Quotes from The Truth About Alice

Jennifer Mathieu ·  209 pages

Rating: (12.2K votes)


“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



About the author

Jennifer Mathieu
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“And of course the word love has many shades of meaning, as do many, many of the words in our living, breathing language”
― Mary Balogh, quote from Slightly Dangerous


“Because this, after all, was the basic truth they all chose to live by: that love was no finite commodity. That it was not subject to the cruel reckoning of addition and subtraction, that to give to one did not necessarily mean to take from another; that the heart, in its infinite capacity-even the confused and cheating heart of the man in front of her, even the paltry thing now clenched and faltering inside her own chest-could open itself to all who would enter, like a house with windows and doors thrown wide, like the heart of God itself, vast and accommodating and holy, a mansion of rooms without number, full of multitudes without end.”
― Brady Udall, quote from The Lonely Polygamist


“I learned a lot from the stories my uncle, aunts and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good; that people can’t be judged by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgements can make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes the only response to pain.

Perhaps most important, I learned that everyone has a story – of dreams and nightmares, hope and heartache, love and loss, courage and fear, sacrifice and selfishness. All my life I’ve been interested in other people’s stories. I wanted to know them, understand them, feel them. When I grew up into politics, I always felt the main point of my work was to people a chance to have better stories. - Page 15, Paragraph 5, ‘My Life’ by Bill Clinton. –Hard cover version-”
― Bill Clinton, quote from My Life


“She felt the snake between her breasts, felt him there, and loved him there, coiled, the deep tumescent S held rigid, ready to strike. She loved the way the snake looked sewn onto her V-neck letter sweater, his hard diamondback pattern shining in the sun. It was unseasonably hot, almost sixty degrees, for early November in Mystic, Georgia, and she could smell the light musk of her own sweat. She liked the sweat, liked the way it felt, slick as oil, in all the joints of her body, her bones, in the firm sliding muscles, tensed and locked now, ready to spring--to strike--when the band behind her fired up the school song: "Fight On Deadly Rattlers of Old Mystic High.”
― Harry Crews, quote from A Feast of Snakes


“A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.”
― Ludwig von Mises, quote from Liberalism: The Classical Tradition


Interesting books

Lost in Babylon
(4.2K)
Lost in Babylon
by Peter Lerangis
Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts
(125.5K)
Waiting for Godot: A...
by Samuel Beckett
Five Ways to Fall
(11.8K)
Five Ways to Fall
by K.A. Tucker
Morrie: In His Own Words
(4.4K)
Tower Lord
(32K)
Tower Lord
by Anthony Ryan
Helvetti
(116.8K)
Helvetti
by Dante Alighieri

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.