Quotes from This Song Will Save Your Life

“Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don't know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn't you. That isn't you at all.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“That's the problem with life. You never get enough time to stare at your ceiling and try to figure out what's going on.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“You think it's so easy to change yourself. You think it's so easy, but it's not. True, things don't stay the same forever: couches are replaced, boys leave, you discover a song, your body becomes forever scarred. And with each of these moments you change and change again, your true self spinning, shifting positions-- but always at last it returns to you, like a dancer on the floor. Because throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable. And isn't that - just you - enough.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“People are who they are and, try as you might, you cannot make them be what you want them to be.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“I believe that a person's taste in music tells you a lot about them. In some cases, it tells you everything you need to know.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“I had this feeling suddenly. I get this feeling a lot, but I don’t know if there’s one word for it. It’s not nervous or sad or even lonely. It’s all of that, and then a bit more. The feeling is I don’t belong here. I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know how long I can stay before everyone else realizes that I am an impostor. I am a fraud. I’ve gotten this feeling nearly everywhere I have ever been in my life. There’s nothing you can do about it except drink some water and hope that it subsides. Or you can leave.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“Don't you ever want to have just one thing that no one else knows about, so no one can ruin it for you?”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“Sometimes, when you are worn down, day after day, relentlessly, with no reprieve for years piled on years, sometimes you lose everything but the ability to cry.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“Throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“Sometimes you just have those days where everything goes wrong. But sometimes, and totally unexpectedly, something can go right.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“Sometimes you have to give up something you are to get to who you want to be.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“I didn’t know. I feel sometimes like…there are all these rules. Just to be a person. You know? You’re supposed to carry a shoulder bag, not a backpack. You’re supposed to wear headbands, or you’re not supposed to wear headbands. It’s okay to describe yourself as likeable, but it’s not okay to describe yourself as eloquent. You can sit in the front of the school bus, but you can’t sit in the middle. You’re not supposed to be with a boy, even when he wants you to. I didn’t know that. There are so many rules, and they don’t make any sense, and I just can’t learn them all”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“I don't believe that anyone who is a legitimately interesting person can be popular as a teenager," Mel went on. "Or ever, maybe. Popularity rewards the uninteresting.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“Don't be special." That's what I would say to my younger self if I could pinpoint the moment when I went astray. But there was no one moment. I was always astray”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“The thing about being an artist," Dad said, folding his newspaper and setting it down on the table, "is that there are always going to be people who want to stop you from doing your art. But this usually says more about them and their issues than it does about you and your art. Trust me.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“I do want to believe that there's some place in the world that's more mature than high school," Vicky said. "But I haven't found it yet.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“But you know better than anyone how the Internet sees everything and nothing, all at the same time.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“People have to create some sort of art so they have something to think about other than their shitty lives.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“You can't tell me my feelings are overwrought or absurd. You don't know. They are my feelings.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“But I also felt like an eggshell that had gotten a tiny crack. You can’t repair something like that. All you can do is hope that it sticks together, hope that the crack doesn't grow until all your insides come spilling right out.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“Which to you have?' Mel asked, blocking the entry with his body. 'Talent or issues?' I paused for a moment, thought about this. 'Both,' I said at last.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“Tonight the Internet seemed filled with versions of me, like a fun house filled with mirrors. Some of them made me look prettier, and some of them made me look uglier, and some of them chopped me right in half, but none of them were right.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“Anyone who said I believe in you obviously didn't know me very well.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“I was smiling like a crazy person because I has just made a hundred people dance, I had just made a hundred people scream, I had just made a hundred people happy. I, Elise, using my own power, had made people happy.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“I had never killed myself before, so I had no idea what would I want to listen to when it was too late for me to skip to the next song. Like, maybe when you're dying, you actually want to hear something really upbeat.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“I liked projects where I could take things apart and figure out exactly how they worked. The problem is, you can't do that with people.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“In Bio last year, I learned that blood is actually a dark maroon when it's inside your body. It's the exposure to oxygen that turns it bright red. And there must have been a lot of oxygen in my bathroom, because that blood was bright, bright red.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“Of course, as always, there is an arbitrary, invisible fence in place. You can't see it, but it will always keep you out. It will always encircle happiness and keep you out.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“This should have been a red flag, I realize in retrospect. Working really hard on anything is, by definition, not cool.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

“It wasn't an effect of alcohol. It was more like we got drunk on the night.”
― Leila Sales, quote from This Song Will Save Your Life

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Popular quotes

“When we love each other we are immortal and indestructible like the heartbeat and the rain and the wind.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country

“Artemis grabbed her shoulders, for once abandoning his shell of icy composure. "Holly, Holly, speak to me. Your finger is it okay?"
Holly wiggled her fingers, then curled them into a fist.
"I think so," she said, and whacked Artemis right between the eyes. The surprised boy landed in a snowdrift for the third time that day.
Holly winked at an amazed butler.
"Now we're even," she said.
Commander Root didn't have many treasured memories. But in future days, when things were at their grimmest, he would conjure up this moment and have a quiet chuckle.”
― Eoin Colfer, quote from The Arctic Incident

“She started shaping the face, using a wire loop to gently carve the slope of the strong forehead and brow, then the nose and the lean angle of the cheekbones. In little time, her fingers were moving on automatic pilot, her mind disengaged and gone into its own flow, her subconscious directly commanding her hands into action.
She didn’t know how long she’d been working, but when the hard rap sounded on her apartment door some time later, Tess nearly jumped out of her skin. Sleeping next to her feet on the rug, Harvard woke up with a grunt.
“You expecting someone?” she asked quietly as she got up from her stool.
God, she must have been really zoned out while she was sculpting, because she’d seriously messed up around the mouth area of the piece. The lips were curled back in some kind of snarl, and the teeth . . .
The knock sounded again, followed by a deep voice that went through her like a bolt of electricity.
“Tess? Are you there?”
Dante.
Tess’s eyes flew wide, then squeezed into a wince as she did a quick mental inventory of her appearance. Hair flung up into a careless knot on top of her head, braless in her white thermal Henley and faded red sweats that had more than one dried clay smudge on them. Not exactly fit for company.
“Dante?” she asked, stalling for time and just wanting to be sure her ears weren’t playing tricks on her. “Is that you?”
“Yeah. Can I come in?”
“Um, sure. Just a sec,” she called out, trying to sound casual as she threw a dry work cloth over her sculpture and quickly checked her face in the reflection off one of her putty spatulas.
Oh, lovely. She had a slightly crazed, starving-artist look going on. Very glamorous. That’ll teach him to do the pop-in visit, she thought, as she padded over to the door and twisted the dead bolt.”
― Lara Adrian, quote from Kiss of Crimson

“Using someone's name during a conversation was like a casual caress, like stroking their hair.”
― Harry Mulisch, quote from The Discovery of Heaven

“He closed by telling us the real battle is won in the mind. It’s won by guys who understand their areas of weakness, who sit and think about it, plotting and planning to improve. Attending to the detail. Work on their weaknesses and overcome them. Because they can.”
― Marcus Luttrell, quote from Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10

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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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