Quotes from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“Its hard to show people everything, you know? You never know what they'll do with it once they have it.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“I think some love you can stand to let go of because it's ultimately for the best, but other types you have to stick with until the day you die even when it's hard.You have to think about that before you run away from wherever you are. And then when you know, you either stay or you go and pray thatyou're making the right decision.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“Love. People threw that word around like carzy.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“I stopped wanting to float away from my life, because in the end my life was all I had. I'd walk the Fairmont campus and look up to the sky and I wouldn't see myself drifting off like some lost balloon. Instead I saw the size of the world and found comfort in its hugeness. I'd think back to those times when I felt like everything was closing in on me, those times when I thought I was stuck, and I realized that I was wrong. There is always hope. The world is vast and meant for wandering. There is always somewhere else to go.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“The world is vast and meant for wandering. There is always somewhere else to go.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“gettimg attached to things is pointless. Thats how things get screwed up.People care to much about everything. Let it go. You'll be happier.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“Dade Kincaid is not afraid of the things of which the world is made.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“Let it all out. If only I could. Letting it all out would involve me exploding like a firework, a beautiful riot of rainbow sparks bouncing around the car and lighting up the entire lot.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“I practiced saying I was gay to inanimate objects around the house. I told the soap dish in the bathroom, the ceiling fan above my bed, the blue drinking glass I favored above all the others simply because over the years its entire family had perished one by one during various interactions with hard surfaces around the kitchen and I'd convinced myself our solitude was linked.
"I'm gay," I told these things. "I'm a homo."
I would wait for the orphaned drinking glass to shatter, the ceiling fan to drop, or for the soap dish to let out a bloodcurdling scream. But nothing ever happened. The world went on as ever.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“I was touched that he'd brought me here. I didn't know what to say. Up until then there was a part of me that wondered if maybe there was nothing more to him than an aura of danger and a disposable charm that he used to keep himself from getting into too much trouble. I was beginning to realize that like everyone else, he was searching for something, and like everyone else, he had no idea where he could find it.
Thanks for bringing me here," I said. " It really means a lot me."
Does it?" he asked. He seemed genuinely surprised by this. "I'm glad. I wasn't sure if you'd get it. I thought maybe you'd think it was creepy."
No," I said quickly. "Not at all. I like that there's these different parts to you."
Good," he said, smiling. "It's hard to show people everything, you know? You never know what they'll do with it once they have it.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“The truckers are staring," I said after a few seconds.

It was true. They were. The whole row of them was doing a bad job of pretending not to look at us.

"We just got engaged," Lucy shouted over to them. "I just asked this man to be my wife."

The men at the counter traded confused looks. I burst out laughing.

"We're glad you and your ass cracks could share this moment with us," she went on. "Seriously. We really are. Those are serious cracks and this is a serious moment.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“Dads are the appendix of humanity. They should just be taken out before they start causing problems.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“I looked in the mirror and stared at my reflection, until I was in the head-clearing trance that comes when you stare at something for a long time.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“I felt the vacuum in him. It was the same as the one in me. It wanted, but it didn’t know what it wanted, so it pulled at everything.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“I was vaguely worried about how they would cope with wandering the desert of adulthood without the other's hand to hold, but then I remembered that they never appeared to give each other that much comfort in the first place, or at least if they had, those days were buried so far in the past that it was hard to consider them a meaningful part of their life.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“For some reason I didn't believe it. I don't know why. Maybe it was because my father was the kind of person who told himself things over and over until he believed them, who could justify almost anything. What I wanted was for it to really be okay. I wanted him to really not care, to maybe even be happy about it. Instead he was acting like I was making a bad career choice, like I was passing up an English degree at Fairmont in favor of a bartending certificate at the local community college.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“Was he coming to bury the hatchet? Was there a hatchet to even be buried? For some reason I started thinking of how weird it was that I would always be his son and he would always be my father, that there was nothing that could ever change. I didn't know whether this permanence was comforting or terrifying.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“Love. People threw that word around like crazy.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“The world is vast and meant for wandering.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“Getting older isn’t always about having fun,” he said. “In fact, in many ways it’s about being bored. It’s good if you can find a way to be entertained by your boredom.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

“It's hard to show people everything, you know? You never know what they'll do with it once they have it.”
― Nick Burd, quote from The Vast Fields of Ordinary

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Popular quotes

“When you've spent thirty years entering rooms filled with strangers you feel less pressure than when you've had only half that number of years of experience. You know what the room and the people in it probably hold for you and you go looking for it. If it's not there, you sense it earlier and leave to go about your business. You just know more about what is, what isn't, and how little time there is to learn the difference.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Hyperion

“So, there was this beautiful princess.
She was locked in a high tower(...)She was stuck up there(...)So the only thing was to jump.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Pretties

“So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon’tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglass-I’veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme….

There was a time when it wasn’t uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bunch of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string.

The practice of attaching cups to the ends of string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world’s first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America.

When the world grew bigger, and there wasn’t enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented.

Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person’s silence.”
― Nicole Krauss, quote from The History of Love

“She understood now why her friend Elizabeth, with her near-genius, analytical mind gave wide berth to murder mysteries, psychological thrillers, and horror stories, and read only romance novels. Because, by God, when a woman picked up one of those steamy books, she had a firm guarantee that there would be a Happily-Ever-After. That though the world outside those covers could bring such sorrow and disappointment and loneliness, between those covers, the world was a splendid place to be.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Darkfever

“He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.”
― Richard Wright, quote from Native Son

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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.

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