John David Anderson > Quotes

“Words accumulate. And once they're free there's no taking them back.

You can do an awful lot of damage with a handful of words. Destroy a friendship. End a marriage. Start a war. Some words can break you to pieces.

But that's not all. Words can be beautiful. they can make you feel things you've never felt before. Gather enough of them and they can stick those same pieces back together, provided they're the right words, said at the right time. But that takes more courage than you'd think.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“I don't think there's too much normal out there anymore. Though there's still plenty of average to go around.”
― John David Anderson, Standard Hero Behavior

“You find your people and you make your tribe and you protect each other from the wolves.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“A wish is many things. It is hope and desire and daydreams. It is impossibility and improbability and something in between. It is stardust and well water and spectrums of light in the sky. It is half-melted birthday candles and Christmas lists. It is broken turkey bones, It is the willing suspension of disbelief.
And sometimes it is desperation. It is a hole in your heart that wants filling. It is more-than-anything-in-the-world.”
― John David Anderson, Granted

“Words are ghosts that can haunt us forever.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“The nod is the easiest lie there is.”
― John David Anderson, Sidekicked

“Keep your head up. Keep your eyes forward. And don't let go.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“A wish is many things. It is apprehension and anticipation. It is lucky coins and dandelion fluff and rainbows stretching to forever. It is loves-me after love-me-nots and a pile of plucked flower petals at your feet. It's purple bikes and getting picked first and a passing grade in math. It's the marvelous and the miraculous. It's hunger and heartache. A wish is something extraordinary that you never hoped to have.
Or something very ordinary that most people take for granted.”
― John David Anderson, Granted

“You have to slay the dragon to be the hero. Not easy to do, but at least you know what you're dealing with...

But there are no such things as dragons. It's never that clear-cut. Sometimes, the thing you're fighting against is hiding from you. It's tucked away, buried deep where you can't see it. In fact, for a long time, you might not even know it's there. Maybe when it starts, it's just this tiny thing you don't even notice. Maybe you mistake it for something else or you ignore it. But then it starts to grow, and before you know it, it's stalking you. Before you know it, it has you cornered...

Of course, sometimes it really is a dragon, or at least it's a monster, determined to destroy you or someone you care about from the inside out. And you know it's there. You just have no idea how to stop it.”
― John David Anderson, Ms. Bixby's Last Day

“Live every day as if it were your last. That’s a Bixbyism for sure, though even she would tell you that it’s impossible. It’s just way too much to ask most of the time. I’ve experienced one last day in my life, and it was enough to hold me for a while. The truth is—the whole truth is—that it’s not the last day that matters most. It’s the ones in between, the ones you get the chance to look back on. They’re the carnation days. They may not stand out the most at first, but they stay with you the longest.”
― John David Anderson, Ms. Bixby's Last Day

“And that people who get embarrassed by other people who laugh or sing too loud just don’t have the guts to laugh and sing out loud themselves.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“If you only listen to what others say, you’ll never hear yourself think,”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“That's the difference between artists and the rest of us, I think. Artists know where to put the shadows.”
― John David Anderson, Ms. Bixby's Last Day

“I know what you are going to say: sticks, stones, and broken bones, but words can kick you in the gut. They wriggle underneath your skin and start to itch. They set their hooks into you and pull. Words accumulate like a cancer, and then they eat away at you until there is nothing left. And once they are let loose there really is no taking them back.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“Everybody loves a good sob story, so long as it's not their story.

I don't know why. I'm not sure if people honestly care about other people or they just want a way to confirm that they've got it better than someone else.”
― John David Anderson, Ms. Bixby's Last Day

“wishes are made in moments of wonder and desperation. Wishes are prayers without a salutation and minus an amen.”
― John David Anderson, Granted

“It doesn’t take much. A poem. A catch. A glance. A roll of the dice. And it doesn’t matter what’s true and what isn’t. Doesn’t matter what you think you know about yourself. The things you have the guts to tell people and the things you don’t. You get your label, and then you get ignored, or sometimes you get teased, but mostly you go about your business, thinking things that you would never say out loud, not to someone’s face.
But there are some words you know you can’t say. Not out loud, not without getting into serious trouble. You might whisper them to your friends, but you would never write them down. Instead you find some other way. A secret code. An inside joke… And everyone knows what it means, but nobody says anything.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“They set their hooks into you and pull. Words accumulate like a cancer, and then they eat away at you until there is nothing left. And once they are let loose there really is no taking them”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“I guess it happens to everyone. You get pushed off to the side, or you just learn to blend in, stay out of the way, merge with the crowd. And you start to think that maybe you're not the center of the universe anymore. Maybe you're not as awesome or creative or talented or worthy of attention as you originally thought.
But in your head, at least, you can still be all those things. You can be the hero at the center of it all. The man with the plan.
The one who leads the way.”
― John David Anderson

“When you're a teenager,everybody is waiting for you to be something or somebody else-your friends,your parents,your teachers.Sometimes you lose track.”
― John David Anderson, Sidekicked

“It makes you wonder where they all go, all the letters and notes, the thank-you cards and he birthday invitations, the little missives scrawled along the edges of grocery lists, the doodles on the cardboard backs of spiral-bound notebooks. All the messages, so important, so pressing, so necessary.
Maybe Wolf’s right and they never really disappear. Even after they’re crumpled and thrown away, they linger and become ghosts. Not the kind that hide up in the attic rattling your shutters, but the kind that follow you wherever you go, coming back to you like an echo, like when something leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I don’t know if that’s guilt or regret.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“Dungeons & Dragons was like that. Forget that half the kids in school probably went around slaying dragons and stashing loot on their PlayStations or iPads. It's different when you actually have to roll the dice.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― John David Anderson, Ms. Bixby's Last Day

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it. —Robert Frost CONTENTS Dedication”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“All those messages, so important, so pressing, so necessary. Maybe Wolf’s right and they never really disappear. Even after they’re crumpled and thrown away, they linger and become ghosts. Not the kind that hide up in the attic rattling your shutters, but the kind that follow you wherever you go, coming back to you like an echo, like when something leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I don’t know if that’s guilt or regret.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“I have this theory. I call it the theory of socio-magnetic homogeny. A bunch of big words, but it basically says that people gravitate toward people who share their interests and whatnot.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“You find your people and you make your tribe and you protect each other. From the wolves.”
― John David Anderson, Posted

“Words are ghosts that can haunt us forever." from Posted”
― John David Anderson

“That's Jenna. She's one of those girls who talk just as much with her hands as with her mouth, which means between the three of them you don't get a word in. But she's a little restricted by the thick steel cuffs around her wrists, so right now she is just wriggling her fingers. Vigorously.”
― John David Anderson, Sidekicked

“Then she asked me who the lead singer of Led Zeppelin was. I told her zeppelins could not be made of lead due to the obvious weight issues. She said, “Case closed.” Led Zeppelin is a band. I know that now.”
― John David Anderson, Ms. Bixby's Last Day