Gabrielle Zevin quotes
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“You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Ask two people to tell you anything, you’ll get two versions. Even easy things like directions, let alone important or semi-controversial topics like why a fight started or what a person was generally like. If you don’t know something for yourself, you just can’t be sure.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Someday, we’ll run into each other again, I know it. Maybe I’ll be older and smarter and just plain better. If that happens, that’s when I’ll deserve you. But now, at this moment, you can’t hook your boat to mine, because I’m liable to sink us both.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“It was strange, really. A couple months ago, I had thought I couldn’t live without him. Apparently I could.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
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“We are not quite novels. We are not quite short stories. In the end, we are collected works”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“In the end, the end of a life only matters to friends, family, and other folks you used to know. For everyone else, it's just another end.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“I did learn something about insanity while I was down there. People go crazy, not because they are crazy, but because it's the best available option at the time.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Intimacy doesn't have all that much to do with backseats of cars. Real intimacy is brushing your teeth together.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
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“No one actually needs another person or another person's love to survive. Love is when we have irrationally convinced ourselves that we do.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“It was odd to have something so personal out there in that way, but the good thing about art is that no one necessarily knows what you mean by it anyway.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“When I was in my twenties and broke, I'd buy books before food. A meal will sustain you for a few hours, a good book will sustain you for life.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“I have so much paperwork. I'm afraid my paperwork has paperwork.”
-- Gabrielle ZevinSource : Gabrielle Zevin (2016). “Elsewhere”, p.47, Bloomsbury Publishing
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“But I believe good things happen everyday. I believe good things happen even when bad things happen. And I believe on a happy day like today, we can still feel a little sad. And that's life, isn't it?”
-- Gabrielle ZevinSource : Gabrielle Zevin (2016). “Elsewhere”, p.166, Bloomsbury Publishing
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“Let's stay young forever. Young, stupid, and pretty. Sounds like a plan, don't you think?”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Wounds are like water set to boil – they heal best left unwatched...”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“They should tell you when you’re born: have a suitcase heart, be ready to travel.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
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“Daddy always said you only explained things to the people that actually mattered.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart.”
-- Gabrielle ZevinSource : Gabrielle Zevin (2014). “The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel”, p.154, Algonquin Books
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“...lies can sound awfully pretty when a girl is in love with the person telling them.”
-- Gabrielle ZevinSource : Gabrielle Zevin (2011). “All These Things I've Done”, p.262, Macmillan
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“Did you know that there are over three hundred words for love in canine?”
-- Gabrielle ZevinSource : Gabrielle Zevin (2016). “Elsewhere”, p.54, Bloomsbury Publishing
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“Diving is a leap of faith plus gravity.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Love stories are written in millimeters and milliseconds with a fast, dull pencil whose marks you can barely see, they are written in miles and eons with a chisel on the side of a mountiantop”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“The only love she inspires is the canine kind.”
-- Gabrielle ZevinSource : Gabrielle Zevin (2016). “Elsewhere”, p.163, Bloomsbury Publishing
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“On, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human life is a beautiful mess.”
-- Gabrielle ZevinSource : Gabrielle Zevin (2016). “Elsewhere”, p.148, Bloomsbury Publishing
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“What are you reading?" Owen asks. "Charlotte's Web," Liz says. "It's really sad. One of the main characters just died." "You ought to read the book from end to beginning," Owen jokes. "That way, no one dies, and it's always a happy ending.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Life used to move much more quickly when I was a girl. We needed to abbreviate just to keep up.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Daddy always said that an option that you know to have a bad outcome is only a fool's option, i.e., not an option at all. And I liked to think that Daddy hadn't raised a fool.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
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“It's sad when you think about it, but also kind of beautiful.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Saying you're through with romance is like saying you're done with living, Betty. Life is better with a little romance, you know.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“It wasn't even 8:00 yet. Pretty early for such deep thoughts.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Since i couldn't remember the "real" first time i'd lost my virginity, this would have become my de facto first time. I wanted a better story then: I did it with this boy who i wasn't very into and who had mysterious Gaterade breath; in his room decorated with sports equipment; at least he was nice enough to provide condoms and get his ancient, ***** dog to leave us along.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
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“Oh," says Owen, "but I would have, you know." "I know you would have," says Liz, "and knowing you would have is nearly as good.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Daddy always said the only thing worth begging for was your life, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe sometimes your love is a little bit worth begging for, too.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Tragedy is when someone ends up dead. Everything else is just a bump in the road. For the record, that was something Daddy used to say.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“I let myself feel good and sorry for myself, but only for a second. Daddy always said that the most useless of all human emotions was self-pity.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
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“Win walked over to me. He held out his palm. In the middle of it was a single black sequin from the dress Scarlet had lent me. "You lost this," he said. I giggled, slightly embarrassed to be leaving bits of myself behind. "I'm shedding.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Should have. Would have. Could have. Didn't.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“I know you did, lass. You're the toughest girl I know." "'Lass'? Where did that come from?" "I don't know. I just felt the urge to call you that.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“The things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life”
-- Gabrielle ZevinSource : Gabrielle Zevin (2014). “The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel”, p.41, Algonquin Books
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“There's a strange sort of quiet when you're dying. It's as if you're in a glass room, and the walls keep getting thicker and thicker.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“The words you can't find, you borrow. We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone. My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart. We are not quite novels. The analogy he is looking for is almost there. We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that. In the end, we are collected works.”
-- Gabrielle ZevinSource : "Shadowlands". Biography, Drama, Romance, 1994.
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“The theme of the dance was "Great Romances," or some such nonsense. There were projections of supposedly great couples from the past on the walls of the gym. Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Hermione and Ron, Bonnie and Clyde, etc.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
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“A question I’ve thought about a great deal is why it is so much easier to write about the things we dislike/hate/acknowledge to be flawed than the things we love.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“I wish I could tell you to always follow your heart, but I think it is bad advice. You have a heart, yes, it is true, but also a brain and also a soul. I've come to believe that we love with our brains as much as our hearts. Real Love is not just instinct, but intent...... From year to year, you may not always be the same Jane. This is perfectly normal. A Jane is many Janes in a lifetime.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Liz, I like you very much," he says. "Oh," she says, "I like you very much, too!" Owen is not sure if she means "O" for Owen, or just plan "Oh." He is not sure what difference it would make in either case. He feels the needs to clarify. "When I said 'I like you very much,' I actually meant 'I love you.'" "O," she says, "I actually meant the same thing." She closes the car door behind her. "Well," he says to himself, driving back to his apartment, "isn't that something?”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“I shouldn't have done that," I said. That was when I kissed him again. May God forgive me for this and all these things I've done.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
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“Eye contact made people think you were being truthful even if you weren't.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“My beautiful Win. I wanted to kiss him on every last broken place, but his mother and my lawyer were there. So, instead I started to cry.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“He told me that love was the only thing that really mattered in the world.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“He kissed me, though not in a sexy way. Gentle. Tender.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
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“Violence should not always beget more violence.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Maybe if I'd been braver in that moment, I would have cried.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
“Daddy once said, "If you don't know what you believe, Annie, you'll be a lost soul.”
-- Gabrielle Zevin -
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“And when she dreams, she dreams of a girl who was lost at sea but one day found the shore.”
-- Gabrielle ZevinSource : Gabrielle Zevin (2016). “Elsewhere”, p.167, Bloomsbury Publishing
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