“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
“There was once an invisible man, the monster continued, though Conor kept his eyes firmly on Harry, who had grown tired of being unseen.
Conor set himself into a walk.
A walk after Harry.
It was not that he was actually invisible, the monster said, following Conor, the room volume dropping as they passed. It was that the people had become used to not seeing him.
"Hey!" Conor called. Harry didn't turn around. Neither did Sully nor Anton, though thet were still sniggering as Conor picked up his pace.
And if no one sees you, the monster said, picking up its pace, too, are you really there at all?
"HEY!" Conor called loudly.
The dining hall had fallen silent now, as Conor and the monster moved faster after Harry.
Harry who had still not turned around.
Conor reached him and grabbed him by the shoulder, twisting him round. Harry pretended to question what had happened, looking hard at Sully, acting like he was the one who'd done it. "Quit messing about," Harry said and turned away again.
Turned away from Conor.
And then one day the invisible man decided, the monster said, its voice ringing in Conor's ears, I will make them see me.
"How?" Conor asked, breathing heavily again, not turning back to see the monster standing there, not looking at the reaction of the room to the huge monster now in the midst, though he was aware of nervous murmurs and a strange anticipation in the air. "How did the man do it?"
Conor could feel the monster close behind him, knew that it was kneeling, knew that it was putting its face up to his ear to whisper into in, to tell him the rest of the story.
He called, it said for a monster.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from A Monster Calls
“Upstream, Arkansas and Ohio have their bottomlands, too, populated by a jaundiced and hungry-looking race, prone to fevers, whose eyes gleam at the sight of stone and iron, for they know only sand and driftwood and muddy water.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from Collected Fictions
“Denis Eady was the son of Michael Eady, the ambitious Irish grocer, whose suppleness and effrontery had given Starkfield its first notion of "smart" business methods, and whose new brick store testified to the success of the attempt. His son seemed likely to follow in his steps, and was meanwhile applying the same arts to the conquest of the Starkfield maidenhood. Hitherto Ethan Frome had been content to think him a mean fellow; but now he positively invited a horse-whipping.”
― Edith Wharton, quote from Ethan Frome
“And maybe I'm a liar and I do need it, because being kissed by Josh Bennet is kind of like being saved. It's a promise and a memory of the future and a book of better stories.”
― Katja Millay, quote from The Sea of Tranquility
“I know it's hard for you to trust me. If I ever find the man who did this to you, who made you so frightened, I'll kill him with my bare hands. But you can trust me.”
― Juliet Marillier, quote from Daughter of the Forest
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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