Amy Zhang Quotes

We race the world, and as fast as it rotates, as fast at it revolves, we are faster. ~ Amy Zhang

No one's going to be at our hundred-year reunion. Hell, no one's coming back for the five-year reunion." That was probably true. ~ Amy Zhang

There was a certain freedom in being on the outside. He watched instead of being watched. ~ Amy Zhang

We are nervous laughter and fast breath and faster heartbeats, alive alive alive. ~ Amy Zhang

Had the world always been like this? Why had it seemed so much kinder when she was younger? Why had it seemed beautiful? ~ Amy Zhang

Inertia, force, mass, gravity, velocity, acceleration. . .cause and effect.

Liz Emerson doesn't understand any of it.

But I do.

I understand how we fall. Where we fall. Why we fall.

I understand her sadness and loneliness and silence, her shattered heart.

It doesn't have to be this way, does it?

It wasn't always this way, was it?

Stay alive, Liz Emerson, stay alive. ~ Amy Zhang

She finally figure out that she, Liz Emerson, was the equal and opposite reaction. She was the consequence. ~ Amy Zhang

She was insane, and this was Janie. This was the Janie who loved fire and carried rocks. This was the Janie Vivian who trusted rarely but deeply, and hoped with everything she was. This was the Janie Vivian, who I had loved with every atom in every cell in my body before memory was relevant. ~ Amy Zhang

And tonight - tonight, that was what she wished for. She wished to be happy, and fell asleep with an extra sky watching over her. ~ Amy Zhang

That's what high school's for. You make plans and you don't follow through. You dream and you can be brave when you're dreaming, brave enough to imagine that there's actually a yourself to find, brave enough to finish projects even though you were never born with endings, brave enough to plan volunteer trips even though you'd probably be dead of asphyxiation by the time you're there because you're always holding your breath as if that can keep you together. ~ Amy Zhang

Some things are easier to forget than other things, I'm noticing. ~ Amy Zhang

Some people die because the world does not deserve them. Liz Emerson on the other hand, did not deserve the world. ~ Amy Zhang

We fall asleep to fairy tales, and the world rotates and revolves and time passes and we grow up and we understand that they are false. There are not heroes and princesses and villains. It's not that easy. ~ Amy Zhang

But she needed ice on the roads. She needed her accident to look as accidental as possible. And she just didn't think she was capable of waiting another three months. Julia, however, knows none of this. She looks down at what remains of her best friend, and she thinks of all the times Liz was quiet and not really there. The times when she was the Liz everyone else knows, all snark and insanity, and the moments when she was the one that stared at invisible things and hadn't truly smiled in a long time. ~ Amy Zhang

If she loved them, if she loved anything, it was because it burned. ~ Amy Zhang

She wasn't here to make memories. She was here for the flashing lights and the sweat and the smoke and the feel of someone else's skin against hers. ~ Amy Zhang

I don't need to keep my misanthropy in check. It runs wild. ~ Amy Zhang

On the first day of fifth grade, Liz was sitting on the swing beside Liam's at recess. Falling and flying, her hair fanned out behind her and her eyes were closed, and that was what had caught his attention, her closed eyes. She looked a little bit silly and very much alive, and Liam couldn't stop watching.

Liz, on her part, was aware that the boy beside her was watching, but she loved swinging too much to care what he thought. She loved the wind hitting her face and the brief moment of suspension at the top of the arc and the falling sensation that was magnified by the darkness of her eyelids. She imagined that she was a bird, an angel, a wayward star.

At the height of the arc, she let go. And she flew.

Liam watched with his mouth hanging wide open, expecting her to crumple on the asphalt and die tragically before his eyes.

She didn't, and when she walked away, Liam's heart followed. ~ Amy Zhang

He embraced his weirdness, and it was nice. ~ Amy Zhang

There are things worth dying for. ~ Amy Zhang

There are no wicked queens or vengeful sorcerers, but that doesn't mean that there aren't bad people. There are. There are some truly, truly shitty people out there. ~ Amy Zhang

And suddenly it's very clear to her that every action is an interaction, and everything she has ever done has led to something else, and to another something else, and all of that is ending here, at the bottom of the hill by Highway 34, and she is dying. ~ Amy Zhang

I put my hand in my pocket and squeeze my rocks and wonder if there is a word for the marks you get on your palm when you squeeze something so hard that the skin is on the verge of ripping. ~ Amy Zhang

They never talked about it, but they both knew what they feared. More than anything, they feared they wouldn't have each other someday. ~ Amy Zhang

I like water, though. I like the way it waits, and when you touch it, it both moves away and clings to your finger. I like the way it rises, like memory, or fear. ~ Amy Zhang

