John Corey Whaley > Quotes

“Life, he says, doesn’t have to be so bad all the time. We don’t have to be anxious about everything. We can just be. We can get up, anticipate that the day will probably have a few good moments and a few bad ones, and then just deal with it. Take it all in and deal as best we can.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“Not only had my brother disappeared, but--and bear with me here--a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from them on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could be told but not shared.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“Your mind has a way of not letting you forget things you wish you could. Especially with people. Like, you'll always try your best to forget things that people say to you or about you, but you always remember. And you'll try to forget things you've seen that no one should see, but you just can't do it. And when you try to forget someone's face, you can't get it out of your head.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“But in that moment I understood what they say about nostalgia, that no matter if you're thinking of something good or bad, it always leaves you a little emptier afterward.”
― John Corey Whaley, Noggin

“I often found myself in situations where I had, without thinking, said too much to too many with too little caution.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“We've learned from this that death can hurt us. It can surprise us. It can scare us. It can keep us up a night. But we've also learned the things that death cannot do. It cannot crush our hopes. It cannot take away the love and support of our family and friends. It cannot make us lose our unending faith in world and in God. It has saddened us, but it will not prevail.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“Dr. Webb says that losing a sibling is oftentimes much harder for a person than losing any other member of the family. "A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future," he says. "Spouses have each other, and even when one eventually dies, they have memories of a time when they existed before that other person and can more readily imagine a life without them. Likewise, parents may have other children to be concerned with--a future to protect for them. To lose a sibling is to lose the one person with whom one shares a lifelong bond that is meant to continue on into the future.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“I wanted the world to sit back, listen up, and let me explain to it that when someone is sad and hopeless, the last thing they need to feel is that they are the only ones in the world with that feeling. So, if you feel sorry for someone, don't pretend to be happy. Don't pretend to care only about their problems.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“When I asked him the meaning of life, Dr. Webb got very quiet and then told me life has no one meaning, it only has whatever meaning each of us puts on our own life. I'll tell you now that I still don't know the meaning of mine. And Lucas Cader, with all his brains and talent, doesn't know the meaning of his, either. But I'll tell you the meaning of all this. The meaning of some bird showing up and some boy disappearing and you knowing all about it. The meaning of this was not to save you, but to warn you instead. To warn you of confusion and delusion and assumption. To warn you of psychics and zombies and ghosts of your lost brother. To warn you of Ada Taylor and her sympathy and mothers who wake you up with vacuums. To warn you of two-foot-tall birds that say they can help, but never do.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“We’re just floating in space trying to figure out what it means to be human.”
― John Corey Whaley, Highly Illogical Behavior

“Maybe we all just exist, all versions of us exist at times, and we have to figure out a way to get to each of them, to find each one and tell that version that it's okay, that it's all justthe way it works, a concept too powerful to ignore but too complicated to explain.”
― John Corey Whaley, Noggin

“We all get lots of people. And maybe we don’t always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all.”
― John Corey Whaley, Noggin

“Some people say dying alone is a fate worse than death itself. Well, they should try being alone during the living part sometimes. There's no quicker way to make you wonder why the hell you ever thought you'd want to return.”
― John Corey Whaley, Noggin

“People didn't like having to come up with something smart or helpful or sensitive to say, and they weren't intelligent enough to realize that all we wanted, all I wanted, was to be treated the same as I had been three months before. I wanted to be ignored because of my eccentricities, not because of my brother. And I wanted to be offered help from people because they cared about me, not because they felt some strange social obligation to do so. I wanted the world to sit back, listen up, and let me explain to it that when someone is sad and hopeless, the last thing they need to feel is that they are the only ones in the world with that feeling. So, if you feel sorry for someone, don't pretend to be happy. Don't pretend to care only about their problems. People aren't stupid. Not all of us, anyway. If someone's little brother disappears, don't give him a free hamburger to make him feel better-- it doesn't work. It's a good burger, sure, but it means nothing. It means something only to the Mr. Burkes of the world. Offering free meals, free stays in condos in Florida, even free plumbing. And we let them. We let them because they need it, not us. We didn't let them help us because we needed it, we let them help us because inside of humans is this thing, this unnamed need to feel as if we were useful in the world. To feel as if we have something significant to contribute. So, old ladies, make your casseroles and set them on doorsteps. And old men, grill your burgers and give them to teenagers with cynical worldviews. The world can't be satisfied, but that need to fix it all can.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“...God was like the best musician in the world, because he put together all the sounds of nature and gave people like Jimi Hendrix his fingers and John Lennon his brain.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“His brother, he thinks, was in love with everyone he knew.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“It was like looking at the sun and not going blind”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“You ever feel like you know someone so much that they can breathe for you? Like when their chest and your chest rise and fall, they do it together because they have to? That's how it felt. That's how it always felt.”
― John Corey Whaley, Noggin

“He was afraid of the world, afraid it would find a way to swallow him up. But, maybe everyone was sometimes.”
― John Corey Whaley, Highly Illogical Behavior

“I call it the Pretty Paradox. Pretty girls always want guys who treat them, and most everyone else, like complete shit. It is perhaps one of the most baffling phenomena of history."---Cullen”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“You’re like Lady Macbeth without the murder.” “Thank you. You have no idea how much of a compliment that is to me.”
― John Corey Whaley, Highly Illogical Behavior

“What he feared the most was that all this hiding had made it impossible for him to ever be found again.”
― John Corey Whaley, Highly Illogical Behavior

“I thought maybe a day was coming when I'd stop constantly worrying about how to live. Maybe at some point I'd just start living, no questions asked.”
― John Corey Whaley, Noggin

“We let them help because they needed it, not us. We didn't let them help us because we needed it, we let them help us because inside of humans is this thing, this unnamed need to feel as if we are usefel in the world. To feel as if we have something significant to contribute."---Cullen”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“You can find ways to be okay with dying, but you can’t fake your way through living.”
― John Corey Whaley , Noggin

“He was an astronaut without a suit, but he was still breathing.”
― John Corey Whaley, Highly Illogical Behavior

“People dreamed. People left. And they all came back.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“That’s what we do sometimes. We let people disappear. We want them to. If everyone just stays quiet and out of the way, then the rest of us can pretend everything’s fine. But everything is not fine.”
― John Corey Whaley, Highly Illogical Behavior

“And then he spent three years wondering why everyone found that so hard to understand. All he was doing was living instead of dying. Some people get cancer. Some people get crazy. Nobody tries to take the chemo away.”
― John Corey Whaley, Highly Illogical Behavior