Matthew Quick Famous Quotes
Reading Matthew Quick quotes, download and share images of famous quotes by Matthew Quick. Righ click to see or save pictures of Matthew Quick quotes that you can use as your wallpaper for free.
Flowers
Are in the
Ground,
Where we
Cannot see
The
Future
Wonderment
Do people actually do that
go back and thank their teachers years later, when they're no longer handicapped by youth and ignorance, when they figure out just how much their teachers actually did for them?
I looked into Father McNamee's eyes, and it looked like he had been broken into and robbed again.
Cherishing the welfare of others to the point where we are unable to bear the sight of their misery.' The
She was acting like a little excited kid ... like she could still get really excited about something in public without trying to hide it.
I remember just how bizarre my friendship with Tiffani has been - but then I remember that no one else but Tiffani could really even come close to understanding how I feel after losing Nikki forever. I remember that apart time is finally over, and while Nikki is gone for good, I still have a woman in my arms who has suffered greatly and desperately needs to believe once again that she is beautiful. In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatcher's Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I'm on and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. There's something honest about all of this, and I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer filed with me-in the middle of a snowstorm even - impossibly hoping to see a single cloud break free of a nimbostratus. Nikki would not have done this for me, not even on her best day.
Life is random and fucked-up and arbitrary, until you find someone who can make sense of it all for you - if only temporarily.
I'm waiting for the stars to pop through the black above, waiting for the future to wash over me like so many salty waves - some as turbulent as my thoughts and some as velvety as a good kiss.
As I pedal, I start to get a bad feeling. I start to feel like I have everything all wrong, and that everyone else is right, and all my hopefulness is just childish bullcrap.
I can be a very valuable friend to you, but you do not want me as an enemy.
We can simultaneously be human and monster - that both of those possibilities are in all of us.
Her eyes are sometimes the colour of a May sky at 2:00pm on a Saturday, and sometimes they are the colour of polar bear ice.
It's so quiet in my room that I wonder if this is what being dead sounds like.
Cripple coming through! Cripple coming through! Move out the way!
The only way to beat my crazy was by doing something even crazier. Thank you. I love you. I knew it from the moment I saw you. I'm sorry it took me so long to catch up.
I want to believe that happiness might at least be possible later on in life for people prone to sadness.
Going to the movies? Fuck that! You have to sit with fucking asshole strangers and you never know which one has a fucking cold or what fuck is going to bring a fucking crying baby.
It's okay to love people who aren't perfect. People who still have work to do on themselves.
When she needed help most, she was abandoned - and only when she offered help to others was she beloved.
My other friends are in music relaxation class, which I do not attend, because smooth jazz makes me angry sometimes.
The world will break your heart ten times till Sunday,that's guaranteed
Maybe you held back for too long and then you had to explode. Maybe there was no middle ground let. Sometimes we need to get violent with out words because no one is listening otherwise.
Well, there's the type of person who says there are certain types of people and then tries to be one type or the other. And then there are others who say bananas to the whole concept of types and won't allow themselves to be filed neatly away under some sort of ridiculously limiting category.
We cry together- on the couch for different- reasons, but it helps.
When I travel round the country, people can't place my accent; if there's someone in the audience, they'll be like, 'You're from Philadelphia', but everyone else will say, 'Where are you from, California?' I get England sometimes - bizarre!
I was writing full time after quitting a job as a high school English teacher, and I hadn't been able to sell anything, and my bank account was down to zero, and all of my friends were like 'What are you doing in the basement, when are you going to get a real job?', and my parents thought I'd completely lost it.
I'm an incredibly emotional person, but I always feel bad about that. The work is therapy ... I need to emote wildly while I write. I weep. I'll laugh, get excited, and get up and pace. I try to take the emotional journey with the characters.
All out friends had gone to the rugby house for a party, but we stayed in together for a night of pizza and wine on the couch of my town house.
