Andrew Smith Quotes

Robby Brees was such a gifted theologian.

History does show that nothing means a hell of a lot more than nothing when teenagers talk. In this case, Robby knew it meant that I did not want to talk about it, so he left me alone.
Robby Brees was such a good friend.

To me, hearing that those girls gave my brother Eric a blow job sounded very nice.
History shows that all boys consider blow job to be a nice-sounding set of words.
I thought a blow job was putting your face in front of an air conditioner, which is something all nine-year-old boys love to do, even though Eric did not look like he had been cooled off very much.

Man will tell woman he will die for her, but I say, tell woman that you will die for her both physically and interior

And then it's always that one word that makes you so different and puts you outside the overlap of everyone else; and that word is so fucking big and loud, it's the only thing anyone ever hears when your name is spoken.
And whenever that happens to us, all the other words that make us the same disappear in its shadow.

Innocence is the one thing you can't re-create, can only parody.

I don't just let anyone find me, you know?

People fear what they don't understand and hate what they can't conquer.

Researched Heinrich Fuchs. There were a lot of Fuchs in Splugen. Splugen was full of dumb Fuchs. The Swiss are famous for maintaining neutrality, except, apparently, when it comes to shooting at monstrous bugs with someone else's sperm.

But when I was quiet ... that made words too. The same words that make horrible things come also tell the quieter things about love.

I would die for Conner Kirk. Sometimes, I think I have died for him dozens of times, over and over again.

Sometimes it is perfectly acceptable to decide not to decide, to remain confused and wide-eyed about the next thing that will pop up in the road you build.

You must be crazy, after all, if a bird loves you.

All good books are about everything, abbreviated.

There's no prison worse than "I promise.

History will show that patient boys with a sense of humor, who can dance, tend to have more opportunities to participate in the evolution of the species than boys who give up and mope quietly on the sidelines

Joey told me nothing ever goes back exactly the way it was, that things expand and contract- like breathing, but you could never fill your lungs up with the same air twice.

I guess that's a sign of growing up: When your dad shuts up but you can hear him anyway.

I think it is always appropriate to end a conversation about sperm with a sweaty handshake.

History shows that an examination of the personal collection of titles in any man's library will provide something of a glimpse into his soul.

We made this stupid rule and this stupid rule.
Boys are not allowed to love each other.
Then we painted a bison on the wall.

I realize that death and survival are both extremes of selfishness.

after midnight
Just words.
No more pictures. No charts or plays or poems.
Now it's just about the words.

Everyone on every road that crossed beneath the point of my pen was always going to do the same things over and over and over.
I was confused.
How could I be in love with a girl and a boy, at the same time?
I was trapped forever.
You know what I mean.

History does show that boys who dance are far more likely to pass along their genes than boys who don't.
Boys who dance are genetic volcanoes.

Okay, well . . . yeah, I didn't really say "Shut the fuck up," because I honestly don't cuss. But I wanted to. I think, in reality, I raised my finger to my lips and said, "Shhhhh," so she wouldn't say anything else as we spiraled into the center of that wish circle.

I am going to build something big for you.

You know, nothing ever goes back exactly the way it was. Things just expand and contract. Like the universe, like breathing. But you'll never fill your lungs up with the same air twice. Sometimes, it would be cool if you could pause and rewind and do over. But I think anyone would get tired of that after one or two times.

History shows that erections happen at the worst possible times, and they stick around until someone else notices them. Often, it is either a librarian or an English teacher, like Mrs. Edith Mitchell.

Look: Words did not frighten my father. They scared the shit out of me. I almost couldn't believe I'd worked up the guts to ask the question and not choke to death in the process. But words were the atoms in my father's universe, and he was their destroyer and their creator.

He was a little guy, a former winger too, and he was a transplant from England who could talk the most civilized-sounding shit you would ever hear, and he could cuss you out with the most vicious obscenities and

Hungry Jack's real name was Charles R. Hoofard.
He was born in Indianapolis in 1950.
In 1950, Harry S. Truman was president of the United States.
Harry Truman, as far as I can tell, also never took a shit in his life.
In 1950, the same year that a boy named Charles R. Hoofard was born in Indianapolis, President Harry S. Truman sent military assistance to the French. They were trying to maintain their French Catholic colony in Vietnam. That military aid would grow and blossom to the point that a boy with wanderlust from Indiana named Charles R. Hoofard ultimately took time out from fucking whatever he wanted to fuck to participate in the killing of an entire village of women, elderly people, and children.
History is full of shit like that.

