“Living is the challenge. Not dying. Dying is so easy. Sometimes it only takes ten seconds to die. But living? That can take you eighty years and you do something in that time.”
“She asked me what type of contraceptive I use.
Underwear. Keeping it on prevents pregnancy.”
“Your problems are out there. But they're small. They only grow out of proportion when they climb inside your head.”
“I'm beginning to realize that things don't turn out the way you want them to. And sometimes, when they don't they can turn out just a little bit better.”
“You don't die. You just... get really angry and then after you're angry you hurt a lot and then the best thing is that one day you remember something she said or did and you laugh instead of crying.”
“And when you'd finished running you'd be thousands of miles away from people who love you and your problem would still be there except you'd have nobody to help you.”
“To have somone hold you could be the greatest medicine of all.”
“Because photos are testimony that someone did live. A reminder of past we may have loved or hated. A piece of our lives.”
“Simple dreams are the hardest to come true”
“You can't think for other people. Nor can you feel for them or be them. They have to do that for themselves.”
“But you're almost eighteen. You're old enough. Everyone else is doing it.
And next year someone is going to say to someone else 'but you're only sixteen, everyone else is doing it' Or one day someone will tell your daughter that she's only thirteen and everyone else is doing it. I don't want to do it because everyone else is doing it.”
“I think that we vote, not to get the best party in, but to keep the worst party out.”
“We're so different. You're an intellectual. I'm an idiot."
"Don't say that," I yelled. "You're not an idiot, you stupid idiot.”
“We don't even love each other.
I do a bit, you know.
You do what a bit?
You know. Like you...whatever...love you a bit.
I think I kind of love you too.”
“I'll run one day. Run for my life. To be free and think for myself...I'll run to be emancipated.”
“It's too late. Seventeen-year-olds don't need fathers.
Oh god. I'm thirty-four years old and I need a father. I can't even begin to think what my daughter needs.”
“Mama says that satisfaction isn't what I should search for. Respect is. Respect?
I detest that word. Probably because in this world you have to respect the wrong people for the wrong reasons.”
“I never thought meeting you would be this boring. I thought we'd put our Italian emotion into gear and scream the place down. I never expected indifference.”
“One day" came.
Because finally I understood.”
“You know something,Jacob, I'd hate to be as smart as Jonh. I mean he was really, really smart, and to be that smart means you know all the answers, and when you know all the answers there's no room for dreaming.”
“I would rather die than ever see you suffering this way. I don't want you or any child I ever have or any woman I ever love to go through or feel what you're going through, but it's happened and I don't know what to do.”
“It's my birthday today. I'm not 17 anymore. The 17 Janis Ian sang about where one learns the truth. But what she failed to mention is that you keep on learning truths after 17 and I want to keep on learning truths till the day I die.”
“Fifteen minutes later I was an expert. That's all you need. I think I was even getting the upper hand, which is very simple with a guy. Anything seems to turn them on.”
“I've been passionate about two things in my life. One was Christina Alibrandi. The other is Josephine Alibrandi.”
“I'm scared to die," I whispered as Michael walked in.
"He was scared to live," he said kissing my forehead.”
“I just don't trust people who have bodies that change with their moods.
Well then you'll never trust the opposite sex again.”
“You're the father of the person who is my life.”
“Josie, life is not a Mills and Boon book. People fall out of love. People disappoint other people and they find it very hard to forgive.”
“What is it? A prize or something?
No. It's not a prize and I'm not a prize. But it's mine. It belongs to me and I can only give it away once, and I want to be so sure when it happens. I don't want to say that the first time for me was bad or it didn't mean a thing.”
“In the book of Job, the Lord demands, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?”
“I was there!”-surely that is the answer to God’s question. For no matter how the universe came into being, most of the atoms in these fleeting assemblies that we think of as our bodies have been in existence since the beginning. Each breath we take contains hundreds of thousands of the inert, pervasive argon atoms that were actually breathed in his lifetime by the Buddha, and indeed contain parts of all the ‘snorts, sighs, bellows, shrieks” of all creatures that ever existed or will exist. These atoms flow backward and forward in such useful but artificial constructs as time and space, in the same universal rhythms, universal breath as the tides and stars, joining both the living and the dead in that energy which animates the universe.”
“Salim,' She said, as if he were in the room. 'I'll have your guts for garters.' I has never heard this before and wondered what garters were. Kat told me later that they are what women used to wear around their thighs to keep their stockings up and they were elasticated. I do not think guts would be a tidy way of doing this.”
“.... They both professed to be atheists, but, judging by their conduct, they exhibited in their daily lives all those attributes which are fundamental to real, active Christianity. They were thoughtful for my comfort in every way, and shared many of my interests and pursuits with a zest which might well have been envied by much younger people. Together we went down to Torquay for a two-week holiday and returned to Brentwood completely refreshed.”
“I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—”
“The Fat Girl Code of Conduct:
1. Any sexual activity is a secret. No public displays of affection.
2. Don’t discuss your weight with him.
3. Go further than skinny girls. If you can’t sell him on your body, you’d better overcompensate with sexual perks.
4. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever push the relationship thing. ”
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