Instead he thinks up the worst ending imaginable: Hemingway has Catherine die from
hemorrhaging after their child is stillborn. It is the most torturous ending I have ever
experienced and probably will ever experience in literature, movies, or even television.
I am crying so hard at the end, partly for the characters, yes, but also because Nikki
actually teaches this book to children. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to
expose impressionable teenagers to such a horrible ending. Why not just tell high school
students that their struggle to improve themselves is all for nothing?
You ever feel like you're sending out a light but no one sees it?
I'm crying again because I'm such a fucking waste - such a fucking non-person.
How did high schools all over the country decide that athletes needed pep rallies to boost their pride and self-esteem? Isn't it enough that people actually pay money to see these kids compete in games? That people cheer from the sidelines? And they get their names in the paper? Why don't they take all the lonely ghost floaters in every high school and have a pep rally for them? Make all the most popular kids in school sit on the hard bleachers and cheer until their asses hurt like hell?
If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that reminds me to keep on trying.
I have to admit that Emily is a cute kid, and I instantly understand why Ronnie has written me so many letters about his daughter-why he loves her so much. I start to think about having children with Nikki someday and I become so happy that I give little Emily a kiss on the forehead, as if she were Nikki's baby and I was her father. And then I kiss Emily's forehead again and again, until she giggles.
And I know
That they will never
Keep me down
Because there is always
An exit window
That leads somewhere
No one else will go
And the gambling bastards
Well, they always leave it unlocked
Yes, they do
(I have to say that everything seems to be unraveling lately. Or maybe it seems as though I am a flower myself, opening up to the world for the first time. I don't know why this is, and I'm not really in control of it either. Flowers do not think, Okay, it is now May, so I will reach up toward the sun and relax my fist of petals into an open hand. They do not think at all. Flowers just grow, and when it is time, they shoot colors out of their stems and become beautiful.
it's important to treasure your woman while you have her because if you don't, you can lose her pretty quickly
When I go downstairs, my mom tells me I need to tuck in my shirt and wear a belt, "Why?" I ask, because I do not really care if I look respectable or not. I only want to get rid of Tiffany once and for all.
He [Alex] was more of an idea than a true friend or a lover. We never got the chance to really know each other or test our compatibility over a significant period of time. I see now that he was sick - that maybe he pushed his needle too far away from the middle of the herd. But being with him for a short time helped push my needle just enough to free me from the life I hated, what everyone expected of me. And even though I have no idea what comes next, I'm grateful that I'm not signed up for a life that would make me miserable.
A lot of female teachers do this - flirt with male students. I wonder if that's the only way they know how to interact with men. Like they use their sexuality to get what they want.
You cannot beat time; you can only enjoy it whenever possible, as it zooms by endlessly.
So I pull Tifanny closer, kiss the hard spot between her perfectly plucked eyebrows, and after a deep breath, I say, I think I need you too.
That's basically the mantra of Herr Silverman's teaching - think for yourself and do what's right for you, but let others do the same.
But you also pay a high price when you order people to do things that they can't do - especially people with a strong sense of self, people with rebel personalities.
She's just a weird woman," I say in response.
"Aren't they all?" Cli� replies, and we laugh some because women truly are hard to
figure out sometimes.
As If He Were Yoda and I Were Luke Skywalker Training on the Dagobah System
I can always look up at the cosmos and marvel, no matter what happens. And when I look up at it, I feel as though my problems are small. I don't know why, but it always makes me feel better.
I'm from a family of bankers and businessmen, and here I am, the artist, the black sheep.
She's fulfilled her obligation, assuaged her conscience by finding me in the hallway and giving me the chance to freak out, and I've played my role too, by remaining calm, pretending to be okay, and therefore giving her permission to cross me off her things-to-do list. Now she can move on, and I can too.
Once you understand how adults are controlled by the system, manipulating them is elementary.