They were catalysts, the fingers that tipped the first domino. They started things that grew into nothing things that were much greater than themselves. A touch, a nudge in the wrong direction, and everyone fell down. ~ Amy Zhang

Well, hello, darling with the ocean eyes,
How many secrets keep us apart?
A sea of poems, a field of sighs,
Can I cross and return to the start? ~ Amy Zhang

He is very much in love with Liz Emerson,and it seems that she will never know. ~ Amy Zhang

She would be an object in motion that would stay in motion, even if it meant flattening everything in her path. ~ Amy Zhang

It was the colors that had initially attracted her, the vibrant blue of the Bunsen flame and the dusty red of copper and the deep violet of permanganate. It was the logic of balanced equations, the certainty that when element A mixed with element B, compound C would appear. It was like predicting the future; it was like magic. Most of all, it was being: of having to be so careful with the hydrochloric acid, of accidentally burning herself while lighting a match, of discovering. ~ Amy Zhang

Please," he whispers. "remember the sky. ~ Amy Zhang

He leans back in his chair and just looks at it all, the final diary of a dying girl. ~ Amy Zhang

Her mother's words echoed through her head: love you. People threw them around so easily, as if they were nothing, as if they meant nothing. ~ Amy Zhang

I used to think that destiny was fluid, because isn't that the point of every Disney movie and Saturday-morning cartoon? You make your own choices. You decide how life goes. I always thought that your fate line would change if something happened, bam, something goes wrong and the line on your palm goes all wonky to reflect that. Nope. It still looks fine. ~ Amy Zhang

How many times can a person explode? ~ Amy Zhang

Elizabeth Michelle Emerson," she whispers, stroking Liz's hair away from her face. She remembers being just two floors above here, holding Liz when she was still just a small bundle of pink in her arms. She remembers shifting Liz from one arm to the other so that she and her husband could sign the birth certificate beneath the name that they had chosen so carefully. Through her tears, she says softly, "Please don't make me write it on a tombstone, ~ Amy Zhang

She wished to be happy, and fell asleep with an entire sky above her. ~ Amy Zhang

I am thinking about the way we love each other. I am thinking about our soul, one atom and bruised all over now that I have dragged it behind me with my muddy hands. ~ Amy Zhang

You have to understand yourself before you can understand anything else. ~ Amy Zhang

I wish second chances were real. ~ Amy Zhang

She would die, and maybe everyone would forget that she had ever lived. ~ Amy Zhang

No one sees how her hands shake as she closes the magazine, lays it down gingerly as though afraid that her trembling will start an earth quake, and make the entire world crumble. ~ Amy Zhang

Forgetting is the easy part. This should be unsurprising, but it surprises me. Forgetting was easy. Remembering is endless and it hurts, endlessly. ~ Amy Zhang

I'm sitting here and I can still feel distance between us, just folded and crumpled and tangled. Our soul has stretch marks. ~ Amy Zhang

Lesson learned: bad things happen to good people. ~ Amy Zhang

Miracles do not belong to religions. Miracles belong to the desperate, which is why every religion, every philosophy, and most importantly, every fairy tale always has a moment of salvation, a eureka, an enlightenment. We are all chasing and chasing tails, running and running in circles, until a wolf or the witch or the stepmother jumps out and trips us, and we fall flat, splat, and we lie bare and bleeding and breathless and finally, finally look and see whatever it is---salvation or eureka or enlightenment or a hunter or prince or a glass slipper---in front of us. And that's what miracles are. Not solutions, but catalysts. Not answers, but chances. ~ Amy Zhang

Newton's laws of physics can rarely be applied to the real world. There is more to life than cause and effect. Things just aren't that simple ~ Amy Zhang

There had been silent tears and ones that barely leaked out. There were tears that heaved from her in great sobs. They all slipped through my fingers when I tried to catch them, and they fell around her in oceans. ~ Amy Zhang

Gravity is our playmate, momentum is our friend. We are blurs of motion. We are racing, and we are both winning, because we do not race each other. We race the world, and as fast as it rotates, as fast as it revolves, we are faster. ~ Amy Zhang

Sometimes they got lost. Sometimes they didn't want to be found. But it was a big forest and a bigger world, and whenever they went anywhere without each other, they left trails of stones that led all the way back to each other.

