“Woah,' I said, blocking the doorway. 'You can't come in here. This is the girls' room.'
Even as it came out of my mouth, I knew it sounded dumb. Dumb, I thought and maybe even wrong.
You...are a boy, aren't you?' I asked. 'I mean, don't take that the wrong way or anything -'
J.Lo is a boy, yes.' I let that go.
So...you Boov have boys and girls...just like us?'
Of course,' said J.Lo. 'Do not be ridicumlous.'
I smiled a wan little smile. 'Sorry.'
The Boov have seven magnificent genders. There is boy, girl, girlboy, boygirl, boyboy, boyboygirl, and boyboyboyboy.'
I had absolutely no response to this.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“Is there a short-eared koobish, then?'
Mmmyes ...' said J.Lo. 'But it is technically not really a koobish. Is more alike a kind of singing pumpkin.'
We had conversations like these all the time, where I just eventually gave up.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“I spy, with my little eye, something that starts with ... G."
"Sausages.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“YOU have no room to laugh, that's all. I'm not doing any worse with Boovish than you did with English.'
Get off of the car,' J.Lo huffed. 'I am an English superstar.'
Uh-uh. There's no comparison. 'Gratuity' in written Boovish has seventeen different bubbles that all have to be the right size and in the right place. 'J.Lo' in written English only has three letters, and you still spelled it 'M-smiley face-pound sign.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“Wherefor are you knowing it? If you stacked all of the Gorg in the galaxy on top of eachother, the Gorg would kill you.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“The Boov frowned. 'Everybodies always is wanting to make a clone for to doing their work. If you are not wanting to do your work, why would a clone of you want to do your work?”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“Captain Smek himself appeared on television for an official speech to humankind.
[...] 'Noble Savages of Earth,' he said. 'Long time we have tried to live together in peace.' (It had been five months.) 'Long time have the Boov suffered under the hostileness and intolerableness of you people. With sad hearts I now concede that Boov and humans will never to exist as one.'
I remember being really excited at this point. Could I possibly be hearing right? Were the Boov about to leave? I was so stupid.
'And so now I generously grant you Human Preserves - gifts of land that will be for humans forever, never to be taken away again, now.'
[...] So that's when we Americans were given Florida. One state for three hundred million people. There were going to be some serious lines for the bathrooms.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“We could have made it to the Arizona border in a few more hours if we hadn't been distracting each other with stupid little arguments. Don't get me wrong; I liked J.Lo fine. I've made that bed. But I'm not sure there's a person in the world I could be with twenty-four hours a day for three weeks without getting a little snippy. If I ever meet such a person, I'm marrying them.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“Soon the Boov was in the ghost suit and Pig was in the car, which would be a good lyric for a bluegrass song, now that I think of it.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“The United States was a big country where everybody wore funny t-shirts and ate too much.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“[J.Lo] found us a police car. Sort of.
'It's not a police car,' I said.
'It is,' said J.Lo. 'Looknow. Lights for flashing.'
'That's true.'
'Writing on the sides.'
'Yeah, but the writing? It says ''BullShake Party Patrol.''
Yes. Whatnow?”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“I didn’t feel up to arguing about it, but I was pretty sure if you loved everything you didn’t really love anything.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“For you time-capsule types, MoPo was something called a convenience store, as in, 'The soda is conveniently located right next to the doughnuts and lottery tickets.' People who want to understand better how the human race was conquered so easily need to study those stores. Almost everything inside was filled with sugar, cheese, or weight-loss tips”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“J.Lo gasped. When I looked to see why, he had one hand to his mouth and the other pointing at me.
"You . . ." he squealed, wagging his finger. ". . . your hand!"
I raised my hand to my face, turning it over and back again.
"What? What's wrong with it?"
"You are bearing the mark! The mark that has been foretold! You are The One . . . The One who will bring peace onto the galaxy!"
"What, this? This is taco sauce," I said, wiping it clean.
J.Lo stared at my palm for a moment, then turned back to the wall.
"Never mind," he said.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“We found the bathrooms, which were labeled 'Aliens' and 'Femaliens.'
