“I've decided that it's possible to love someone for entirely selfless reasons, for all of their flaws and weaknesses, and still not succeed in having them love you back. It's sad, perhaps, but not tragic, unless you dwell forever in the pursuit of their elusive affections.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“This feeling will pass. The fear is real but the danger is not.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“Let's don't wait forever for our lives to start. Let's begin them ourselves. Let's be fearless for once and say, we can do this.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“I thought helping someone else might take me out of my own head for a while.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“Dear Matthew-
There's one more thing I didn't get to tell you that night in my bedroom. Here it is: I love you. I'm in love with you. I have been for a long time. This might seem like a strange thing for me to say given the fact we aren't speaking to each other. But I've decided that it's possible to love someone for entirely selfless reasons, for all of their flaws and weaknesses, and still not succeed in having them love you back. It's sad perhaps, but not tragic, unless you dwell forever in the pursuit of their elusive affections.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“Stains were a patchwork of mistakes you couldn't get rid of. They showed the world your real self, even the parts you didn't want it to see.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“Freakishness could happen to anyone at any time.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“I have learned not to judge people by their limitations, but by the way they push past them.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“The real problem with his type of OCD--chronic fear of hurting other people--was that you thought so much about not running over children, not sideswiping pedestrians, not poisoning strangers with germs on your hands--essentially not killing a world full of strangers--that you ended up hurting the people you loved most. He saw that now.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“He stood in front of her and told her he'd come, not to climb her tower but to shelter it. In his clumsy way, he was like a prince who arrived with sweaty armpits and bad hair. At least I'm here, he might have said. That's better than nothing. And it was.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“I have learned that some people who look fine are more crippled than I am, by fears they can’t explain. Other people are held back by shyness, or anger. In making friends, I see the way some people handicap themselves. I believe there are choices each of us make every single day. We can dwell on our limitations or we can push ourselves past them.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“Her idea had a beautiful simplicity at first.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“What's a strapless bra?" he finally asked.
"LIKE A TOURNIQUET FOR YOUR CHEST."
"Can you breathe if you're wearing it?"
"BARELY”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“There isn't any one big test or way to validate ourselves in the world. There's just a long, quiet process of finding our place in it”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“It was electrifying the way he watched her so carefully that he forgot himself.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO SCARED TO TAKE ANY RISKS DOESN'T MEAN THE REST OF US SHOULD BE.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“According to Sarah, who had gone two years ago, prom was famous for being an overpriced disappointment where most people had no fun.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“Oh God, this is my fantasy! Where those just-friend boys suddenly realize they love me.'
'I don't know if this was like that.'
'What happened?'
He thought for a moment. 'Well. I realized I loved her.'
Hannah gasped. 'Oh God, that's so sweet.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“Don't worry. Here's the thing I've learned about pregnancy. Everything feels like a crisis and everything turns out to be heartburn.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“YOUR FEAR MAY SEEM REAL BUT THE DANGER IS NOT. YOU’RE SAFE. YOU’RE ALL RIGHT. YOU’RE HAVING A PANIC ATTACK.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“He had no idea how wonderful he was. How his hands were so beautiful she could hardly look at them. How his truest smile was crooked and lifted higher on the left side than the right, which made her feel like he might understand her better, her hemiplegic face that was all crooked half smiles, too. But it couldn't be denied. He was also slightly crazy. Maybe more than slightly.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“WHY DID YOU TELL PEOPLE MY ESSAY WASN’T TRUE?”
“I don’t know,” he said, breaking out in a sweat. “Because I don’t believe it. I don’t believe anyone could be so well adjusted.”
She typed. “WHY NOT?”
“You said you look at your friends’ lives and feel like your own is better, which is fine, except that you don’t have any friends.”
“HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?”
“I sit behind you. I notice things.”
“WHAT KIND OF THINGS?”
“It’s not your fault that you don’t have any friends. You always have an aide with you. No one is going to be themselves when there’s a teacher standing right there. Plus, you talked about parties and dances, but I don’t think you’ve even been to any, so how would you know what you’re not sorry to be missing?”
He kept going. He started saying too much, telling her all the things he’d noticed—that she never said hi to other kids, that she never answered questions when people asked her things before class. “I’m not pretending I’m Mr. Popularity or anything. I’m just saying you’ve got this whole message that doesn’t seem believable. To me, anyway.”