So I wore the lesbian comments like a mask that kept everything I really loved private and safe and beyond the dirty grasp of the people who didn't know the real, true me and never would.
I found posts about how to slit your wrists the "right way", so you will actually die, and that depressed me, because people actually post stuff like that, and even though I wanted to know the answer, so I could weigh my options, that info maybe shouldn't be on the internet ...
But really - why do some people post the correct ways to commit suicide on the internet? Do they want weird, sad people like me to go away permanently? Do they think it's a good idea for some people to off themselves? How can you tell when you are one of those people who should slash his wrists the right way with a razor blade? Is there an answer for that too? I Googled but nothing concrete came up. Just ways to complete the mission. Not justification.
How do you measure suffering? I mean, the fact that I live in a democratic country doesn't guarantee my life will be problem-free. Far from it. I understand that I am relatively privileged from a socioeconomical viewpoint, but so was Hamlet - so are a lot of miserable people. I bet there are people in Iran who are happier than I am - who wish to keep living there regardless of who is in charge politically, while I'm miserable here in this supposedly free country and just want out of this life at any cost.
We are the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary, for the ungrateful.
Real life often ends badly, like our marriage did, Pat. And literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for people to endure nobly. It sounds like you have endured very nobly since you returned to New Jersey, and I want you to know I admire that. I hope you are able to reinvent yourself and live out the rest of your life with a quiet sense of satisfaction, which is what I have been trying to do since we parted.
Pretending often ends when you allow nonpretenders access to the better, safer worlds you create for yourself.
People enter our lives for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.
You are you [Nanette O'Hare] - and that's okay, because this existence you're making your way through is your story and no one else's.
...it's not fair because I have been trying so hard and how long can this fucking movie last...
His use of the plural pronoun made me very suspicious.
But it makes me laugh every time because I don't wear and of that name-brand crap, don't play or follow popular sports at all, and wouldn't be found dead wearing our shitty school mascot. I'm not a follower. Not a joiner. I'm not even on Facebook.
I can tell you get it -- you're different. And I know how hard being different can be. But I also know how powerful a weapon being different can be. How the world needs such weapons. Gandhi was different. All great people are. And unique people such as you and me need to seek out other unique people who understand -- so we don't get too lonely and end up where you did tonight
Different is good. But different is hard.
The world is a hard place and can be hardest on the hopeful,
Maybe that's why adults drink, gamble, and do drugs - because they can't get naturally lit anymore. Maybe we lose that ability as we get older.
Lauren is tethered to religion.
I always talk to young writers about when you make art in your room, you make art. And when you send it to New York and L.A., you have to be a professional. Of course, when you sell your book rights as an option for a movie, you have to be a professional about that.
How was I to know that being honest would make our relationship so much better? Honesty doesn't always produce such good results. And then I think about how I've never really been honest with my peers, either. I never really let them see the true, authentic Nanette O'Hare. Few people besides Alex and Oliver got to hang out with her. And maybe that was my big mistake.
believed in The Good Luck of Right Now. Believing - or maybe even pretending - made you feel better about what had happened, regardless of what was true and what wasn't. And what is reality, if it isn't how we feel about things? What else matters at the end of the day when we lie in bed alone with our thoughts? And isn't it true, statistically speaking - regardless of whether we believe in luck or not - that good and bad must happen
I think about how fragile people are, how anyone can disappear in a second and be gone forever.
Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being.
A life lived well gets messy,
Don't you ever feel like you want to quit doing something everyone else makes you feel like you're supposed to keep doing? Didn't you ever just simply want to ... stop?
The problem with the stigma around mental health is really about the stories that we tell ourselves as a society. What is normal? That's just a story that we tell ourselves.
But the next time Nikki eats too many crabby snacks, I am going to tell her she did not eat too much and that she looks too skinny anyway; I'll say she needs to gain a few pounds because I like my women looking like women and not like 'Ms. Six O'Clock-straight up, straight down,' which is another term I learned from Danny.