'Finally,' I said to J.Lo. 'Here's a bathroom you're allowed to use.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“I'm sorry, but -I'm sorry!' I yelped and skipped backward as Gorg advanced on me. 'You were given bad information. Probably some human's fault.'
I AM PRINCIPAL ANGER COORDINATOR ASSOCIATE-OF-THE-MONTH GORG FOUR-GORG! HUMANS WILL GIVE ME BAD INFORMATION AT THEIR PERIL!'
He didn't look like a principal. He looked like something Hercules ought to be wrestling on the side of a vase.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“Sometimes you really want to say "Duh," but you can't. It's a part of growing up, I guess.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“I meow now?" hissed J.Lo when she was gone. "What comes next? Do I juggle fire?"
"Look, I'm sorry, but it's good this happened. Mrs. Hoegaarden will probably tell people you meow, and we'll spread the word, too, and soon if anybody hears Pig they'll just think it's you."
"Yes!" droned J.Lo, throwing his hand up. "A foolproof plan! Thank Mother Ocean that you do not use your genius for evil.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“Look," I said halfheartedly. "Another one of those tumbleweeds made out of old hair weaves."
"Tumbleweave," said J.Lo.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“The fog was mysterious. The lights were mysterious. The music was "A-Tisket, A-Tasket".”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“I'm half white," I said, folding my arms.
"Hrrm. Which half?"
I blinked. "Uh...dunno. Let's just say it's from the waist down."
Chief Shouting Bear nodded. "Deal. I only hate your legs.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“You heard my name was Chief Shouting Bear," he said. "It doesn't matter. You can call me whatever you want, Stupidlegs.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“This is exciting," said J.Lo. "We are sneaky agent men, like Bond James Bond."
"I don't know where you pick this stuff up.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“I felt a stack of shelves, and these were filled with plastic bottles and maybe buckets, and one object that felt like the worst thing in the world but which turned out later to be a sandwich.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW MEOW”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“As far as pets go, a cat is a nice on to have.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“They were just people. They were too smart and too stupid to be anything else.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“The Boov are having seven magnificent genders. There is boy, girl, boygirl, girlboy, boyboy, boyboygirl, and boyboyboyboy.” I”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
“Apocalypse Hal was on the corner by the Laundromat. Hal was a neighborhood street preacher who worked at the fish and crab place next door. He wore a sandwich board sign of Bible verses and shouted angry things at passersby like “The end times are near” and “Seafood sampler $5.99.” Now his sign just read “TOLD YOU SO,” and he looked more anxious than angry.”
― Adam Rex, quote from The True Meaning of Smekday
Adam Rex
Born place: Dayton, OH
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“For anyone who has never experienced or set any store by being close to an animal, it is perhaps difficult to understand that you can miss a dog so that it literally hurts. But the relationship with an animal is so much more physical than a relationship with another person. You don’t get to know a dog by asking how he’s feeling or what he’s thinking, but by observing him and getting to know his body language. And all the important things you want to say to him you have to show through actions, attitude, gestures and sounds.”
― Ninni Holmqvist, quote from The Unit
“He could have had “dull” tattooed across his forehead, but that would have made him too exciting.”
― Stephen Clarke, quote from A Year in the Merde
“He was struck by the sensation she’d made it happen in some way, that his life was simply a story the old woman was making up in her head.”
― Michael Crummey, quote from Galore
“If feminism means anything at all, women with power should be addressing their energies to help the girls and women who suffer the pain of genital mutilation, who are at risk of being murdered because of their Western lifestyle and ideas, who must ask for permission just to leave the house, who are treated no better than serfs, branded and mutilated, traded without regard to their wishes. If you are a true feminist, these women should be your first priority.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, quote from Nomad: From Islam to America: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations
“The believer's cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of which is demanded. The believer's cross must be, like his Lord's, the price of his social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of the path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not, like Luther's or Thomas Muntzer's or Zinzendorf's or Kierkegaard's cross, an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come.”
― John Howard Yoder, quote from The Politics of Jesus
The Liar
Some Boys
We All Looked Up
The Year I Met You
The Penderwicks on G...
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