Elizabeth Scott · 276 pages
Rating: (7.5K votes)
“The truth is, I feel beyond sad. I feel empty. Numb. ”
“The thing is, that world doesn't exist. All growing up means is that your realize no one will come along to fix things. No one will come along to save you.”
“Why do people think being with someone is the answer to everything?”
“Wherever I go, I'll always see you. You'll always be with me. And there's no happy ending coming here, no way a story that started on a night that's burned into my heart will end the way I wish it could. You're really gone, no last words, and no matter how many letters I write to you, you're never going to reply. You're never going to say good-bye. So I will. Good-bye, Julia. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for being you.”
“I deserved the shaking and the headaches and the fact that every single time I took a breath I felt a squeezing in my chest, my heart beating even though I wished it wasn't.”
“You can't go back to how things were. How you thought they were. All you really have... is now”
“I suppose he's making a real fashion statement, but this is high school. You're not supposed to be real. You're supposed to be enough like everyone else to get through and out into the waiting world.”
“But the past couple
of days I’ve missed you so much it’s felt like missing you
is all I am.”
“I always wanted to be grown up. When I was little I couldn’t wait to be a teenager and go to high school. When I got there I wanted to be done with it, wanted to get out into the world, the real one, and live in it. The thing is, that world doesn’t exist. All growing up means is that you realize no one will come along to fix things. No one will come along to save you.”
“I knew I was having a panic attack. I hadn't had one in a while, though, and I'd forgotton how they made everything like it- and I- was going to fall apart. How they reminded me of how trapped I was.”
“It's bullshit. It's so easy to label people, to look at a list of symptoms and say, "This is who you are. This is what you are.”
“You're right . . . you can't go back. No matter how much you want to, you never can”
“All growing up means is that you realize no one will come along and fix things.”
“ I never went for the
talkers.”
“I lied to Julia, I didn't know what else to do because you - you make me feel..." I had to stop. Not because I didn't have words. I did. But I was afraid to say them.
He looked at me, and I knew then I could love him. That if I let myself I would.
"You make me feel too," he said, and held out one hand.”
“My father looked like he was having a stroke— not
that Mel seemed to notice because he just kept talking.
“Patrick needs a ride. No car, you know, and so I figured,
hey, I can pick up some gas money.” He laughed. No one
else did, and now Patrick looked like he was trying to
push himself inside the door and hide.”
“Too late, too late, juice pouring does not a kind soul make, and I killed you.”
“I've missed you so much it's felt like missing you is all I am.
Like if someone looked inside me, there wouldn't be a skeleton and muscles and blood and nerves. There'd just be memories of you and all the things I've tried to say and ripped out of this notebook, all the things I want to say but can't because I don't have the words.”
“She did the "we have mysterious hand gestures that make us giggle" thing.”
“He kept talking and I thought about taking my copy of Huckleberry Finn and stuffing it in his mouth so he'd shut up.”
“Everyone gets scared," like it's some big profound statement?”
“You didn’t answer my question. I asked you about being in love. You said what it was like when your wife went away.”
Martin sat down again. How young she is. When we were that young we invented the world, no one could tell us a thing. Julia stood with her hands clenched, as though she wanted to pound an answer out of him. “Being in love is…anxious,” he said. “Wanting to please, worrying that she will see me as I really am. But wanting to be known. That is…you’re naked, moaning in the dark, no dignity at all…I wanted her to see me and to love me even though she knew everything I am, and I knew her. Now she’s gone, and my knowledge is incomplete. So all day I imagine what she is doing, what she says and who she talks to, how she looks. I try to supply the missing hours, and it gets harder as they pile up, all the time she’s been gone. I have to imagine. I don’t know, really. I don’t know any more.”
“It was my TBR-my TO Be Read stack. The usual subjects were there. Chick lit. Action. A Pulitzer Prize winner. A romance novel about a pirate and a damsel in a low-cut blouse (What? Even vampire enjoys a little bodice ripping now and again.)”
“Emblematic of this era was the prolific Viennese surgeon Theodor Billroth. Born in 1821, Billroth studied music and surgery with almost equal verve. (The professions still often go hand in hand. Both push manual skill to its limit; both mature with practice and age; both depend on immediacy, precision, and opposable thumbs.)”
“People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know _about_ you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to.”
“Er war entsetzt … und der Höhlenmensch in ihm sprang herum und freute sich.”
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