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’RE SAYING THIS.”
Her facial expressions were impossible to read. He couldn’t tell how mad she was. Probably pretty mad. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s none of my business. Like, none at all. I don’t know why I just said all that. I had this theory that you’re trying to be a certain kind of person, and that must be hard. But God, I’m hardly one to talk. So let’s forget the whole thing. Please. I’m sorry.”
It startled him when her machine blurted out a single word. “NO!”
“No what?”
“DON’T BE SORRY. YOU’RE RIGHT. MY GOSH, I CAN’T BELIEVE HOW RIGHT YOU ARE.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“I’ve decided that it’s possible to love someone for entirely selfless reasons, for all of their flaws and weaknesses, and still not succeed in having them love you back.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“It was about acceptance, he thought. About realizing no one is perfect and no one can expect to change someone else. Which”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“After that, a strange thing happened: Amy couldn't stop her expectations from rising. She imagined herself transformed and beautiful, like Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink, with her homemade dress and mysterious lace boots. She pictured her hair in an upsweep of loose curls. In the fantasy, her prom face looked like the one she only wore asleep, loose and relaxed. She imagined a photographer asking her to smile and, for the first time in her life, being able to do it.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
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“JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE TOO SCARED TO TAKE ANY RISKS DOESN'T MEAN THE REST OF US SHOULD BE.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
“I just slipped into my mother’s office to look at the names of my new peer helpers, and I’m so happy! Your name is on the list! I thought maybe I’d scared you by coming right out and asking you to apply. I realize it’s an unusual setup, but try not to think of it as my parents offering to pay people to be my friend. I know there’s something unsettling and prideless in that. I prefer to think of it this way: my parents are paying people to pretend to be my friend. This will be much closer to the truth, I suspect, and I have no problem with this. I’m guessing that a lot of people in high school are only pretending to be friends, right? It’ll be a start, I figure.”
― Cammie McGovern, quote from Say What You Will
Cammie McGovern
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“Better to suffer the loneliness of the cold throne room than endure the isolation to be found within the crowds of facile courtiers.”
― Stuart Hill, quote from The Last Battle of the Icemark
“夏草や
兵どもが
夢の跡
The summer grasses—
For many brave warriors
The aftermath of dreams.
- Donald Keene, Travelers of a Hundred Ages, New York, 1999, p. 316 (Translation: Donald Keene)”
― Matsuo Bashō, quote from Backroads to Far Towns: Basho's Travel Journal
“With Tom, there had never been a door to close, only the grass to lie on, never a bed; no walls, no ceiling to shut them in - or others out. Only the moon to see them, only the moon, some stars and whatever it was that had flown up out of the field when Ede had cried 'don't' in the final seconds of their embrace. Don't - meaning don't withdraw.”
― Timothy Findley, quote from The Piano Man's Daughter
“Nature had once produced an Englishman whose domed head had been a hive of words; a man who had only to breathe on any particle of his stupendous vocabulary to have that particle live and expand and throw out tremulous tentacles until it became a complex image with a pulsing brain and correlated limbs. Three centuries later, another man, in another country, was trying to render these rhythms and metaphors in a different tongue. This process entailed a prodigious amount of labour, for the necessity of which no real reason could be given. It was as if someone, having seen a certain oak tree (further called Individual T) growing in a certain land and casting its own unique shadow on the green and brown ground, had proceeded to erect in his garden a prodigiously intricate piece of machinery which in itself was as unlike that or any other tree as the translator's inspiration and language were unlike those of the original author, but which, by means of ingenious combination of parts, light effects, breeze-engendering engines, would, when completed, cast a shadow exactly similar to that of Individual T - the same outline, changing in the same manner, with the same double and single spots of sun rippling in the same position, at the same hour of the day. From a practical point of view, such a waste of time and material (those headaches, those midnight triumphs that turn out to be disasters in the sober light of morning!) was almost criminally absurd, since the greatest masterpiece of imitation presupposed a voluntary limitation of thought, in submission to another man's genius.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from Bend Sinister
“He stopped. “You're upset. I'll shut up and leave you”
― Iris Johansen, quote from The Killing Game
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Hitch-22: A MemoirBookQuoters 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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