Julie > Julie's Quotes

“A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“So much of language is unspoken. So much of language is compromised of looks and gestures and sounds that are not words. People are ignorant of the vast complexity of their own communication.”
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“I'm lonely. And I'm lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be this lonely because it seems catastrophic.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“They murdered him.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Ahem. Dear Jesus," Taylor intoned more fervently. "We just want to thank you for gettin' us here safe ---"
There was a loud, gurgling groan. Somebody shouted, "Oh my gosh! Miss Delaware just died!"
"--- for gettin some of us here safe," Taylor continued. "And we pray that, as we are fine, upstandin', law-abidin' girls who represent the best of the best, you will protect us from harm and keep us safe until we are rescued and can tell our story to People magazine. Amen."
- "Beauty Queens”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles
and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles...
...they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle
bottle paddle battle.”
― Dr. Seuss, Fox in Socks

“At school, the news that Pia Kolvenbach was moving to England and that her parents were divorcing had circulated with lightening speed. Suddenly I was no longer ostracized for being the Potentially Exploding Girl, but the new attention was worse. I could tell that the girls who sidled up to me and asked with faux-sympathetic smiles whether it was true were doing it on the basis of discussions they had heard between their own parents, to who they would report back like scouts. Soon there would be nothing left of me at all, nothing real: I would be a walking piece of gossip, alternatively tragic and appalling and, worse of all, a poor thing.”
― Helen Grant, The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

“When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“At the Unitarian Universalist Christmas pageant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it didn't matter that Mary insisted on keeping her nails painted black or that Joseph had come out of the closet. On December 25 at seven and nine p.m., three wise women would follow the men down the aisle -- one wearing a kimono and another, African garb; instead of myrrh they would bring chicken soup, instead of frankincense they'd play lullabies. The shepherds had a line on protecting the environment and the innkeeper held a foreclosure sign. No one quite believed in God and no one quite didn't -- so they made it about the songs and the candles and the pressing together of bodies on lacquered wooden pews.”
― Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

“I miss dreaming forwards," Anna said.
"What?"
"I dream backwards now. You won't believe how backwards you'll dream someday.”
― Marina Keegan, The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories

“It was up to him to pay back to the world in beauty and caring what Leslie had loaned him in vision and strength.”
― Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia

“Our hospital was famous and housed many great poets and singers. Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?”
― Susanna Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted

“Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.”
― Malcolm X

“Helloooo." Miss Ohio rolled her eyes. "I'm from the Buckeye State. We are serious about our tailgating parties. I can turn anything into a grill.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“See, now I don't know whether to be all 'Yay!' because you're empowered or sad because you're having delusional almost-sex with an imaginary boyfriend.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“I hate this place,” Tiara whimpered. “It’s super creepy. Like a haunted Chuck E. Cheese’s where the games all want to kill you and you never get your pizza.”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“She wore too much eyeliner then, at age thirteen, and now, at eighteen, she wears so much black under her eyes, she looks like a slutty linebacker raccoon.”
― A.S. King, Please Ignore Vera Dietz

“Stories continue in all directions to include even the retelling of the stories themselves, as legend is informed by interpretation, and interpretation is informed by time. And so I tell my story to you, as the Mariner told his: he, standing outside the wedding party, snatching at a passing wrist, paralyzing his victim with his gaze; I, standing with my family at the edge of this immortal forest. I tell this story because telling this story is what I must do.”
― Garth Stein, A Sudden Light

“I have two choices in life: I either try to do the right thing and get accused of being selfish, or I just do what is right for me and get called selfish anyway. This time, it's all about me.”
― Dawn O'Porter, Paper Aeroplanes

“To say that I wished I wasn't there would be a ludicrous understatement, but I'd only ever had the illusion of choice: We have to do this, Hank had said. It's for Ellis. To refuse would have been an act of calculated cruelty. And so, because of my husband's war with his father and their insane obsession with a mythical monster, we'd crossed the Atlantic at the very same time a real madman, a real monster, was attempting to take over the world for his own reasons of ego and pride.”
― Sara Gruen

“There is no dishonor in losing the race. There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose.”
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“I don't understand why people insist on pitting concepts of evolution and creation against each other. Why can't they see that spiritualism and science are one? That bodies evolve and souls evolve and the universe is a fluid package that marries them both in a wonderful package called a human being. What's wrong with that idea?”
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“We live in an era where the best way to make a dent on the world may no longer be to write a letter to the editor or publish a book. It may be simply to stand up and say something . . . because both the words and the passion with which they are delivered can now spread across the world at warp speed.”
― Chris J. Anderson, TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking