Carol Plum-Ucci · 331 pages
Rating: (5.2K votes)
“Nobody stopped believing that other people were more guilty than they were. Why do people have so much trouble seeing their own faults but such an easy time seeing everyone else's?”
“Things don't have to be sane when they're normal.”
“People can love their lies, tell their lies, believe their own lies until hell pays a visit.”
“People only see as far as they are able and the rest of the truth is lost on them.”
“But not hurting people and knowing how to get along with people, ... they're different.”
“You're in my personal space, so get out of it.”
“Life is a journey, and I may not have always lived up to my ability, but I have always lived purposefully, and I guess readers get caught up with me, raising the questions, looking for the answers, looking to be a little more understanding, a little less judgmental, a little more merciful. I hope so.”
“I only wish to be gone. Therefore, I AM.”
“People will do and think whatever it is they have to in order to survive.”
“«People used to say I was weird,» he said. «I used to care. But I don't anymore. People shouldn't care, people shouldn't use words like weird once you hit junior year. Everyone's weird. That's the way I look at it.»”
“You're making it sound like it's more dangerous to have a slightly weird family, than a totally weird family.”
“...perhaps they will remember Chris Creed and they will find their tolerance, their compassion.”
“There is justice in an insanely cruel world.”
“It was as if the story had been added to, so as not to disgust people too much.”
“When you go into a room, you knock first. If you start asking people questions and they start tilting back in their chairs, it means they don't want to talk about it. It means if you look at something on their computer screens, they're likely to knock your brains out with a baseball bat.”
“You can't find your life, or your peace, in the middle of a bezillion eyes staring at you.”
“No friend of my parents is a pervert. It's physiologically impossible.”
“And so, though Smith was not at all the man Knight would have deliberately chosen as a friend—or even for one of a group of a dozen friends—he somehow was his friend. Circumstance, as usual, did it all. How many of us can say of our most intimate alter ego, leaving alone friends of the outer circle, that he is the man we should have chosen, as embodying the net result after adding up all the points in human nature that we love, and principles we hold, and subtracting all that we hate? The man is really somebody we got to know by mere physical juxtaposition long maintained, and was taken into our confidence, and even heart, as a makeshift.”
“It was inevitable that Red China would invade Tibet, and then there would be no place for us two friends of Tibetan independence.”
“Mentira, el recuerdo del colegio despertaba aún esa inevitable sensación sombría y huraña bajo la cual su espíritu se contraía como una mimosa al contacto de la piel humana. Sólo que el malestar era cada vez más efímero, un pasajero granito de arena en el ojo, ya estaba bien de nuevo.”
“[David Riesman] had made a hobby of studying the American Civil War and he had always been disturbed by the passions which it had unleashed in the country, the tensions and angers just below the surface, the thin fabric of the society which held it all together, so easy to rend.”
“Don't let someone spend money who never earned it.”
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