I need you, Pat Peoples; I need you so fucking bad.
There will always be a part of me that is dirty and sloppy, but I like that, just like all the other parts of myself.
Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.
You can't live for someone else. At some point you just explode ...
Have you noticed that far too often the best people in the world lack power,
Maybe my movie isn't over, I say, because sometimes moviemakers trick the audience with a false bad ending, and just when you think the movie is going to end badly, something dramatic happens, which leads to the happy ending. This seems like a good spot for something dramatic to happen, especially since it's my birthday.
PS. Docendo discimus. (Latin. By teaching, we learn.)
This wasn't supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be beautiful. What the fuck?
You need to make time for your family no matter what happens in your life
But maybe it's only been a brief separation that feels like years. Like a solo car ride that takes all night but feels like a lifetime. Watching all those highway dashes flying by at seventy miles an hour, your eyes becoming lazy slits and your mind wandering over the memory of a whole lifetime-past and future, childhood memories to thoughts of your own death-until the numbers on the dashboard clock do not mean anything more. And then the sun comes up and you get to your destination and the ride becomes the thing that is no longer real, because that surreal feeling has vanished and time has become meaningful again.
So I close my eyes, hum a single note, and silently count to ten, blanking my mind
The mental health conversation is very important to me. I have friends that struggle with various mental illnesses. I've struggled with depression and anxiety. I'm very interested in how we deal with that.
He was trying to make us think about how life is hard and people suffer in all sorts of ways without our adding to their suffering to satisfy our sense of vengeance, but I sort of don't think that the quote holds up in the real world, where literature and schooling and philosophy and morality don't exist, because Asher and Linda and so many other culpable people seem to be fine - functioning exceptionally well within the world even - while I'm under a disgusting bridge about to put a hole in my skull.
My only hope is that someday-after you have stabilized your mental health-you will take comfort in the fact that I reached out to you after all that happened.
This is when I learned that nice people sometimes felt they had to pretend to be mean and awful.
For some things there are no explanations - no reasons, and so, when these things happen, there is nothing to talk about really. And it is best not to dwell on said things for too long, because you will find that life has no real meaning if you do.
I read (and copied into my Interesting Things I Have Heard notebook)
Fly! There's a lot of sky out there for brave birds.
I do see why Nikki likes the novel, as it's written so well, but her liking it makes me worry now that Nikki doesn't really believe in silver linings. Because she says The Great Gatsby is the greatest novel ever written by an American, and yet it ends so sadly. One thing's for sure. Nikki is going to be very proud of me when I tell her I finally read her favorite book. Here's another surprise: I'm going to read all the novels on her American Literature class syllabus, just to make her proud. To let her know that I am really interested in what she loves.
We never see any boats. But you man the light anyway
just in case. And WE got to see it
all these years. The great light. The beautiful sweeping beam! We were here to see it, and that was enough ... Weed your mind. And man the great light. Even when no one is looking.
You better watch out, or you're going to be defeated by pessimism!
Teachers have to believe. You have to care, and that takes a lot of work and effort. Teachers need people to give back once in a while too, if only a little.
And I still love you in my own fucked-up way. I miss you, I really do. Can we still be friends?
My eyes burn. My face flushes. Suddenly I realize that for the past two months I have been completely delusional, that Nikki is never coming back and apart time is going to last forever.
Nikki.
Is.
Never.
Coming.
Back.
Never.
I want to hit Tiffany.
I want to pound her face with my knuckles until the bones in my hands crumble and Tiffany is completely unrecognizable, until she no longer has a face from which she can spew lies.
They've never had to make any real decisions at all. Their lives are easy and unremarkable. They're not awake.
I admire you your willingness to offer kindness almost indiscriminately. But unfortunately, it takes a lot more than kindness to survive in this world. I understood what she meant, but I also understood that Mom's philosophy was a powerful weapon.