The more time you wait before telling somebody the truth about a secret you've been keeping, the longer your path out of the woods gets.

It's no wonder I became a monster, too.

Sometimes books imitate life. And sometimes books imitate lives that imitate books.

When you think about it, the universe is nothing but this vast knackery of churning black holes and exploding stars, constantly free atoms that collect together and become something else, and something else again.

History is full of decapitations, and Iowa is no exception.

My brother Max nodded knowingly. Head injuries can answer a lot of questions that genetics are just too afraid to ask.

I don't know exactly what the Xanax did to me. All I can remember is how relaxed and not-uptight I felt. I did not care about anything. Everything was nice, very nice.

Please do not shoot us in the balls, EJ Elgin. It is only me, Robby Brees, and my friend, Austin Szerba, who is your next-door neighbor, and we are not rat boys from Mars. We come in peace, and smoking cigarettes." "Benson

They were both so beautiful, and their sound, as we said them to each other above the music, made our chests fill up with something electric and buzzing, like love and magic.

Expired condoms are like nuclear waste: there's nothing sensible you can do with it.

And you can't see around corners. so you just have to deal with it, and try to stay afloat.
And things get tough.
And you're supposed to grow up.
And it's all a bunch of bullshit.
Sorry.

We killed this big hairy thing and that big hairy thing. And that was our day. You know what I mean.

The end of the world was one week old and it was getting out of hand.

Here is what the end of the world looks like:
It looks like a child running out into the road, eyes focused only on some destination ahead - the future, which is on the other side - and the child fails to notice the speeding truck that is there, on that same road, in the present.
This is what the end of the world looks like.
All roads cross here.

Had (President) Kennedy turned to his advisers and wailed, "What can we beat the Russians at?" and if someone had cried "Backgammon!" at that point, Apollo would never have happened.

I guess I was waiting till after we got to Arizona to say anything."
"That's the dumbest conversational plan I have ever head in my life.

Because, in an empty bedroom with creaky old wood floors, it is a natural human response to just stand there and shift your weight from foot to foot, and think about sex.

All roads lead past shooting ranges, liquor stores, and gay bars. Wanderlust is part of the American Spirit.

Worry and regret are both useless weights that provide no drag. They never did anything to slow down the planet for one goddamned second.

You need to get up, Finn. I'm not going to let you stay in here like this any longer. Cade's waiting downstairs, and I exhausted all possible topics of conversation with him back when he was about twelve years old.

I always bring back books for the library. Books have everything in them. After the end of the world, you cannot learn a goddamned thing from a computer or a television screen.

When I think about my life, I'm always thinking, 'I hope I live long enough to do all the stories I know.' And I know I'm not gonna, 'cos I got a list over there and it keeps getting a little bit longer.

I thought about words - like words in books - and how just saying them made things real.

Not a very pretty world, is it?"
"Which one?

I began to consider the fact that maybe history is actually the great destroyer of free will.

There is something inside all boys that drives us to go away again and again and again.

I pictured the first time we saw the girl, breezing past us in that Lincoln, blond hair whirling around her, her glasses tipped down, her smile, the stroke of her fingers. The teasing.
Simon tumbled the meteorite around in the sweat of his hand. I wondered what it would be like to look down at the earth, to fall, to burn brilliantly in the air like the image of the girl who passed by, kicking back dust like cosmic ash, and could she see that, now; was she up there above us?
I wondered.
We closed our eyes.

I don't let just anyone fine me, you know?

The one sure thing about Marbury is that it's a horrible place. But so is right here, too. And there's certain benefit in the obviousness of its brutality, because in Marbury there's no doubt about the nature of things: good and evil, or guilt and innocence, for example. Not like here, where you could be sitting in the park next to a doctor or someone and not have any idea what a sick and dangerous sonofabitch he really is. Because we always expect things to be proper, even if we haven't learned our fucking lesson that it just doesn't work out like that all the time.

And Doc Mom, being the compassionate therapist that she is, laughed until she had tears in her eyes (just like Annie does) and said that was one of the funniest stories she'd ever heard.

Robby called me Porcupine because of how I wore my hair. I didn't mind. Everyone else called me Austin.
Austin Szerba.
It is Polish.