“There is one thing I've learned about people: they don't get that mean and nasty overnight. It's not human nature. But if you give people enough time, eventually they'll do the most heartbreaking stuff in the world.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“How much did it hurt? It was like a million paper cuts on my heart.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“It’s like when we read The Diary of Anne Frank in seventh grade, and I had the sneaking suspicion that I would have been a Nazi back then because I wouldn’t have had the guts to be anything else. Because I would have been too scared to not go along with the majority. Like, I would have been a passive sort of Nazi, but I still would have been a Nazi. I never said anything out loud, of course, but I remember reading that book in Ms. Peterson’s class and everyone was all, “Oh, I would’ve helped Anne. I would have rebelled. I don’t understand how people could have allowed this to happen, blah blah blah.” I mean,”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“It’s like when we read The Diary of Anne Frank in seventh grade, and I had the sneaking suspicion that I would have been a Nazi back then because I wouldn’t have had the guts to be anything else. I know that everyone wants to believe they would have been the brave one and they would have been the one to hide Anne in their attic and they would have killed Hitler with their own bare hands. But clearly if everybody thinks that way and in reality only a few people actually did it way back then, doesn’t that just make me the honest one?”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“I really can't handle talking about this for too long because it hurts too much, but I want to say that there is one thing I've learned about people they don't get that mean and nasty overnight. It's not human nature. If you give people enough time, eventually they'll do the most heartbreaking stuff in the world.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“I’ve missed you, too,” I say. “And I’ve missed your vocabulary.” “Tremendously?” he says, smiling.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“You know how there’s this whole world that exists only to teenagers, and adults never know what’s going on there?”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“There are some things, like your eighth grade boyfriend kissing some other girl at a middle school dance, that are easy to forgive. And there are some things that are just unforgivable.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“Alice smiled her wide smile. The crooked incisor smile.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“Brandon was like a God in Healy, and I guess I was like God's best friend.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“I do want to say that there is one thing I’ve learned about people: they don’t get that mean and nasty overnight. It’s not human nature. But if you give people enough time, eventually they’ll do the most heartbreaking stuff in the world.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“I see no need in taking part in forced adolescent social rituals that would do nothing but stir up emotions of dread for all involved.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“That was back when all of us were students at Jefferson Elementary, and our quirks and strange rough edges hadn't fully formed yet”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“If you give people enough time, eventually they’ll do the most heartbreaking stuff in the world.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“Her letters were bubbly and girlish. Her handwriting made her seem happier than she actually was.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“But if you give people enough time, eventually they’ll do the most heartbreaking stuff in the world. *”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“Even the gods themselves must have eventually gotten used to being around Aphrodite.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“Not Fantasy Alice, but the living, breathing, talking, walking, actual Alice who holds her breath near cemeteries and eats grilled cheese sandwiches and has managed to survive complete and utter banishment from everyone she ever regarded as a friend and still come to school every single day.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“Lastly, unlike my fellow citizens, I have the ability to recognize that Healy is simply an extremely small place in the middle of a very large place called the United States, and that the United States is itself also just a small place in the middle of an even larger place called the world, and that makes much of what is discussed in and around Healy inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
“I don't look out onto the sea of faces and wish I wasn't alone. I simply acknowledge the sea exists...”
― Jennifer Mathieu, quote from The Truth About Alice
Jennifer Mathieu
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“Fuck the drug war. Dropping acid was a profound turning point for me, a seminal experience. I make no apologies for it. More people should do acid. It should be sold over the counter.”
― George Carlin, quote from Last Words
“The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.”
― Jack Gilbert, quote from The Great Fires
“Sometimes...the hardest part about letting someone go is realizing that you were never meant to have them.”
― Rebecca Serle, quote from When You Were Mine
“Hercule Poirot spread out his hands in his most foreign manner.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Cards on the Table
“Americans tended to think of war as something that had to be done from time to time, for a particular purpose or goal. They fought not for the sake of fighting but for the sake of winning.”
― David Hackett Fischer, quote from Washington's Crossing
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I Am Her...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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