Quotes from The Before Now and After Then

Peter Monn ·  304 pages

Rating: (410 votes)


“I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. Sometimes pain likes to be alone.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then


“Maybe, just maybe, the perfection of the world was found in the imperfection.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then


“That's the thing about parents. They ask what you think, but they don't really care, or at least they don't care enough to let it affect the outcome.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then


“Sometimes it was easier to stay and suffer for the short term than to have a permanent scar reminding you of the past.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then


“He had never seemed breakable before, but in that moment, he was entirely fragile, and there was something beautiful in his sadness; something raw.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then



“And then I would cry, because even though boys don’t cry, I did.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then


“I think it’s funny how people say what dead people would want, as if they would know.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then


“Parents always thought if they could get on your level then that allowed them secret passage into your world when in reality, they were just manipulating you the whole time.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then


“Eventually, the Pat's of this world forgot about you and moved on to someone else. The worst part was that deep down inside, you knew that there was a truth to everything they said. And even if that truth wasn't bad or good, they still owned part of it. They owned a piece of you.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then


About the author

Popular quotes

“The Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board is established in 1946 in an effort to discover the cause of the brown cloud hanging over the city and decide how to combat and disperse it. In 1949, after intense lobbying from both the automobile and oil industries, and against the recommendations and position of the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board, the public rail system, which at one time was the largest in the world, and still serves a majority of the city's population, is decommissioned and torn out. It is replaced by a small fleet of buses.”
― James Frey, quote from Bright Shiny Morning


“I had the feeling of something inside me that flipped like a fish in a net. It was hope. As much as I bad-mouth people in general and think the worst of them, I'm secretly waiting for them to surprise me. Try as I might, I haven't been able to give up on them wholly. Even though they are nine and nine-tenths dirt, now and again they are capable of something angelic. I can't say that it restores my faith, because I really had none in the first place, but when it happens it does confuse you.”
― Marcel Theroux, quote from Far North


“The ferocious virtues that had been necessary for survival on the American frontier were theirs: they were men who lived freely, wastefully, independently, and they lived by killing--animals as a rule, men if necessary.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from Wolf Willow


“Because of the "divine" properties attributed to the Golden Ratio, mathematician Clifford A. Pickover suggested that we should refer to that point as "the Eye of God.”
― quote from The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World's Most Astonishing Number


“Her nod was grudging. “Do you think Downing killed her and ran?” “There is no evidence of that.” He pulled up to her building. “One last question,” he said. “Was Greg involved in anything unsavory?” “Like what?” “Like is there any reason thugs would be after him?” Again her excitement was palpable. The woman was like an electric current. “What do you mean? What thugs?” “A couple of thugs were watching Greg’s house.” Her face was positively glowing. “Thugs? You mean like professional gangsters?” “Probably. I don’t know for sure yet. Can you think of anything that would connect Greg to thugs or for that matter, the murder of this woman? Drugs maybe?” Audrey shook her head immediately. “It can’t be drugs.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Fade Away


Interesting books

Lois & Clark: A Superman Novel
(119)
Lois & Clark: A Supe...
by C.J. Cherryh
Wasteland
(3.4K)
Wasteland
by Francesca Lia Block
Sacrificial Magic
(6K)
Sacrificial Magic
by Stacia Kane
Letters to a Young Artist
(505)
Letters to a Young A...
by Anna Deavere Smith
The Wrinkle in Time Quintet - Digest Size Boxed Set
(2.5K)
The Wrinkle in Time...
by Madeleine L'Engle
Code: Version 2.0
(1.4K)
Code: Version 2.0
by Lawrence Lessig

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.