epic things. And I’ve fallen in love with epic.  It’s the only way to live.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Life ain’t about coasting. It’s about pushin’ the damn gas pedal all the way to the floor. Same goes for fun and love, no coasting. Pedal to the floor.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Bright Side wasn’t only my best friend; she was like my other half ... the other half of my brain, the other half of my conscience, the other half of my sense of humor, the other half of my creativity, the other half of my heart.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Leave it to Bright Side to haunt me from the grave—and instead of it being creepy, it’s sunshine and rainbows and fucking unicorns.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus



“It was a gift. You were a gift. A gift that made my life worthwhile. A gift that made life fun. A gift that filled me with music. A gift that filled me with love. A gift that inspired me to live on the bright side.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“That’s the secret. You find what you love and you go for it. Life ain’t about coasting. It’s about pushin’ the damn gas pedal all the way to the floor. Same goes for fun and love, no coasting. Pedal to the floor.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“I need to know why I’m supposed to go through the rest of my life without being able to talk to her. Hug her. Hear her laugh. Watch the sunset with her. Watch her play her violin. Kiss her forehead. Tell her I love her. Hear her say it back. Why? Why?!”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Fuck it. I am who I am. Nobody's perfect.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“When someone initiates kindness anonymously, you know it comes from the most pure, kind-hearted part of them because they’ll probably never be singled out and thanked. It speaks to his character.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus



“Outside on the sidewalk, I stop in my tracks. The sun is setting. It’s like fire in the sky.  Bright.  Brilliant.  Orange. The four guys stand with me in awed silence. They know how much Bright Side loved to watch the sunset.  My smile grows as the sun makes its final descent and plunges us into darkness. Bright Side was definitely in charge tonight.  “That’s my girl.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Bendy straws are the shit, dude.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“friends are the family you choose.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“I don’t know how to be Gus without her, dude. I’m fucking lost as shit.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“I’m at the point where I just … don’t. I know that doesn’t make any fucking sense, but it’s how I feel. I don’t.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus



“There’s something epic that happens every day if you look hard enough for it.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“And when his big arms wrap around me, I realize in this moment that I’ve never really been hugged. This is a hug. This is what human contact is supposed to feel like. It’s supposed to feel … human. Distilled until it’s nothing but one human being transferring support to another human being in the form of touch that’s unselfish and pure in intention.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“I knew I wasn’t alone. I haven’t written like that since Bright Side was around. I always feel her in my heart these days, because that’s where she lives. I walk around with her inside me every day. And it doesn’t hurt anymore. But the presence I felt tonight wasn’t internal. It was physical. Tangible. Like someone was in the room with me, feeding me. Little did I know, she was just on the other side of the door.  Filling my soul.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Tears and Smiles <3 Mrs. Randolph
Quite the character!!!

"Here’s the thing about life, boy. We meet a lot of people along this journey. Some of them are sonsabitches and some are special. When you find the special ones you don’t take a moment for granted, because you never know when your time with them is gonna be up. I got over fifty years with my Fritz. Fifty wonderful years. When he died, I was lost for a few months. I lost my fire. But then I realized that life’s short and I had a choice to make. I could keep bein’ miserable, or I could go find joy and live again.” She’s squeezing even harder now. “If you only listen to one thing this crazy old lady tells you, I hope it’s this: ain’t nobody gonna stoke your fire but you, boy.” She looks at me hard with her grey, cloudy eyes. “You go make life happen.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“nobody is perfect. Some people wear their scars on the outside. Others wear them on the inside. Same difference. Your character, your heart, your essence, that’s what’s important, because that’s the real you. All the rest, our looks, the material stuff? It's just meaningless bullshit.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus



“Silence isn’t the enemy. It can bring comfort and clarity and validation. It’s a reminder of time for what it is … presence.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Your character, your heart, your essence, that’s what’s important, because that’s the real you. All the rest, our looks, the material stuff? It's just meaningless bullshit.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Bright Side wasn’t only my best friend; she was like my other half ... the other half of my brain, the other half of my conscience, the other half of my sense of humor, the other half of my creativity, the other half of my heart. How do you go back to doing what you did before, when half of you is gone forever?”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Happy birthday, Bright Side. I hope you’re in charge of showtime tonight. I’m expecting nothing short of fucking incredible on behalf of your big day, just so you know. No pressure, but you’d better step up and do epic.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus


“Kate Sedgwick. That name holds so much power over me. The best kind of power: inspiring, encouraging, and respectable. It’s a name that I’ve always associated with badass bravery. It’s a name that always meant anything was possible. It’s a name that was love and goodness and kindness.”
― Kim Holden, quote from Gus



About the author

Kim Holden
Born place: in Denver CO, The United States
Born date October 14, 1972
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Popular quotes

“If you tell a guy in the street you're hungry you scare the shit out of him, he runs like hell. That's something I never understood. I don't understand it yet. The whole thing is so simple - you just say Yes when some one comes up to you. And if you can't say Yes you can take him by the arm and ask some other bird to help you out. Why you have to don a uniform and kill men you don't know, just to get that crust of bread, is a mystery to me. That's what I think about, more than about whose trap it's going down or how much it costs. Why should I give a fuck about what anything costs ? I'm here to live, not to calculate. And that's just what the bastards don't want you to do - to live! They want you to spend your whole life adding up figures. That makes sense to them. That's reasonable. That's intelligent. If I were running the boat things wouldn't be so orderly perhaps, but it would be gayer, by Jesus! You wouldn't have to shit in your pants over trifles. Maybe there wouldn't be macadamized roads and streamlined cars and loudspeakers and gadgets of a million-billion varieties, maybe there wouldn't even be glass in the windows, maybe you'd have to sleep on the ground, maybe there wouldn't be French cooking and Italian cooking and Chinese cooking, maybe people would kill each other when their patience was exhausted and maybe nobody would stop them because there wouldn't be any jails or any cops or judges, and there certainly wouldn't be any cabinet ministers or legislatures because-there wouldn't be any goddamned laws to obey or disobey, and maybe it would take months and years to trek from place to place, but you wouldn't need a visa or a passport or a carte d'identite because you wouldn't be registered anywhere and you wouldn't bear a number and if you wanted to change your name every week you could do it because it wouldn't make any difference since you wouldn't own anything except what you could carry around with you and why would you want to own anything when everything would be free?”
― Henry Miller, quote from Tropic of Capricorn


“It is always difficult, the transition from noisy refusal to humble acceptance.”
― Zoë Heller, quote from What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]


“His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from His Last Bow


“And Caitlin smiled. I Wanted to put her smile in my pocket to look at over and over”
― Alex Flinn, quote from Breathing Underwater


“The imprint left on her mind by the long famished body that had seemed in the darkness to consist of nothing by sharp crags and angles, the memory of its painfully-defined almost skeletal ribcage, a pattern of ridges like a washboard, was fading as rapidly as any other transient impression on a soft surface.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Edible Woman


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