Because they loved each other with the biggest love of all. ~ Amy Zhang

it's never too late to change. Every day is a blank page, and your story has yet to be written. ~ Amy Zhang

I remember and then I don't.
I forget and then it all comes rushing back. ~ Amy Zhang

The world is so big and beautiful and infinite that we don't need to pretend ~ Amy Zhang

I watched her carve her mistakes in stone, and they arranged themselves around her. They became a maze with walls that reached the sky. Because she learned from so few of them, she was lost. Because she didn't have faith in anything, she didn't try to find a way out. I watched her try to face her fears alone, too proud to ask for help, too stubborn to admit she was afraid, too small to fight them, too tired to fly away. ~ Amy Zhang

Drowned out by the sound of his heart throwing itself against his ribcage. ~ Amy Zhang

When I crash, I will be inertia mass acceleration force gravity opposite equal everything. I will be nothing. ~ Amy Zhang

Liz was afraid of silence, and she kept her fears clenched so tightly in her fists that they grew and grew and swallowed her whole. ~ Amy Zhang

Liz Emerson held so much darkness within her that closing her eyes didn't make much a difference at all. ~ Amy Zhang

She had been desperate to feel something, anything. She needed a window, because she had broken her heart throwing it at locked doors. ~ Amy Zhang

Like I said, the world isn't always fair, and sometimes we have to help it along. ~ Amy Zhang

She cannot bear to catch fireflies in jars. She hates zoos. She will not let her father teach her about constellations, because she will not trap the stars. She lives in a world made entirely of sky. It is inconceivable that one day, her world will grow so dark and distant that when she raises her head, she will not be able to find it. ~ Amy Zhang

I could understand a world where she was in Nepal, though I couldn't figure out why she didn't text me back. I could understand a world where she was distant but not lost. I couldn't understand a world without her. ~ Amy Zhang

Miracles do not belong to fairy tales. Miracles belong to the desperate, because only the desperate believe in bullshit. ~ Amy Zhang

Liz looked back and counted the bodies, all those lives she had ruined simply by existing. So she chose to stop existing. ~ Amy Zhang

subsequently sentenced to five minutes on the Wall. ~ Amy Zhang

In that moment, Liz Emerson felt that she was forever looking up at people who were much, much better than she could ever be, and the only thing she was really good at was pulling them down to her level. ~ Amy Zhang

We knew each other to our fingertips. No, that's not right. We only knew each other in our fingertips, and that was nothing at all, and for a while that was okay. We could have been a love story, a fairy tale, an indie film about high school and selective insanity featuring a boy of angel parts and a girl made of dreaming. We could have been all the best things: bracelets sliding down arms while shots slid down throats, laughter and crashing music in dark and flashing rooms, kisses that started hesitant but didn't stay that way. ~ Amy Zhang

Life is messy and the universe has an awful lot of people to keep track of. Sometimes things get screwed up. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes good things happen to bad people.
That isn't fair.
Bad things should happen to bad people.
And they will. They will. ~ Amy Zhang

Micah lives like an apology. He blushes when he breathes because he's taking someone else's air. It's like all Micah wants is to disappear, and he thinks if he's quiet enough, if he keeps his eyes on the ground and barely breathes and treads lightly, people will forget he exists. ~ Amy Zhang

Whatever you do, whatever you redo, it all ends up here. Some things are just unavoidable. No matter how hard you try, the things meant to go to shit still go to shit. Terrible things happen, Micah, and you can't stop them. You just can't."

So you just do more terrible things. ~ Amy Zhang

He found that there were still beautiful things in the world, and nothing could ever change that. ~ Amy Zhang

It was quiet, deeply so, but it was the kind of quiet that lived and moved and changed, filled to the brim with crickets and wings and the sounds of late summer. ~ Amy Zhang

She wanted to go back. She wanted to be a little girl again, the one who thought getting high meant being pushed on the swing and pain was falling off her bike. ~ Amy Zhang

We wonder what lies beyond.
One day, she will grow up and imagine death as an angel that will lend her wings, so she can find out.
Death, unfortunately, is not in the business of lending wings. ~ Amy Zhang

She was tired. Gravity pulled at her more aggressively than usual. When she closed her eyes, she could feel it, dragging her deeper, deeper. I would have pulled her back. I would have saved her from falling, but she didn't see my hand. ~ Amy Zhang

I remember threading my fingers through his and pressing our life lines together ~ Amy Zhang

Only my people can receive my glory and dwell with me in the holy city. Only those who are holy can be my people, and they may inherit eternal life. Only those who obey my commands can be holy, and they may be watched over by me. Only those who understand my word can obey my commands, and they may have the splendor of wisdom. ~ Zhang Yun

Everyone is walking around with these self doubts, so there's something reassuring about that. And self-doubt in one or a few areas doesn't mean that you have generally low self-esteem. And you have the power to get yourself out of feeling that way. ~ Amy Cuddy

You will live in me always. Your words, your heart, your soul are all part of me. My heart is full of your memories. Thank you for the gift of your life. I will never forget you. ~ Amy Eldon

