Lauren Barnholdt · 285 pages
Rating: (9.6K votes)
“And that's when I realize the thing about the truth. It always comes out, no matter what you do.”
― Lauren Barnholdt, quote from The Thing About the Truth
“Because sometimes when someone is telling you something really important, it’s best to just let there be silence, to really think about what they’re saying. A lot of times people think they have to say something all insightful or wise or something to try and make the person feel better. But really, sometimes silence is best.”
― Lauren Barnholdt, quote from The Thing About the Truth
“The thing about me and books is that whichever one I’m reading always reminds me of whatever’s happening in my life during that time.”
― Lauren Barnholdt, quote from The Thing About the Truth
“I hate that about guys. At least girls have the decency to be fake and pretend everything’s okay when shit gets weird. Whenever guys get upset, they get all angry and scary”
― Lauren Barnholdt, quote from The Thing About the Truth
“Parents don’t get that, though. They don’t understand about the fragility of teen friendships. They don’t understand how easy it is for things to break apart, how someone you thought would be by your side forever can just disappear, or turn on you, or decide she likes someone more than she likes you. Parents always talk about romantic relationships being so ephemeral and fleeting in high school. What they don’t get is that friendships can be the same way.”
― Lauren Barnholdt, quote from The Thing About the Truth
“Not for the first time, I wonder what it would feel like that, to be so beautiful that you don't even realize people are watching you, to be so confident that you don't even have to worry about being nervous or feeling self-conscious. I've spent what seems like my whole life trying to pretend I'm that way. What would it be like to have it just come naturally?”
― Lauren Barnholdt, quote from The Thing About the Truth
“You have to give respect to get respect.”
― Lauren Barnholdt, quote from The Thing About the Truth
“Because the truth is, I wouldn’t care if she lied to me, except for the fact that I love her. And once you love someone, you can’t really put up with them lying to you. It just doesn’t work. It makes things into a big mess.”
― Lauren Barnholdt, quote from The Thing About the Truth
“But now I’m thinking that wanting to end up with a great storyteller might have been a bad idea. Because girls who can tell great stories are also great liars.”
― Lauren Barnholdt, quote from The Thing About the Truth
“Not for the first time, I wonder what it would feel like that, to be so beautiful that you don't even realize people are watching you, to be so confident that you don't even have to worry about being nervous or feeling self-conscious. I've spent my whole life trying to pretend I'm that way. What would it be like to have it just come naturally?”
― Lauren Barnholdt, quote from The Thing About the Truth
“[si eres / joven / y resulta / que / no / eres / Arthur / Rimbaud / preferiríamos / no saber / nada / de ti”
― Leonard Cohen, quote from Book of Longing
“All the men send you orchids because they're expensive and they know that you know they are. But I always kind of think they're cheap, don't you, just because they're expensive. Like telling someone how much you paid for something to show off.”
― Winifred Watson, quote from Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
“Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are. —John Wooden FOR”
― Aleatha Romig, quote from The Consequences Series Box Set
“When I first took this job at the factory it was not my intention to work there very long, for I once possessed higher hopes for my life, although the exact nature of these hopes remained rather vague in my youthful mind. While the work was not arduous, and my fellow workers congenial enough, I did not imagine myself standing forever at my designated assembly block, fitting together pieces of metal into other pieces of metal, with a few interruptions throughout that day for breaks that were supposed to refresh our minds from the tedium of our work or for meal breaks to allow us to nourish our bodies. Somehow it never occurred to me that the nearby town where I and the others at the factory lived, travelling to and from our jobs along the same fog-strewn road, held no higher opportunities for me or anyone else, which no doubt accounts for the vagueness, the wispy insubstantiality, of my youthful hopes.”
― Thomas Ligotti, quote from Teatro Grottesco
“When every link to the outside world is severed, time has no meaning. It ceases to exist other than as a dull memory, a vague recollection of what a minute used to be, an hour, a day. Sealed up tight so far beneath the ground, every single second was stretched out almost to infinity—each one a vast and empty abyss where time used to reign, an ageless aeon barren of significance and consequence.
When every scrap of light and sound has been taken away, reality has no meaning. It too ceases to exist, for what is reality other than the cumulation of senses—images witnessed by our own eyes and the noises that enter through our ears? But when all those senses are starved, then the real world fades away like the last frantic gasp of a television program when the set is switched off.
And when reality goes, sanity has no reason. How can your ability to behave in a normal and rational way still exist when nothing normal or rational remains? As soon as reality breaks, as soon as we are separated from the physical world, the cracks begin to appear in our minds. And through them seeps the madness that has always been there, flowing into your skull like a liquid nightmare.”
― Alexander Gordon Smith, quote from Solitary
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