Chelsey Philpot > Quotes

“I wish for the same thing I've hoped for since the beginning. I wish for a life so brave, so unpredictable, so full of unexpected joys and unforgettable love that no box could possibly contain all my memories.

Such a life won't be perfect. It'll be something better.

It'll be my own paradise.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“This is not something anyone can teach you. Heartbreak you must learn on your own.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“Even knowing, as I do now, that grace, power, and, yes, love can hide the darkest elements of the human heart, I would do it all again.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“Before that night, I didn't grasp that the shadows that sometimes crossed her face weren't momentary clouds passing in front of the sun. Her deep silences were more than daydreams. And her habit of standing with her arms wrapped around her ribs was a way of holding herself together.

I didn't get there must be balance.
She couldn't hold so much life, light and joy without also containing their opposites.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“For a time, I missed them like winter misses warmth. I could not breathe without her. I could not feel without him.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“I wish for a life so brave, so unpredictable, so full of unexpected joys and unforgettable love that no box could possibly contain all my memories.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“They were perfect. They were flawed. They were scarred and beautiful. They were too familiar with death and clung to life by clinging to one another. The Great Buchanans were only human, after all.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“I’m sorry,’ I whispered. I didn’t know whether I was sympathizing with her broken heart or apologizing for a family who had had theirs broken, too.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“Even with her red-rimmed eyes she was the reason artists painted portraits.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“We are solitary creatures that come together in packs so we can survive as a species. We’ll do anything to preserve the social status quo, including omit, deny, and lie. Complete honesty would be detrimental to the survival of the race.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“Even knowing everything, I would have chosen the same.
It's only in hindsight that we can point, as easily as finding a town on a map, to the moments that shaped us, - the moments when choices between yeses and noes determined the people we become.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“The hours were long, but the days were short, and as much as I willed it to never come, the end of summer arrived anyway.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“The burst of love I felt for her spread through me like blue paint turning red to purple.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“Heartache, guilt, loss, grief, these things, too, are monsters.”
― Chelsey Philpot

“But if love can be funny and capricious, it can also be strong enough to seem like a sign of insanity.”
― Chelsey Philpot

“Childhood is not all candy stores and recess; it’s frustrations and confusions, too.”
― Chelsey Philpot

“Illness can be undignified. Suffering does not have a purpose, and relationships are complicated. In the most painful way a person can, Hazel comes to realize, that love does not, cannot, conquer death. What it can do, however, is transcend it.”
― Chelsey Philpot

“So self-assured were they all by nature that it never occurred to me to doubt that their perfection was predetermined by forces I did not understand. They were all royalty. They were all gods. They were all broken.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“I think inspiration is strongest when I find a balance between observation and participation. You can’t write about what it means to dance by watching from the bleachers.”
― Chelsey Philpot

“If you believe in gravity, you already believe in something higher than yourself.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Be Good Be Real Be Crazy

“The air was swollen with music, shouting, and something I could not quite place- a feeling of happiness, but happiness with an edge, a sense of joy that was all the more meaningful because it was so fleeting.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“We cannot 100 percent know the depth of another person’s heart. We cannot know the whys and whats of his soul.

This idea could be sad, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead of rendering human beings powerless, it could render them more compassionate. Knowing that the stranger who just bumped you in the hall or that the awkward loner who sits behind you in class each have a story, makes it easier to chose kindness — again, again, and again.”
― Chelsey Philpot

“As children we read to escape—to enter fantasy worlds where a bespectacled boy can discover he’s a wizard or a brave girl can find a magical passage through a wardrobe. But we also read to find reflections of ourselves.”
― Chelsey Philpot

“The trouble with your life being a miracle is that people expect miracles of you.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Be Good Be Real Be Crazy

“For it should be recognized as a natural law that the difficulty of of making decisions about the future is directly proportional to the amount of internal entropy created by love.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“I felt part of a world that was so large and so strange I could never understand it, and that was okay. I was happy to give myself up to it.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“When, after all, does the fall begin—at the first thought of flight or the moment you're airborne?”
― Chelsey Philpot, Be Good Be Real Be Crazy

“It’s only in hindsight that we can point, as easily as finding a town on a map, to the moments that shaped us—the moments when choices between yeses and noes determined the people we became.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“Solo col senno di poi siamo in grado di riconoscere, con la facilità con cui troviamo una città su una cartina, i momenti che ci hanno forgiato. I momenti in cui la scelta tra un sì e un no ci ha fatto diventare le persone che siamo.”
― Chelsey Philpot, Even in Paradise

“In the Empire, the Scholars are not allowed to read and, like so many bullies and power-seekers who hide behind ideologies to justify the terrible things they do, their oppressors wear masks. 'An Ember in the Ashes' suggests that such masks (literal or figurative) don’t work. Not forever, anyway. Masks only cover faces. It’s actions that show who we are.”
― Chelsey Philpot