Matthew Quick · 289 pages
Rating: (134.2K votes)
“I don't want to stay in the bad place, where no one believes in silver linings or love or happy endings.”
“If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that reminds me to keep on trying.”
“Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.”
“I am practicing being kind over being right.”
“Life is hard, and children have to be told how hard life can be…So they will be sympathetic to others. So they will understand that some people have it harder than they do and that a trip through this world can be a wildly different experience, depending on what chemicals are raging through one’s mind.”
“You need to make time for your family no matter what happens in your life”
“The only way to beat my crazy was by doing something even crazier. Thank you. I love you. I knew it from the moment I saw you. I'm sorry it took me so long to catch up.”
“She looks sad. She looks angry. She looks different from everyone else I know—she cannot put on that happy face others wear when they know they are being watched. She doesn’t put on a face for me, which makes me trust her somehow.”
“I still love you in my own fucked-up way.”
“You need to know it's your actions that will make you a good person, not desire.”
“Life is random and fucked-up and arbitrary, until you find someone who can make sense of it all for you— if only temporarily.”
“Let me tell ya. You gotta pay attention to signs. When life reaches out with a moment like this it's a sin if you don't reach back... I'm telling you.”
“It hurts to look at the clouds, but it also helps, like most things that cause pain.”
“When she needed help most, she was abandoned—and only when she offered help to others was she beloved.”
“In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatcher's Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I'm on, and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. There's something honest about all this, and I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer field with me - in the middle of a snowstorm even - impossibly hoping to see a single cloud break free of a nimbostratus.”
“There will always be a part of me that is dirty and sloppy, but I like that, just like all the other parts of myself.”
“Looking into another person's eyes for an extended period of time proved to be a powerful thing. And if you don't believe me, try it yourself.”
“Most people lose the ability to see silver linings even though they are always there above us almost every day.”
“And I still love you in my own fucked-up way. I miss you, I really do. Can we still be friends?”
“I...have a woman in my arms who has suffered greatly and desperately needs to believe once again that she is beautiful.”
“...I am now watching the movie of my life as I live it.”
“When I read the actual story-how Gatsby loves Daisy so much but can't ever be with her no matter how hard he tries-I feel like ripping the book in half and calling up Fitzgerald and telling him his book is all wrong, even though I know Fitzgerald is probably deceased. Especially when Gatsby is shot dead in his swimming pool the first time he goes for a swim all summer, Daisy doesn't even go to his funeral, Nick and Jordan part ways, and Daisy ends up sticking with racist Tom, whose need for sex basically murders an innocent woman, you can tell Fitzgerald never took the time to look up at clouds during sunset, because there's no silver lining at the end of that book, let me tell you.”
“When life reaches out with a moment like this, it's a sin if you don't reach back.”
“Maybe you will never be able to forgive me, but I wanted you to know I had the best intentions-and I still love you in my own fucked-up way.”
“I will not be quoting Hemingway anytime soon, nor will I ever read another one of his books.
And if he were still alive, I would write him a letter right now and threaten to strangle him dead with my bare hands just for being so glum.
No wonder he put a gun to his head, like it says in the introductory essay.”
“I think all it really takes for different people to get along is a common rooting interest and a few beers.”
“I need you so fucking bad.”
“The world will break your heart ten ways to Sunday, that’s guaranteed.
And I can’t begin to explain that- or the craziness inside myself and everybdy else,but guess what? Sunday is my fav day again”
“He doesn’t ever feel the war that goes on in my chest every single fucking day—the chemical explosions that light up my skull like the Fourth of July and the awful needs and impulses and…”
“I believe in happy endings," I tell him, "And it feels like this movie has gone on for the right amount of time.”
“Two of my fav pieces of wisdom from Phoebe:
- Men are like parking spots. All the good ones are taken, and those that aren't are inaccessible.
- Remember, it's always better to be the smartass rather than the dumbass.”
“I had thought about cocaine in a kind of day-dream.”
“When would he learn that women never stayed where you put them?”
“The most beautiful thing we can experience,’ he said, ‘is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
“and shocking, I kept on until I arrived in the East Room, which I entered. There I was met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards. And there were a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I”
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