Robyn Schneider > Quotes

“And I realized that there's a big difference between deciding to leave and knowing where to go.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that’s all. I don’t know if he’s right, but I do know that I spend a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. So we're all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“There's a word for it," she told me, "in French, for when you have a lingering impression of something having passed by. Sillage. I always think of it when a firework explodes and lights up the smoke from the ones before it."
"That's a terrible word," I teased. "It's like an excuse for holding onto the past."
"Well, I think it's beautiful. A word for remembering small moments destined to be lost.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“Words could betray you if you chose the wrong ones, or mean less if you used too many. Jokes could be grandly miscalculated, or stories deemed boring, and I'd learned early on that my sense of humor and ideas about what sorts of things were fascinating didn't exactly overlap with my friends'.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“If everything really does get better, the way everyone claims, then happiness should be graphable. But that's crap, because better isn't quantifiable.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“She tasted like buried treasure and swing sets and coffee. She tasted the way fireworks felt, like something you could get close to but never really have just for yourself.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“Being temporary doesn't make something matter any less, because the point isn't for how long, the point is that it happened.”
― Robyn Schneider, Extraordinary Means

“I wondered what things what things became when you no longer needed them, and I wondered what the future would hold once we'd gotten past our personal tragedies and proven them ultimately survivable.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“Sometimes I think that everyone has a tragedy waiting for them, that the people buying milk in their pajamas or picking their noses at stoplights could be only moments away from disaster. That everyone's life, no matter how unremarkable, has a moment when it will become extraordinary - a single encounter after which everything that really matters will happen.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“You have this maddening little smile sometimes, like you've just thought of something incredibly witty but are afraid to say it in case no one gets the joke.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“To Cassidy, the panopticon wasn't a metaphor. It was the greatest failing on everything she was, a prison she had built for herself out of an inability to appear anything less than perfect. And so she ghosted on, in relentless pursuit of escape, not from society, but from herself. She would always be confined by what everyone expected of her because she was too afraid and too unwilling to correct our imperfect imaginings.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“That's all you can do in this world, no matter how strong the current beats against you, or how heavy your burden, or how tragic your love story. You keep going.”
― Robyn Schneider, Extraordinary Means

“There's difference between being dead and dying. We're all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.”
― Robyn Schneider, Extraordinary Means

“You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“The funny thing about gold is how quickly it can tarnish.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“The way I figured it, keeping quiet was safe. Words could betray you if you choose the wrong ones, or mean less if you used too many.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“History is filled with fictional people.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“I pictured her tragically; it never once ocurred to me to picture her as the tragedy.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“We have all been fooled into believing in people who are entirely imaginary--made-up prisoners in a hypothetical panopticon. But the point isn't whether or not you believe in imaginary people; it's whether or not you want to.
"I think I'll stick with reality," I said, handing Cassidy back her phone.
She stared at it, and then me, disappointed. "I'd think you of all people would want to escape."
"Imaginary prisoners are still prisoners.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“We mourn the future because it's easier than admitting that we're miserable in the present.”
― Robyn Schneider, Extraordinary Means

“You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. The popular jock. The mysterious new girl. But we're the ones who choose, in the end, how people see us. And I'd rather be misremembered. Please, Ezra, misremember me.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“Still here, Faulkner?" Luke sneered.
"Still doing that terrible impression of Draco Malfoy?" I asked.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“I do know that I spent a long time existing, and now, I intend to live.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“In AP Bio, I learned that the cells in our body are replaced every seven years, which means that one day, I'll have a body full of cells that were never sick. But it also means that parts of me that knew and loved Sadie will disappear. I'll still remember loving her, but it'll be a different me who loved her. And maybe this is how we move on. We grow new cells to replace the grieving ones, diluting our pain until it loses potency.

The percentage of my skin that touched hers will lessen until one day my lips won't be the same lips that kissed hers, and all I'll have are the memories. Memories of cottages in the woods, arranged in a half-moon. Of the tall metal tray return in the dining hall. Of the study tables in the library. The rock where we kissed. The sunken boat in Latham's lake, Sadie, snapping a photograph, laughing the lunch line, lying next to me at the movie night in her green dress, her voice on the phone, her apple-flavored lips on mine. And it's so unfair.

All of it.”
― Robyn Schneider, Extraordinary Means

“You're better off without me.

And I don't want to be around when you realize it.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“Ezra, the girl you're chasing after doesn't exist. I'm not some bohemian adventurer who takes you on treasure hunts and sends you secret messages. I'm this sad, lonely mess who studies too much and pushes people away and hides in her haunted house.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“It was about being able to dance like Cassidy did, as though no one was watching, as though the moment was infinite enough without needing to document its existence.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“No matter how screwed up your life is today, today is just a collection of moments that stop and start whenever you want them to. And nothing upsetting matters when you know that tomorrow is gonna be better than yesterday”
― Robyn Schneider

“It was like the part of me that had enjoyed those friends had evaporated, leaving behind a huge, echoing emptiness, and I was scrabbling on the edge of it, trying not to fall into the hole within myself because I was terrified to find out how far down it went.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything