John Corey Whaley Quotes

I've been an assistant to a folklorist and a teacher. There may or may not have been some sandwich-making at a certain sub chain in my past as well.

Now, no matter what they told themselves or each other, it would always be different. After all, no first love goes away overnight, especially one that's always right in front of you, but just out of your reach.

But I know what it's like to constantly think about a life you aren't living.

And then he spent three years wondering why everyone found that so hard to understand. All he was doing was living instead of dying. Some people get cancer. Some people get crazy. Nobody tries to take the chemo away.

Janis was completely caught off guard that Lisa finally stood up for herself

I did some research on cryonics and cryogenics, but I kept it to a minimum because I didn't want the science part of the novel to overshadow the fiction. Being medically accurate wasn't my main goal.

I don't want to lie about who I am, even if it doesn't matter. It's who I am. It's part of me.

That's how I knew I loved her so much, because not loving her didn't make any sense once I'd known what it felt like.

They say the heart is just a muscle. They say it plays absolutely no role in our emotions and that its use as a symbol for love is based on archaic theories of it being the seat of the soul or something ridiculous like that. But as I quietly listened to every word she was saying to me, as each syllable shot a sharp arrow through the phone and into my ear, I swear I felt like my entire chest would collapse in on itself. I knew this feeling. They say a heart can't really break because there's nothing to be broken. But see, I once had to leave everyone I loved, and it felt this same way.

Maybe we all just exist, all versions of us exist at times, and we have to figure out a way to get to each of them, to find each one and tell that version that it's okay, that it's all justthe way it works, a concept too powerful to ignore but too complicated to explain.

If this were an indie movie, we'd start talking about the constellations," Solomon said, looking up at the stars.

Dr. Webb says that losing a sibling is oftentimes much harder for a person than losing any other member of the family. "A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future," he says. "Spouses have each other, and even when one eventually dies, they have memories of a time when they existed before that other person and can more readily imagine a life without them. Likewise, parents may have other children to be concerned with
a future to protect for them. To lose a sibling is to lose the one person with whom one shares a lifelong bond that is meant to continue on into the future.

Maybe my time's running out, but at least I'm living. And if that's what it is for you, being here inside where nothing ever happens, where you think you're safe, then stay. Stay right here and you let me know how that works for you.
Bacause I'm gessing it'll never be enough.

She just looked right at him the only way she ever had, like he was the only other person in the world.

I actually didn't mind too much that Gabriel had spent the past four nights in my room. He was relatively quiet, didn't go through my things, and liked to listen to my weird book ideas late at night. When I told him that I wanted to write a book about zombies taking over our town, he suggested that I make myself the hero and said nonchalantly, "You could even have to kill me after I get bitten. Wouldn't that be an awesome twist?" I didn't tell him then but I had no intention of ever letting him die in any book.

I grew up in a little town with about 6,000 or 7,000 people. I always knew from 11 or 12 years old that I wanted to be a writer, and I always wanted to write about growing up in a place like that that's small and you don't fit into.

Jealous of the crazy gay kid. That doesn't sound right."
"Hey, Sol," she said, her tone getting serious for a second.
"Those are two things about you out of a million. Don't box yourself in.

I guess the most interesting thing about Gabriel was that he didn't seem to care at all what people were thinking about him. He walked down the hallway at school with his head down not because he wanted to avoid being seen or dissuade social predators or anything , but simply because he didn't see any reason to lift up his head.

Fulton Dumas, do you know where Gabriel Witter is?"
"No," he said, his expression changing suddenly from surprised embarrassment to sadness.
"Are you sure?" Lucas asked.
"Why would I know where he is?"
"I don't know, Fulton. Why do you need a thousand stuffed bears? Have you seen Gabriel Witter?

The unspoken philosophy of all those in love with Ada was something like this: If I have to die to get that, then death it is.

The thing to know about my brother was that even though he was fifteen, he looked to be about the same age as me. Only, I'm not sure if that was because he looked older or I looked younger. I like to think it was a healthy mixture of both.

I don't think anyone, no matter what, can find perfect happiness until they understand exactly who they are and how every little thing they do can affect the world around them. I think perfect happiness would be a world where everyone is constantly striving to understand everyone else.

He was an astronaut without a suit, but he was still breathing.

You ever feel like you know someone so much that they can breathe for you? Like when their chest and your chest rise and fall, they do it together because they have to? That's how it felt. That's how it always felt.

I feel like writing is sometimes the only way I understand anything.

I do come from a very close family. And I'm fascinated, in particular, with family relationships and the relationships that we all form with friends who feel as close, if not closer, than family.

Approaching my second novel was, admittedly, a bit of a struggle. But having an amazing team at Atheneum Books, especially my very patient, brilliant editor Namrata Tripathi, took a stressful situation and turned it into a really great learning experience for me.

I thought maybe a day was coming when I'd stop constantly worrying about how to live. Maybe at some point I'd just start living, no questions asked.

It's not too hard to disappear when no one's looking for you.

But she believed there was a thin line between accepting one's fears and giving in to them altogether.

No matter how evil man gets, he always gets a second chance one way or another.

And, long after Clark had gone home, Solomon stayed up wondering if everyone falls in love with someone who can't love them back.

People dreamed. People left. And they all came back.

He accepted him for what he was. And that Data concluded, was true friendship.

Take away the things that make you panic and you won't panic. And then he spent three years wondering why everyone found that so hard to understand. All he was doing was living instead of dying. Some people get cancer. Some people get crazy. Nobody tries to take the chemo away. Solomon

As smart as I am, it took a boy stuck in his house to teach me that sometimes it doesn't matter where you are at all. It only matters whos with you.

He hasn't left his house in three years, he's not crazy, he's a genius; just tv and videogames twenty four-seven, I think he's my new hero ...

You think too much," Lucas said to me on the banks of the White River the next day.
"I think too much?" I asked, my voice raised.
"Yeah. You can't just sit back and relax without analyzing every little thing," he said.
"That's what you do, Lucas!" I said.
"Only sometimes," he said back.
"Just as much as I do, I'd say."
"Whatever. That's not the point. The point is, you - sorry, we need to learn how to just calm down and take everything in before trying to pick it all apart."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because we always end up ruinin' it before it begins.

A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future

She believed in herself maybe more than other people believed in God or the devil or Heaven or Hell.

Solomon had good days and he had bad days, but the good had far outnumbered the bad since Lisa and Clark had started coming around. Sometimes, though, they'd show up and he's look completely exhausted, drained of all his charm and moving in slow motion. They could do that to him - the attacks. Something about the physical response to panic can drain all the energy out of a person, and it doesn't matter what causes it or how long it lasts. What Solomon had was unforgiving and sneaky and as smart as any other illness. It was like a virus or cancer that would hide just long enough to fool him into thinking it was gone. And because it showed up when it damn well pleased, he'd learned to be honest about it, knowing that embarrassment only made it worse.

People didn't like having to come up with something smart or helpful or sensitive to say, and they weren't intelligent enough to realize that all we wanted, all I wanted, was to be treated the same as I had been three months before. I wanted to be ignored because of my eccentricities, not because of my brother. And I wanted to be offered help from people because they cared about me, not because they felt some strange social obligation to do so. I wanted the world to sit back, listen up, and let me explain to it that when someone is sad and hopeless, the last thing they need to feel is that they are the only ones in the world with that feeling. So, if you feel sorry for someone, don't pretend to be happy. Don't pretend to care only about their problems. People aren't stupid. Not all of us, anyway. If someone's little brother disappears, don't give him a free hamburger to make him feel better-- it doesn't work. It's a good burger, sure, but it means nothing. It means something only to the Mr. Burkes of the world. Offering free meals, free stays in condos in Florida, even free plumbing. And we let them. We let them because they need it, not us. We didn't let them help us because we needed it, we let them help us because inside of humans is this thing, this unnamed need to feel as if we were useful in the world. To feel as if we have something significant to contribute. So, old ladies, make your casseroles and set them on doorsteps. And old men, grill your burgers and give them t

In the middle of my fourth year teaching is when I got my book contract - in 2010. I knew the book would come out in May 2011.

That's the thing. You come back and you expect everyone to be just the way they were when you left. But it's not that easy, okay? You can't just force us all to be how you liked us.

We let them help because they needed it, not us. We didn't let them help us because we needed it, we let them help us because inside of humans is this thing, this unnamed need to feel as if we are usefel in the world. To feel as if we have something significant to contribute.
Cullen

If you had to pick between living on the East Coast or the West Coast, which would you choose? I never told her what I wanted to give as my answer, that I would choose whichever coast my brother happened to be hiding on or locked in a basement near or buried under. I never told her that even if I did know what I wanted to be, I couldn't bear the thought of leaving Lily as long as I knew my brother might show up one day or that whoever was responsible for his leaving was still out there somewhere waiting to do it again and again and again until a thousand Cullen Witters were seeing zombies of their dead brothers standing by their beds at night. I would need to be there to protect him.

We all get people that help us make sense of the world, right? We just have to figure out how to keep them however we can.

If you could be any character on The Next Generation, who would you be?"
"Easy," Solomon said. "Data. For sure."
"That makes sense," Clark said.
"You?"
"I always liked Wesley Crusher."
"What?" Solomon was appalled. "Nobody likes Wesley Crusher."
"Why not?" Lisa asked.
"Because he's a total Mary Sue," Solomon said. "He's too perfect."
"But he's always saving the day," Clark argued. "Like, always."
"Exactly. He's just a talking deus ex machina. Everybody on the ship treats him like a dumb kid, then he saves them at the last minute and, every single time, they go right back to treating him like a dumb kid again. Do I need to remind you that the starship Enterprise is full of genius scientists and engineers? Why's this kid who can't get into Starfleet Academy smarter than all of them?"
"Good point," Clark said. "He's still my choice, though.

I'm not sure I can do this anymore."
"Do what?"
"This. Exist. Be here like this with everything so fucked up."
"Hey, Travis? I don't think it really matters if you know how to exist."
"What do you mean?"
"I don't think any of us do."
"Then what are we doing?"
"I don't know. We're just meandering.

There are no boring places, only boring people,

It was like looking at the sun and not going blind

Isn't it better not knowing? Like, just liking each other and seeing each other all the time without any definition to it?

Your mind has a way of not letting you forget things you wish you could. Especially with people. Like, you'll always try your best to forget things that people say to you or about you, but you always remember. And you'll try to forget things you've seen that no one should see, but you just can't do it. And when you try to forget someone's face, you can't get it out of your head.

I know what it's like to be from an incredibly small town and the oppressiveness of it and the desire to get out. But I didn't realize that readers in Seattle, New York, and San Francisco might not get that so instinctively.

My family and friends have been monumentally supportive from well before I was a published author.

We've learned from this that death can hurt us. It can surprise us. It can scare us. It can keep us up a night. But we've also learned the things that death cannot do. It cannot crush our hopes. It cannot take away the love and support of our family and friends. It cannot make us lose our unending faith in world and in God. It has saddened us, but it will not prevail.

- Do they know? That you're gay?
- Why waste their time with it? It's not like it'll ever be an issue anyway.
- Yeah, but, it's who you are, right?
- I guess so, - he said. - I don't really know how to be any way else.
- When did you know?
- I was twelve, maybe. Something I just knew one day, even though I hadn't known it the day before.
- So it's like that, huh? A feeling? Not just being into other dudes?
- Oh no, it's that too. Of course it's that. But it's more, I think. Not so much a feeling as a fact, like having blue eyes or brown hair. It's just maybe something you don't discover until you're ready to understand it better.
- Like being straight, - she said. Only we don't have to deal with all that closet bullshit.
- Bingo, - he said.

someone who wants to trust everyone so much that they don't see a lie when it's slapping them right in the face.

Everyone just outgrew me. Now I think I'm just haunting them.

