Quotes from Highly Illogical Behavior

John Corey Whaley ·  256 pages

Rating: (10.2K votes)


“We’re just floating in space trying to figure out what it means to be human.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“You’re like Lady Macbeth without the murder.” “Thank you. You have no idea how much of a compliment that is to me.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“He was afraid of the world, afraid it would find a way to swallow him up. But, maybe everyone was sometimes.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“He was an astronaut without a suit, but he was still breathing.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“There are no boring places, only boring people,”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior



“And then he spent three years wondering why everyone found that so hard to understand. All he was doing was living instead of dying. Some people get cancer. Some people get crazy. Nobody tries to take the chemo away.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“As smart as I am, it took a boy stuck in his house to teach me that sometimes it doesn't matter where you are at all. It only matters whos with you.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“What he feared the most was that all this hiding had made it impossible for him to ever be found again.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“She knew it was weird that she'd reached out to him the way she had. But she also knew that there were a lot of people in the world who regretted never doing the things they felt were right because they were afraid of seeming strange or crazy. Lisa wouldn't settle for that sort of mediocre existence, one bound by invisible social cues. And she had a good feeling that someone like Solomon Reed would appreciate that.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“That’s what we do sometimes. We let people disappear. We want them to. If everyone just stays quiet and out of the way, then the rest of us can pretend everything’s fine. But everything is not fine.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior



“She believed in herself maybe more than other people believed in God or the devil or Heaven or Hell.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“Crazy people don't know they're crazy.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“Jealous of the crazy gay kid. That doesn't sound right."
"Hey, Sol," she said, her tone getting serious for a second.
"Those are two things about you out of a million. Don't box yourself in.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“If you could be any character on The Next Generation, who would you be?"
"Easy," Solomon said. "Data. For sure."
"That makes sense," Clark said.
"You?"
"I always liked Wesley Crusher."
"What?" Solomon was appalled. "Nobody likes Wesley Crusher."
"Why not?" Lisa asked.
"Because he's a total Mary Sue," Solomon said. "He's too perfect."
"But he's always saving the day," Clark argued. "Like, always."
"Exactly. He's just a talking deus ex machina. Everybody on the ship treats him like a dumb kid, then he saves them at the last minute and, every single time, they go right back to treating him like a dumb kid again. Do I need to remind you that the starship Enterprise is full of genius scientists and engineers? Why's this kid who can't get into Starfleet Academy smarter than all of them?"
"Good point," Clark said. "He's still my choice, though.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“He hasn't left his house in three years, he's not crazy, he's a genius; just tv and videogames twenty four-seven, I think he's my new hero...”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior



“He was afraid of the world, afraid it would find a way to swallow him up. But, maybe everyone was sometimes. Maybe some people can just turn it off when they need to. After”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“Solomon had good days and he had bad days, but the good had far outnumbered the bad since Lisa and Clark had started coming around. Sometimes, though, they'd show up and he's look completely exhausted, drained of all his charm and moving in slow motion. They could do that to him—the attacks. Something about the physical response to panic can drain all the energy out of a person, and it doesn't matter what causes it or how long it lasts. What Solomon had was unforgiving and sneaky and as smart as any other illness. It was like a virus or cancer that would hide just long enough to fool him into thinking it was gone. And because it showed up when it damn well pleased, he'd learned to be honest about it, knowing that embarrassment only made it worse.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“I don't want to lie about who I am, even if it doesn't matter. It's who I am. It's part of me.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“There are no boring places, only boring people.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“And, long after Clark had gone home, Solomon stayed up wondering if everyone falls in love with someone who can't love them back.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior



“But she believed there was a thin line between accepting one's fears and giving in to them altogether.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“Now, no matter what they told themselves or each other, it would always be different. After all, no first love goes away overnight, especially one that's always right in front of you, but just out of your reach.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“Grandma "It'll keep you from going completely nuts someday and killing us all."
Solomon "Is that what you think's going to happen, that I"m going to snap and kill you?"
Grandma "Not me you won't. I keep mace in my purse.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“But at home, that same day he'd jumped into the fountain, he'd gotten so anxious, pacing around the living room listening to his parents try to calm him, that he suddenly just lost it completely and slapped his face. He immediately started crying, confused and guilty, looking up at his parents like he had no idea how it happened. And, really, that's the way it always was with the hitting. It would happen so fast, his body shaking to release the tension that built up from all the thoughts swirling through his mind and all the air he was having trouble breathing and all the loud beating of his own heart ringing in his ears. It had to get out and that was the path it chose. Slap. Instant relief.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“But I know what it's like to constantly think about a life you aren't living.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior



“It was a great laugh - that kind where you can actually hear the 'ha-ha-ha's' if you listen closely enough.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“She hadn’t heard the words Star Trek in seven days and it felt amazing. The”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“If this were an indie movie, we'd start talking about the constellations," Solomon said, looking up at the stars.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“Some people sign on for the impossible. And they're the ones everybody remembers.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior


“They say using your imagination makes you live longer.”
― John Corey Whaley, quote from Highly Illogical Behavior



About the author

John Corey Whaley
Born place: The United States
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Popular quotes

“Oh, it's nothing to be ashamed of. Slaying a villain in the service of your king is the stuff of legends and what heroes are made of." [Fanen told Myron]

"It didn't feel very heroic. It made me sick. I don't even know why I... no, that's a lie. I really have to stop doing that." [Myron said]

"Doing what?"

"Lying. (...) It's evidence of self loathing. You see, when you are so ashamed of your actions, thoughts, or intentions, you lie to hide it rather than accept yourself for who you really are. The idea of how others see you becomes more important than the reality of you.

"It's like when a man would rather die than be thought of a coward. His life is not as important to him as his reputation. In the end, who is the braver? The man who dies rather than be thought of as a coward or the man who lives willing to face who he really is?" [Myron finished]

"I'm sorry, you lost me there" Fanen said with a quizzical look.”
― Michael J. Sullivan, quote from The Crown Conspiracy


“Then I felt too that I might take this opportunity to tie up a few loose ends, only of course loose ends can never be properly tied, one is always producing new ones. Time, like the sea, unties all knots. Judgements on people are never final, they emerge from summings up which at once suggest the need of a reconsideration. Human arrangements are nothing but loose ends and hazy reckoning, whatever art may otherwise pretend in order to console us.”
― Iris Murdoch, quote from The Sea, the Sea


“First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.”
― Carson McCullers, quote from The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories


“Our moment had passed somehow. I was different. He was, too. Without our “madness” to unite us, there wasn’t anything much there. Or maybe too much had happened in too short a time. It’s like when you take a trip with someone you don’t know very well. Sometimes you can get very close very quickly, but then after the trip is over, you realise all that was a false sort of closeness. An intimacy based on the trip more than the travellers, if that makes any sense.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac


“Not everyone is willing to embrace liberty; liberty requires not just effort, but risk. Some people choose to delude themselves and see their chains as protective armor.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Chainfire


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