Quotes from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“Someday, we’ll run into each other again, I know it.
Maybe I’ll be older and smarter and just plain better. If that happens,
that’s when I’ll deserve you. But now, at this moment, you can’t hook
your boat to mine, because I’m liable to sink us both.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“It was strange, really. A couple months ago, I had thought I couldn’t live without him. Apparently I could.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“I was crying a little for the boy I had wanted him to be and the boy he hadn’t turned out to be.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“You forget all of it anyway. . . You forget who was cool and who was not, who was pretty, smart, athletic, and not. . . You forget all of them. Even the ones you said you loved, and even the ones you actually did. They’re the last to go. And then once you’ve forgotten enough, you love someone else.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“You forget all of it anyway. First, you forget everything you learned-the dates of the Hay-Herran Treaty and Pythagorean Theorem. You especially forget everything you didn't really learn, but just memorized the night before. You forget the names of all but one or two of your teachers, and eventually you'll forget those, too. You forget your junior class schedule and where you used to sit and your best friend's home phone number and the lyrics to that song you must have played a million times. For me, it was something by Simon & Garfunkel. Who knows what it will be for you? And eventually, but slowly, oh so slowly, you forget your humiliations-even the ones that seemed indelible just fade away. You forget who was cool and who was not, who was pretty, smart, athletic, and not. Who went to a good college. Who threw the best parties Who could get you pot. You forget all of them. Even the ones you said you loved, and even the ones you actually did. They're the last to go. And then once you've forgotten enough, you love someone else.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“Love stories are written in millimeters and milliseconds with a fast, dull pencil whose marks you can barely see, they are written in miles and eons with a chisel on the side of a mountiantop”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“Above all, mine is a love story. Unlike most love stories, this one involves chance, gravity, a dash of head trauma. It began with a coin toss. The coin came up tails. I was heads. Had it gone my way, there might not be a story at all. Just a chapter, or a sentence in a book whose greater theme had yet to be determined. Maybe this chapter would've had the faintest whisper of love about it. But maybe not. Sometimes, a girl needs to lose.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“I wondered if the person who really loves you is the person who knows all your stories, the person who WANTS to know all your stories.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“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

“What were you like," I asked her. "we're you happy? Or were you smiling because they told you to?”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn't mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“Ask two people to tell you anything, you’ll get two versions. Even easy things like directions, let alone important or semi-controversial topics like why a fight started or what a person was generally like. If you don’t know something for yourself, you just can’t be sure.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“My heart was a little bit broken, but I still had to go to school. I buttoned my dress shirt over it and my winter coat, too. I hoped it didn't show too much.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“It was odd to have something so personal out there in that way, but the good thing about art is that no one necessarily knows what you mean by it anyway.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“And I was crying for gravity. It had sent me down the stairs, and I'd thought that meant something, but maybe it was just the direction that all things tend to flow.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“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 realize all that was a false sort of closeness. An intimacy based on the trip more than the travelers.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“Have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“But then again maybe "I will" is nicer. It has a future in it.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“It's when you don't need something that you tend to lose it.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“I was just thinking... isn't it lucky that we decided to become co-editors? If one takes a blow to the head, the other can fill in. If the other's lung spontaneoulsy collapses, the one can fill in. It's a perfect system once you think about it."
~Will Landsman”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“Hi there," squeaked a precocious little voice, "you are speaking to Chloe Fusakawa, and I have just learned how to answer the phone.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“I don't like to feel so crazy about someone," he said. "I don't like to feel like my happiness is so tied up in another person.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“It was such a sweet, sad song with such sweet, sad lyrics. Old-fashioned a little, but also timeless.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“It was funny how dad was more honest in a book that anyone in the world could pick up and read than he could be talking to me. Or maybe it was sad. One or the other. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“Diving is a leap of faith plus gravity.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“Each period had required me to be a slightly different person, and that was exhausting. I wondered if school had always felt this way and whether it was like this for everone.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind that you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“Since i couldn't remember the "real" first time i'd lost my virginity, this would have become my de facto first time. I wanted a better story then: I did it with this boy who i wasn't very into and who had mysterious Gaterade breath; in his room decorated with sports equipment; at least he was nice enough to provide condoms and get his ancient, horny dog to leave us along.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“I missed her like a reflex, even though I knew that it was just some trick of my undependable brain. Some stupid, vestigial part. The way humans have appendixes, even though they're pointless and mainly just a pain in the butt and people never even think about them unless they have to have them removed.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

“In my opinion, wounds are like water boiled--they heal best left unwatched.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

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Popular quotes

“He had always assumed that a time would come in adulthood, a kind of plateau, when he would have learned all the tricks of managing, of simply being. All mail and e-mails answered, all papers in order, books alphabetically on the shelves, clothes and shoes in good repair in the wardrobes, and all his stuff where he could find it, with the past, including its letters and photographs, sorted into boxes and files, the private life settled and serene, accommodation and finances likewise. In all these years this settlement, the calm plateau, had never appeared, and yet he had continued to assume, without reflecting on the matter, that it was just around the next turn, when he would exert himself and reach it, that moment when his life became clear and his mind free, when his grown-up existence could properly begin. But not long after Catriona's birth, about the time he met Darlene, he thought he saw it for the first time: on the day he died he would be wearing unmatching socks, there would be unanswered e-mails, and in the hovel he called home there would still be shirts missing cuff buttons, a malfunctioning light in the hall, and unpaid bills, uncleared attics, dead flies, friends waiting for a reply, and lovers he had not owned up to. Oblivion, the last word in organization, would be his only consolation.”
― Ian McEwan, quote from Solar

“My dreams were always the same I could see myself laughing . I was standing somewhere in a forest a raindrop rolled down a branch and fell on my nose . My hair was a sparkling red color and I was wearing a white flowing ball gown made from silk. I could feel him the one I loved staring at me intensely . His eyes as gold as the sun . I could hear him saying my love Fleur .. you are everything to me. His fingertips lightly shivering as he touched my face beckoning for me to come closer. I don't know what I would do if I lost you . "Are you sure you want to be with me?" My body protested as I fought for him to stay but he never did. As soon as I woke up his presence was gone.”
― Isabella Kruger, quote from Afterlife

“Always look like you know where you're going, even when you don't”
― Candace Bushnell, quote from Summer and the City

“CLAIRE
I used to be a baby!

CADAN
I'm sorry.”
― Charlie Kaufman, quote from Synecdoche, New York: The Shooting Script

“The bodies were cremated in twenty minutes. Each crematorium worked with fifteen ovens, and there were four crematoriums. This meant that several thousand people could be cremated in a single day. Thus for weeks and months—even years—several thousand people passed each day through the gas chambers and from there to the incineration ovens. Nothing but a pile of ashes remained in the crematory ovens. Trucks took the ashes to the Vistula, a mile away, and dumped them into the raging waters of the river. After so much suffering and horror there was still no peace, even for the dead.”
― Miklós Nyiszli, quote from Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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