Jeff Zentner Quotes

We are a fallen species, spitting on the gift of salvation. Humanity is irredeemable.

Don't think that way," my mom says. "We need to think positively."
How's this: I am positively fucked.

I start laughing right there in line, laughing like I did then.
Like I did so many times.
Some days-the good ones-this is how they visit me.

Because we should do things we're afraid of. It makes it easier every time we do it.

You're telling someone in a wheelchair 'Walking is awesome. You should get up and walk.' It's not that easy.

I should wait. I don't want to come off as a weirdo. But also I'm now keenly aware of how important it is to tell people what you want them to know while you can.

Some fall in glorious ways. One green fields of battle as old warriors, surrounded by friends, fighting for their homes, fighting cruelty.

Some fall crawling in the dirt of Forrestville, Tennessee, in the dark, impossibly young and alone, for no good reason at all.

For the most part, you don't hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone.

My mind twirls with mysteries. The eternities. Life. Death. I can't stop it. It's like staring in the mirror for too long or saying your name too many times and becoming disconnected from any sense of yourself. I begin to wonder if I'm even still alive; if I exist.

I guess guilt doesn't sleep, it only eats.

No one knows how anybody lives through anything. People just do.

I wake up one day and it's twenty-plus years later, and here I am still. That's getting left behind. And even then, you can have a decent life. You know why I'm still here? It's because I'm content. Maybe even happy. I found my path. My life is simple. I wake up in the morning. I eat my Cheerios, drink my coffee, think my thoughts. I go home after work and sit on my back patio and pet my dog and listen to music and myself breathing. It feels good to be alive and exist. Most things haven't worked out for me - especially love - but that's all right. I'm not as pretty as I used to be. More of my life's behind me than in front of me. Who knows how many years I took off it while I was partying. But I'm a lot healthier now, if you can believe it.
"I get lonely sometimes, but so does everyone else. We're all looking for some sort of salvation in something sometimes we try to find it in people. We find out salvation, and it slips through our fingers. We find it again. We get left behind. Living is hurting, but I'll take living over the alternative any day. Consciousness is a marvelous gift. It took almost dying to make me realize that. Hell, I'm just rambling now. Anyway, having said all this, you did not get left behind.

How is it every time we're talking about the real world, you manage to bring up fantasy, and every time we're talking about fantasy, you manage to bring up the real world?

Travis shrugged. "My fantasies are more interesting than the real world and machines and tools are more interesting than you guys' fantasies.

His mother was quiet for a moment. "I get out of bed every day because I never know where I'll meet with one of God's small graces. Maybe I'll be cleaning a room and find a dollar bill. Maybe I'll be at the gas station on a slow night, and I'll get to sit and be paid to watch the sun set. Or maybe I just won't hurt much that day. What a miracle each day is. To see the spirit of God move across the face of our lives like he did the waters in the darkness of creation.

I want you to be careful in this world. My heart is wrapped up in you.

There are books stacked high around them - the way opportunity and possibility are stacked around them.

Funny how people move through this world leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what'd happen if all those people put their puzzle pieces together.

If you're going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things.

Weird how we're programmed to get pleasure from destroying ourselves.

Grief is weird. It seems to come in these waves out of nowhere. One minute I'm standing in the ocean, fine. The next minute I'm drowning.

Everything ends. Some things last longer than others, but everything end. Childhood feels like it takes forever when you're in the midst of it, but one day you wake up and you're eighteen and going to college. The basset hound puppy with the bow around his neck? You're going to see his whole life pass. You may find someone you love and get married. And it might last a long time, but it ends one way or another. Maybe you'll be together for fifty or sixty years, but one of you is going to get left behind.I'm glad things end, though. It forces you to love them ferociously while you have them. There's nothing worth having that doesn't die.

My whole family used to watch reruns of Walker, Texas Ranger. And I loved it when Walker would kick butt."
"As opposed to what? When Walker would hold forth on quantum physics? When he would write haikus? When he would interpret Bach on the harpischord? That show is an infomercial for Chuck Norris kicking people through plate-glass windows in show motion."
"So you've seen it.

The worst days spent with her were better than the best days spent without her.

I sometimes look at my bookshelf now and think about how someday I'm going to die without ever reading a lot of the books there. And one might be life-changingly good and I'll never know.

Our memories of our loved ones are the pearl we form around the grain of grief that causes us pain.

I watch the tip of my tie sway to and fro and wonder how humans got to a place where we said, "Whoa. Hold on. Before I can take you seriously, you need to hang a brightly colored strip of narrow pointy cloth around your neck.

The day may come when it takes some discernment to tell when someone loves you for you and when someone wants to stand near your fire.

She's it. She's my everything. She's the standard by which I'll judge beauty for the rest of my life. I'll measure every touch to her breath on my skin. Every voice to her voice. Every mind to her mind. My measure of perfection. The name carved into me. If I could, I would lie with her under these stars until my heart burst.

But the thing with a best friend is that you're never talking about nothing. Even when you're talking about nothing, it's something. The times when you think you're talking about nothing, you're actually talking about how you have someone with whom you can talk about nothing, and it's fine.

Here's where stories come in. They tell us the truth of other people's lives. They shine a light on shared humanity. They make us understand that we are different, but not 'different'. That our differences are something that makes the human tapestry richer and more colorful, and not a threat.

Irrationality loves company.

I wish it would rain. Torrents. So hard it would cleanse me of worry and trouble; so hard it would lift the stain of death from me and carry it to the rivers and out the sea.

I'm tired of watching children perish. I'm tired of watching the world grind up gentle people. I'm tired of outliving those I shouldn't be outliving. I've made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery. I needed to say that out loud to somebody other than my cats. Please take care of yourselves, my young friends.

Writing is something that you can learn only by doing. To become a writer, you need an imagination, which you clearly have. You need to read books, which you clearly do. And you need to write, which you don't yet do, but should.

Now I'm standing here, writing the final chapter of my son's portion of the history of my life. I never imagined that my history would include the full history of my son, start to finish. But it does now.

No one ever says on their deathbed they wish they'd loved fewer people.

The fights begin. We're into it ironically at first, but then start genuinely having fun trying to top each other yelling stuff. We get looks, but so what?
"Make him feel like every day is Monday!" Delia shouts.
"Embarrass him in front of everyone he's ever loved!" I shout.
"Dip your hands in his blood!" Delia shouts.
"Send him back to school to get his degree in computer science!" I shout.
"Show him how angry you are that stuff that's supposed to smell like green tea doesn't smell like green tea!" Delia shouts.
"Okay, that one was a stretch," I say.

I think if what you'd do for your last day on Earth doesn't look like a pretty normal day for you, you probably need to reexamine your life.

Sometimes, though, you want to remember every minute you spent with someone. You want to remember even the most mundane moments. You wish you had inhabited them more completely, and marked them with yourself more indelibly - not in spite of their ordinariness, but because of it. But you only discover this when it's too late

It's comforting to know that you don't have to be excellent to not be completely forgotten.

Nothing makes you feel more naked than someone identifying a desire you never knew you possessed.

We live in a series of moments and seasons and sense memories, strung end to end to form a sort of story.

Stick to the key of C, dude. No sharps or flats. More forgiving.

Remember that Florida is a land of weirdos and bizarre happenings, and conduct yourselves accordingly.

I've made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery.

People live quiet lives and that's okay. There's dignity in that, no matter what you may think.

She got up , walked around the table, and gave him a lingering hug, running her fingers through the back of his hair. She'd been finding more excuses to hug him lately.

"What was that for?" Dill asked.

"Because you looked like your heart stepped on a Lego.