It's never overreacting to ask for what you want and need. ~ Amy Poehler

Dying in your arms sounds like bliss to me. ~ Amy A. Bartol

Over-the-knee socks remind me of the 1920s, silent films, and the stars of the era who wore the rolled-down stockings. They sort of referenced that in 'Cabaret,' when Liza Minnelli was singing 'Mein Herr,' and I love the way she looks in that scene. ~ Amy Heckerling

I remember," she said. "Lawrence Malley. He was an expert in security systems."
"Aka Lightfinger Larry." Dan grinned. "He was also wanted in five states."
"Great," Amy groaned. "I sent you to a tutorial with a crook."
"It got us in here, didn't it?"
"I guess I'm grateful to him, then," Amy said doubtfully.
"Don't be," Dan said. "The first lock I opened was on your diary. Don't worry, I read two pages and fell asleep. ~ Jude Watson

Amy is black. I stare at her in surprise for a minute before I climb in the car. ~ Colleen Hoover

Shaquille and I kind of joke we were the Christopher Columbus of social media. We're kind of out on a boat by ourselves going through these uncharted waters. But it's become more understood, embraced and accepted, and now it's pretty much expected by fans for athletes, leagues and teams to be there. ~ Amy Jo Martin

Before I had satellite radio installed in my car, I thought I would lose my mind listening to commercials and having limited choices on the dial. Your car is your home in L.A., so you've got to have some good stuff to listen to. ~ Amy Landecker

Any time you talk to anyone about something that they love, they're, like, their most beautiful. It's a cool gift to get to talk to people about what they love. ~ Amy Poehler

My best friend recently told me that I was the most passionate person she's ever known. I don't know if that was a compliment or an insult, honestly. ~ Amy Lee

I tackle guys three times your size for a living. I can handle whatever you throw at me. ~ Amy Andrews

We're Bonnie and Clyde! Wanted and unwanted. Caged and cornered. We're lost and we're alone. We're a big, tangled mess. We're a shot in the dark. We're two people who have nowhere else, no one else, and yet, suddenly that feels like enough for me! I'm sorry if it's not enough for you. ~ Amy Harmon

I know that I need to be completely immersed in it for the rest of my life. And that's probably enough for me to make it. ~ Amy Goldwasser

Hey Lady I don't want to fuck you husband . ~ Amy Poehler

He had a particular facination with the I Ching, that art of tossing three coins three times and divining a pattern out of heads and tails. Pete would begin with questions:
What determined the pattern? Was it random? Was it a higher power? Was is mathematical? Wasn't poker based on mathematical probability and not just luck? Did that mean randomness was actually mathematical? And if the I Ching was governed by mathematics, hey, wouldn't that mean the I Ching was actually predictable, a prescribed answer? And if it was prescribed, did that mean that your life followed the I Ching, like some sort of equation? Or did the I Ching simply capture correctly what had already been determined as the next series of events in your life? ~ Amy Tan

I was lying on my bed, contemplating Mason's death when Amy strolled into our cabin.
"Hey, what are you doing?"
"Wondering what would cause more damage, a paint-brush in the eye or a putty knife shoved up someone's nostril," I answered, scowling at the ceiling. ~ Tiffany King

Words managed to find me, whether I wanted to hear them or not. Kjell ~ Amy Harmon

Perspective is the enemy of long-lost love. ~ Amy Dickinson

One person cannot make up for the evils of a whole system and it is the system that is to blame - the system of narrowness and of pride, and of exclusiveness, and of no one doing anything for another, unless there is something to be gained in return. ~ Amy Dillwyn

I walked into Aquagrill and began my experience of trying to help a new restaurant get off the ground. The owners were talented and lovely, but I felt like an imposter in all of our pre-opening meetings. I wanted to earn a living as an actor, and I wanted to pay off my student loans and maybe get some health insurance. ~ Amy Poehler

Jenny Marzen made millions of dollars, as opposed to nickels, by writing novels that got seriously reviewed while selling big. Amy had skimmed her first one, a mildly clever thing about a philosophy professor who discovers her husband is cheating on her with one of her grad students, and who, while feigning ignorance of the affair, drives the girl mad with increasingly brutal critiques and research tasks, at one point banishing her to Beirut, first to learn fluent Arabic and then to read Avicenna's Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb, housed in the American University. This was, Amy thought, a showoffy detail that hinted at Marzen's impressive erudition but was probably arrived at within five Googling minutes. ~ Jincy Willett

Moving out to L.A. for me was a leap of faith. I was very secure in my dinner theater world; I loved it, and I was just like, 'I think there's something else out there for me and I just have to go for it.' ~ Amy Adams