That's what we do sometimes. We let people disappear. We want them to. If everyone just stays quiet and out of the way, then the rest of us can pretend everything's fine. But everything is not fine.

I'm a huge movie nerd.

I wanted the world to sit back, listen up, and let me explain to it that when someone is sad and hopeless, the last thing they need to feel is that they are the only ones in the world with that feeling. So, if you feel sorry for someone, don't pretend to be happy. Don't pretend to care only about their problems.

We all get lots of people. And maybe we don't always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all.

Some people sign on for the impossible. And they're the ones everybody remembers.

Is that what you think I'm going to do? Snap and kill you?" he asked. "Not me, you won't. I keep mace in my purse. You never know what kind of creep'll be shopping for a house." "Wait ... what?" "Invite

But at home, that same day he'd jumped into the fountain, he'd gotten so anxious, pacing around the living room listening to his parents try to calm him, that he suddenly just lost it completely and slapped his face. He immediately started crying, confused and guilty, looking up at his parents like he had no idea how it happened. And, really, that's the way it always was with the hitting. It would happen so fast, his body shaking to release the tension that built up from all the thoughts swirling through his mind and all the air he was having trouble breathing and all the loud beating of his own heart ringing in his ears. It had to get out and that was the path it chose. Slap. Instant relief.

We're just floating in space trying to figure out what it means to be human.

Grandma "It'll keep you from going completely nuts someday and killing us all."
Solomon "Is that what you think's going to happen, that I"m going to snap and kill you?"
Grandma "Not me you won't. I keep mace in my purse.

I was thrilled when this year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature went to Neal Schusterman's 'Challenger Deep.' This brilliant book takes you into the mind of a mentally ill teenager and deserves all the accolades it's received.

When one is sitting in his bedroom and, happening to glance out the window, sees his little brother walking slowly down the driveway, he immediately jumps up, knocks over a stack of magazines piled up beside him, and runs through the doorway and down the hall. He throws open the front door, slams his body, against the screen, and hearing the tap tap tap behind him, jumps over the porch steps and down to the driveway. He stands several yards in front of his brother. He considers running, but doesn't. His arms and legs are shaking. His bottom lip between his teeth, he walks slowly and carefully, making not a sound. He stops, reaches one arm out, and pokes Gabriel Witter on the left shoulder with his index finger. He smiles the slightest of smiles.
Book Title #89: Where Things Come Back

She hadn't heard the words Star Trek in seven days and it felt amazing. The

But, you see, it is not so much in the things we say to them about Christ, but more in the things we do for them that mirror the ways of Christ.

Some people say dying alone is a fate worse than death itself. Well, they should try being alone during the living part sometimes. There's no quicker way to make you wonder why the hell you ever thought you'd want to return.

I knew the second I met you that you'd save my life someday.

Dealing with chronic anxiety has taught me to better understand the nuances of mental illness and the very individual nature of it.

Not a day on your calendar should ever be empty. It's bad luck. Twenty-four hours of wasted opportunity.

Okay, so first we get you a new computer and then a Facebook page. Priorities, you know," he said, typing in Kyle's password.

"What would I do without you--"

"Found her," he interrupted. "She's at Carrie's OK Bar. It's downtown."

"What the hell is Carrie's OK Bar?"

"It's a karaoke bar. Travis, come on."

"Wait, how do you know she's there?"

"She checked in there about twenty minutes ago."

"What does that mean?"

"Oh. Right. Since you left, it's become very important that we all constantly know each other's thoughts, locations, and birthdays."

"That's really stupid. Except for in this one very specific situation. I can't go if her fiancé's there, though. That would be too weird."

"He's not."

"How do you know?"

"Because she put 'Girls' Night' with about five exclamation points after it."

"Are people just asking to be murdered?"

"Pretty much. So are we going?

I'm completely obsessed with Andrew Smith's 'Winger.' A great, hilarious, and moving story.

He was afraid of the world, afraid it would find a way to swallow him up. But, maybe everyone was sometimes.