Quotes from When We Were Animals

“It’s funny how many ways there are to hurt people. As many ways to hurt as there are species of flower. Whole bouquets of hurt.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“Rather than simply being subject to them, I had wanted to know what it felt like to be one of the forces in this world.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“It was possible, I saw now, to be a grotesque, to be huge and free, to wander the streets in utter freedom despite your atrocity, as long as you did it when everybody else was sealed inside their little lit boxes.

Now it made sense – why monsters came out at night.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“We live our lives by measures of weeks, months, years, but the creatures we truly are, those are exposed in fractions of moments.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“Sometimes you hide away a memory because it is so precious that you don’t want to dilute it with the attempt to recount it.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“I am empty space, and I am the light that illuminates that space.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“A big bubble. A block wide. It goes where you go - you're the center of it. And every object gets a little bit better while it's in that bubble with you. It's always very bright where you are.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“Promises are easy to make. [...] They speak of a defined future to which you are required to adhere. They commit you beyond the length of your experience.

What they do is take away possibility.

Promises are the opposite of hope.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“It is always a young girl's dream to have a boy believe in her most colorful fantasies. You paint landscapes with your humble heart, then you seek to populate them with boys who will understand.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“Sometimes we are mysteries to ourselves.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“I thought it must be difficult for him, for boys. They get temperamental when they can't shape the world into what they want it to be. It's easier for girls. Girls are raised knowing that the world is unshapable. So they know better than to fuss.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“The snow came after two o' clock. It fell faintly in the cones of lamplight, descending like fleets or fairies through the cold sky. I was awake - the only one in town, I was sure - and I was sure those miniature fallen sylphs were for me and my personal delectation. They came for me, because nature likes a saint. They settled on my window sill, they collected on the dark grass of my lawn, they danced and whirled in the wind gusts before my eyes. I put my hand to the windowpane to greet it, the first snow. By the time I woke in the morning, I saw that after the snow had come to me, it had visited everyone.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“We are always told that honesty and truth are the shining ideals. But sometimes the truth could be used as a punishment.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“Who's out there?" I say.
"Just teenagers," my father says.
"Why are they like that?"
"That's just the way they are."
"Will I be like that when I grow up?"
"You? Perish the thought.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“I knew the schedule. I liked to know in advance where people would be and where they wouldn't be.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“It was a holy night. I ran. My father slept soundly in his bed, somewhere far behind me, and I ran. Elsewhere in the world masses were being performed and stock was being taken of the glories and retreats of life - and it was nothing to me, because I ran. I was naked in the woods. It was a beautiful outrage.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“Goddamn it," he said, seething. "Goddamn you! No fear. Not an ounce of fucking fear. You invite - you invite - destruction. What's the world to you, huh? A place to die in? You aren't even a girl - you're a… you're a tragedy. There isn't a monster in the world - not a monster in the world till he meets an eager victim.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“I saw you come out with him. He hurt you." "Everybody hurts everybody."
"No."
He said no, but I wondered how could he not see that.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“I smeared honey on my chest, believing it might help me grown breasts. Honeybees are industrious - they can build anything.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“The way he was looking at me made me wonder if he was talking about something other than god. Or if maybe god and the way he looked at me with those voracious boy-eyes were related. I wanted more of it. His boy-eyes, his godliness, which I felt deep down, like a surge.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“Her smile was something I couldn't describe, except to say that it seemed to be queenly in the way that queens remind you of situations grander than your own puny life could conceive.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“You cannot always understand boys, the things they do. They act, sometimes, as though in thrall to severe but natural forces. They can be waterfalls or wind gusts.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“Some parents in our neighborhood do everything they can to keep their children away from violent images. And then, when something terrible happens, like murder or rape or genocide - well, then a conversation has to be had with these young innocents to explain that, yes, goodness is sometimes a fiction, like Santa Claus, and that humanity is, underneath all the cookie baking and song singing, a shameful and secret nastiness. Me, I'm going to raise my son differently. What he will be made to know is that there is violence in everything - even in goodness, if you're passionate about it.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“It's funny how many ways there are to hurt people. As many ways to hurt as there are species of flower. Whole bouquets of hurt. You do it without even realizing.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“I liked the rows of unpopulated seats staring at me, their lower halves all folded up except one on the aisle that was broken and remained always open, a poor busted tooth in that grinning mouth. There is nothing to fear in such cavernous and sepulchral spaces. You fill them with the riots of your imagination.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“Lumen. There was Lumen, and there was the places people did not go. And Lumen would go to those places. She would leap over denies and crawl through mud. She would climb up on rooftops and call crazy with every little branch of her lungs.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“I had started running in order to escape Rose Lincoln and her pack. Then I was running to put things decidedly being me, to seek lovely new emptinesses. Then I ran to outpace the nagging of my ticklish brain. Then I just ran.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“was a pretty young woman with an affection”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“They don't hurt anybody. Except maybe themselves. And each other.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

“They could hurt you," I insisted.
"Not on purpose. They're just teenagers. We'll be like that too one day.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from When We Were Animals

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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.