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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