Quotes from The Year of Secret Assignments

“I'm screwed up, mixed up, messed around, dive-bombing, crashing and burning.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“I saw your name in lights last night.
It's the middle of the night,
and I can't sleep,
thinking all my trumpeting thoughts,
and I get out of bed,
open the curtains,
and look into the night full of stars,
and you know what I saw?
Your name.
Like the stars joined up and spelled the word for me.
Like a sign.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“It's a lot easier to be crazy or mad than to just get on with living.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“Emily: YOU CAN'T SPEAK AND TYPE AT THE SAME TIME, BINDY!

Bindy: Watch me.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“Well, first you have to be very, very funny. I have realized that it is essential for a boy to be funny. Otherwise, what is the point in a boy?”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“Are you sure you want me to go after Christina? Lately I've kind of thought I might just give up on that. Plus, didn't you and I need to gaze into each other's eyes first? How will I know how to gaze at Christina? And my pebble kicking? Disaster.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“I was just peeling some potatoes for dinner and they all looked like crisp white potatoes until I cut them in half. Every single one had a rotten, gray core. [. . .] I feel like the whole world is black, rotting, and evil. Even when it looks crisp on the outside, that's a lie, because you can't trust anything - on the inside it's nothing like mold. [. . .] So, see, nothing good is ever going to happen, and anyone who says it is, is lying to you.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“My father, I never knew, except for this one time when he threw a ball and told me to go fetch it.

"Dad," I said. "Am I a dog?"

"Lydia," he said. "I apologize.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“You're making me nervous by being so weird.
But your weirdness is what I like about you.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“THERE IS A GAS LEAK IN THE BASEMENT OF THE SCHOOL. THERE IS NO NEED TO PANIC. IT IS JUST A GAS LEAK WHICH MAY LEAD TO AN EXPLOSION AT ANY MOMENT. PLEASE ALL GO TO THE OVAL, AS PER THE FIRE DRILLS.

-Charlie on the P.A.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“I've been sniffing out the guys in my English class (to the extent that this is possible without getting my throat cut), but they smell the same way they always do: like feet and testicles. As opposed to freesias.

I don't want to keep sniffing them, Lyd.

- Letter from Seb to Lyd.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“My mind is like the streets of Hong Kong.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“Brookfield High School. How may I direct your call? No, sir, this is not a waste- disposal unit, I'm afraid you have the wrong number.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“...Her parents were going to a conference for the weekend. The conference was called "Lawyers are Lovely, Great and Superb: so Why Does Everyone Think that They are Liars, Greedy and Scum?" and Mr Thomson was doing a speech called "Ten Tips to Make Lawyers as Popular as Doctors.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“P.S. I will give you a clue about the person I'm interested in. She gets a very cute dimple in her right cheek when she's trying not to smile. She has a very cute way of pronouncing th, and she wears a cute hat on cold days, which is like a French beret. I once had an appointment with her to Gaze into the Girl's Eyes, which she went and cancelled on me, and I've been waiting all term for a chance to Kiss the Girl.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“I am grateful to you for the rest of my life. And when I say "you," I mean every part of you, including your mind and your smile and your giggle and the mad look you get in your eyes sometimes. If you don't believe that your words have got into my soul, take a look at the painting which I took to the art show (it's called The Puppy and the Pyramid, which is what you might call a clue). But if I don't get to kiss you fairly soon, Lyd, I won't have a soul left to speak of.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

“There is no right or wrong; there is no one truth, there are lots of truths. And you girls should translate the world into as many different languages as possible. If you see the world in just one language, your world becomes too small.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, quote from The Year of Secret Assignments

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Popular quotes

“The keeping of lists was for November an exercise kin to repeating of a rosary. She considered it neither obsessive nor compulsive, but a ritual, an essential ordering of the world into tall, thin jars containing perfect nouns. Enough nouns connected one to the other create a verb, and verbs had created everything, had skittered across the face of the void like pebbles across a frozen pond. She had not created a verb herself, but the cherry-wood cabinet in the hall contained book after book, jar after jar, vessel upon vessel, all brown as branches, and she had faith.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, quote from Palimpsest

“Sometimes, when you are reading a book you are enjoying very much, you begin thinking so hard about the characters and the story that you might forget all about the author, even if he is in grave danger and would very much appreciate your help. The same thing can happen if you are looking at a photograph. You might think so hard about whatever is in the photograph that you forget all about the person behind the camera.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography

“Nick drank the coffee, the coffee according to Hopkins. The coffee was bitter. Nick laughed. It made a good ending to the story. His mind was starting to work. He knew he could choke it because he was tired enough. He spilled the coffee out of the pot and shook the grounds loose into the fire. He lit a cigarette and went inside the tent. He took off his shoes and trousers, sitting on the blankets, rolled the shoes up inside the trousers for a pillow and got in between the blankets.

Out through the front of the tent he watched the glow of the fire when the night wind blew on it. It was a quiet night. The swamp was perfectly quiet. Nick stretched under the blanket comfortably. A mosquito hummed close to his ear. Nick sat up and lit a match. The mosquito was on the canvas, over his head. Nick moved the match quickly up to it. The mosquito made a satisfactory hiss in the flame. The match went out. Nick lay down again under the blankets. He turned on his side and shut his eyes. He was sleepy. He felt sleep coming. He curled up under the blanket and went to sleep.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Nick Adams Stories

“How to put this feeling, this certainty, into something as limited as words?”
― Patricia Briggs, quote from On the Prowl

“These men had good cause to pursue nuptials; if there's one pattern that psychological studies have established, it's that the institution of marriage has an overwhelmingly salutary effect on men's mental health. "Being married," the prominent government demographer Paul Glick once estimated, "is about twice as advantageous to men as to women in terms of continued survival.”
― Susan Faludi, quote from Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women

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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.

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.