Miselo Matipa

“He looks back down to find that his brother is no longer there. He is no longer there to stop him from ridiculing Merle Hodge or making some smart-ass remark about woodpeckers. He doesn’t stop him when he thinks about asking the tour guide an unanswerable question or when he considers pretending to see a large bird off in the distance. He isn’t there anymore to supply Cullen Witter with endless chances to do better.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“We talked for a while longer about whether or not I was going to study writing or just be like everyone else who wanted to be a writer and become a teacher instead.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back

“My fear is that these kids are always going to be evaluating their self-worth in terms of whether they hit the next rung society has placed in front of them at exactly the time that society has placed it. And that’s dangerous, because you’re going to slip and fall in your life.”
― Frank Bruni, Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania

“Dr. Webb says that life is so full of complications and confusion that humans oftentimes find it hard to cope. This leads to people throwing themselves in front of trains and spending all their money and not speaking to their relatives and never going home for Christmas and never eating anything with chocolate in it.
Life, he says, doesn't have to be so bad all the time. We don't have to be so 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 as we can.”
― John Corey Whaley, Where Things Come Back