Jennifer E. Smith · 337 pages
Rating: (27.7K votes)
“But there's no such thing as a completely fresh start. Everything new arrives on the heels of something old, and every beginning comes at the cost of an ending.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“There was no point in waiting for someone who hadn't asked, and there was no point in wishing for something that would never happen.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“There's a difference between loneliness and solitude.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“You can't know the answer until you ask the question.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“The most basic sort of love: to be worried about the one who was worrying about you.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“If you were to draw a map of the two of them, of where they started out and where they would both end up, the lines would be shooting away from each other like magnets spun around on their poles. And it occurred to Owen that there was something deeply flawed about this, that there should be circles or angels or turns, anything that might make it possible for the two lines to meet again. Instead, they were both headed in the exact opposite directions. The map was as good as a door swinging shut. And the geography of the thing- the geography of them- was completely and hopelessly wrong.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“Maybe they were never meant to have more than just one night. After all, not everything can last. Not everything is supposed to mean something.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“There are so many ways to be alone here, even when you're surrounded by this many people.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“When there was nothing but space between you, everything felt like a leap.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“Sometimes it seemed as if his whole life was an exercise in waiting; not waiting to leave, exactly, but simply waiting to go. He felt like one of those fish that had the capacity to grow in unimaginable ways if only the tank were big enough. But his tank had always been small, and as much as he loved his home- as much as he loved his family- he'd always felt himself bumping up against the edges of his own life.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“Something like that," he said, his eyes shining, and she realized just how much there was she didn't know about him. He was like one of her novels, still unfinished and best understood in the right place and at the right time. She couldn't wait to read the rest.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“Not everything can last. Not everything is supposed to mean something.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“How long could a single night really be expected to last? How far could you stretch such a small collection of minutes? He was just a boy on a roof. She was just a girl in an elevator.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“They just stood there, regarding each other silently, the room suddenly as quiet as the elevator had been, as comfortable as the kitchen floor, as remote as the roof. Because that's what happened when you were with someone like that: the world shrank to just the right size. It molded itself to fit only the two of you, and nothing more.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“They were like a couple of asteroids that had collided, she and Owen, briefly sparking before ricocheting off again, a little chipped, maybe even a little scarred, but with miles and miles still to go.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“... they discover that sometimes it is a person rather than a place that anchors you most in the world.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“He was like one of her novels, still unfinished and best understood in the right place and at the right time.
She couldn't wait to read the rest.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“It is what it is..." he murmured, letting the words trail off at the end.
"I hate that expression," Lucy said, a bit more forcefully than intended. "Nothing is what it is. Things are always changing. They can always get better.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“Being on her own had never been a burden. Instead of weighing her down, it buoyed her up; when she was alone, she was lighter. When she was by herself, she felt untethered and free.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“So you’re just here—”
“For a couple of days,” she said, ducking her head. “To see you.”
He smiled. “Really?”
She nodded, wincing already, and he understood why; he knew better than anyone how it sounded, realized how crazy it was to fly halfway around the world to see a person you hardly knew. But he also knew exactly what to say to make her feel better.
“Me too,” he said, moving close so that there was only the rustle of clothing and limbs and beating hearts as he looped an arm over her shoulder. “I only came to see you.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“The quiet between them had gone on for far too long now to pretend it was anything other than what it was. There were no more words; all that was left were two faintly beating hearts.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“There was a lump in her throat as she watched him fidget with the buttons on his vest, and it struck her as the truest form of kindness, the most basic sort of love: to be worried about the one who was worrying about you.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“That was the thing about books, she was realizing; they could take you somewhere else entirely, it was true. but it wasn't the same thing as actually going there yourself.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“She twisted a piece of his T-shirt, then let it go and laid her palm flat against his chest, right over his heart, and he could suddenly feel it again: the steady thump of it drowning out all his other thoughts. It was more drumbeat than countdown, more metronome than ticking clock, and he felt himself carried forward with each muffled beat, as if hope were a rhythm, a song he'd only just discovered.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“Maybe it was possible that you could take someone out of their life and drop them in the middle of another place entirely and they could seem like someone completely different. But even if that were the case, she thought, it wasn't really 'they' change—it was just the backdrop, the circumstances, the cast of characters. Just because you painted a house didn't mean the furniture inside was any different. It had to be the same with people. Deep down, at the very core, they'd still be the same no matter where they were, wouldn't they?”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“For hours, they wrote back and forth, a conversation punctuated by short periods of waiting, where Lucy held her breath and kept watch over her phone, resenting the constraints of technology, the limits of distance.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“Maybe this was why Owen had been so desperate to travel, why she'd longed for it herself without ever really knowing why. It wasn't just that you got to be somewhere else entirely. It was that you got to be someone else entirely, too.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“This, it seemed, was just what happened when you left someone. They disappeared behind you like the wake of a boat.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
“And the geography of the thing--the geography of them--was completely and hopelessly wrong.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Geography of You and Me
Jennifer E. Smith
Born place: Chicago, IL, The United States
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“And so Shin’s misery never skidded into complete hopelessness. He had no hope to lose, no past to mourn, no pride to defend. He did not find it degrading to lick soup off the floor. He was not ashamed to beg a guard for forgiveness. It didn’t trouble his conscience to betray a friend for food. These were merely survival skills, not motives for suicide.”
― Blaine Harden, quote from Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West
“For the first time in their memory, certainly since the earliest beginnings of the Civil War, Americans facing the shared tragedy of Garfield’s ordeal felt a deep and surprising connection to one another. Divided by vast stretches of dangerous wilderness and stark differences in race, religion, and culture, there had been little beyond severely strained notions of common citizenship to unite them. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln sixteen years earlier had only deepened that divide. But the attempt on Garfield’s life aroused feelings of patriotism that many Americans had long since forgotten, or never knew they had.”
― Candice Millard, quote from Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President
“Sara, we have to go," she whispers, even though my dad isn't there to hear her. She's not crying. She's calm. Matter-of-fact. As if she's asking me whether I want mayo or mustard on my sandwich. Except in secret.”
― Tracy Bilen, quote from What She Left Behind
“He lifted his arm that had been resting on her shoulders and gazed at the words she had written on his hand. He had been branded as cattle are branded to show whom they belong to. The cold mountain air stung his lips. She was driving too fast on this road that had once been a forest. Early humans had lived in it. They studied fire and the movement of the sun. They read the clouds and the moon and tried to understand the human mind His father had tried to melt him into a Polish forest when he was five years old. He knew he must leave no trace or trail of his existence because he must never find his way home. That was what his father had told him. You cannot come home. This was not something possible to know but he had to know it all the same”
― Deborah Levy, quote from Swimming Home
“We can lie to ourselves, saying we believe one thing, and sometimes we convince other's it's true, with the hope that by convincing others, we can convince ourselves. Wars are often waged not because of what we believe, but because of the things we want others to believe.”
― Neal Shusterman, quote from Everfound
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