Bill Konigsberg Quotes

I was thinking about how snakes shed their skin every year, and how awesome it would be if people did that too. In lots of ways, that's what I was trying to do. As ~ Bill Konigsberg

Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where no one thought being gay was even something to ride someone about? ~ Bill Konigsberg

I tried to imagine myself part of a pack of guys who picked up local public school girls on weekends. It was hard to envision, but I was definitely willing to try. Not the pickup part. Just the being in a posse part. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Just smile, Max. The paint cannot be stronger than a smile. But it is. ~ Bill Konigsberg

We were dancers and drummers and standers and jugglers, and there was nothing anyone needed to accept or tolerate. We celebrated. ~ Bill Konigsberg

You would not believe his imitation of Coach Donnelly," Ben said.
I laughed, imagining.
"Run as fast as you can," he said, trying to sound like what Bryce probably sounded like imitating Donnelly, but failing. "Like the French did in the Civil War, when they eluded the Greeks on their way from Charleston to Nashville."
"We knew the only way to attack the axis of evil was by storming the beaches at Normandy," I said back. ~ Bill Konigsberg

It's hard to explain," she says. "I would say that I'm more spiritual than religious at this point." "What does that even mean?" I stare upward at the gleaming stars. "To me, religion is the Walmart of spirituality. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Some things you remember, and some you forget. Of the things you remember, you have to wonder what's real and what's translated into a memory from a story you heard. ~ Bill Konigsberg

I'd never been part of a group like that, so it was interesting, like a National Geographic special on wolves that I might watch with my dad.
And I was part of the pack. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Actually, tolerance and acceptance are different. To tolerate seems to mean that there is something negative to tolerate, doesn't it? ~ Bill Konigsberg

This is where we come," he said.
Albie and I look at each other. "We?"
"Me and, you know."
Albie's eyes got wide. "I really don't think I want to know about this."
I surprised myself. "I do," I said. I guess I was tired of having to withhold the truth from Toby. Other than Ben, he and Albie we're easily my best friends at Natick.
Toby looked a little surprised, like he'd just assumed we wouldn't want to hear the details.
"You do?"
"Yeah."
He looked around to make sure we were alone. We definitely were. No one came back here to my knowledge. Also it was cold. Like twenty degrees. Only three idiots would be in the woods in the winter, it seemed to me.
"Robinson" he said.
"Gorilla Butt," I said, nodding. "I know."
"You know?"
"Yup."
Toby crossed his arms an then deflated into a fake pout. "You're stealing my scene, bitch. Scene stealer."
"Sorry," I said. "So you and Gorilla Butt. Wow."
He flipped me off. "He hates that," Toby said. "But, yeah. It's hairy."
"Oh, look, almost anything else in the universe," Albie said, heading back to campus and leaving us in the clearing.
"He's such a prude," Toby said rolling his eyes. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Guilt is about something you do. Shame is about who you are. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Men in India hold hands walking down the street," Ben said, his voice right up against my ear.
"Really?"
"Yeah. It's just part of their culture. They don't, you know, do things sexually. They just hold hands. Here, that would be, like, weird."
"Yeah. We Americans are so uptight," I said. ~ Bill Konigsberg

I could see he didn't understand that knowing a person is about more than knowing whom they fantasize about. That's the small stuff, actually. Not the big stuff. The big stuff is lying next to a guy on the floor and locking eyes and having deep conversations about philosophy. The big stuff is letting a friend know your hopes and your fears and not having to make a joke about it. That's what matters. ~ Bill Konigsberg

I had the strong sensation that I'd underestimated my parents and their devotion to me. Of course they'd be on my side, whether they understood or not. That was just the kind of parents they were. ~ Bill Konigsberg

I could see the combinations and permutations flutter through their minds. This was Boulder. It could easily be two moms. Two dads. A dad, a mom, and an orangutan. Three Amish hipsters and a transgendered Aboriginal mermaid. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Oh, I'm so glad. You love a boy," my mom said. "You're still our Rafe, underneath this hideous straight disguise ... . ~ Bill Konigsberg

That was the thing about Ben. He could get away with saying shit like that. I totally couldn't. I wasn't big or masculine enough. In my mind, anyway. But Ben could get all agape on your ass, and you'd just sit there like, huh. Agape. Interesting. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Do you know how you get the urge to clean your room, and it's no big deal? But when your mom tells you that you have to clean your room, you don't want to? That's me, anyway. ~ Bill Konigsberg

And during, I realized that the labels didn't matter, because when two people feel that sort of pull toward each other, it just works, and the only label that mattered was that I was in love. Totally, fully, ecstatically. ~ Bill Konigsberg

The world will make you vulnerable. If you're acting like you're not, that's what you're doing. Acting ~ Bill Konigsberg

I think anyone who stops at a gas station at night is up to no good. I think that if cops want to stop drunk driving, they should hide out in the bushes at the Taco Bell drive-through. I think if you're a guy and you pull down your pants and the girl you're with starts texting, you have a small penis. ~ Bill Konigsberg

I knew that she was right, obviously. But part of me didn't want to. I wanted to have someone to call my own so badly that I just couldn't let it go. ~ Bill Konigsberg

I know about urinal etiquette. For one thing, you don't say anything beyond "What's up" to another guy while peeing. It's common courtesy. ~ Bill Konigsberg

We hugged, and my dad cried a little. I don't have a macho-type dad, who hunts and fishes and collects guns. He's sensitive and caring. He drives me crazy most of the time, but I do admire that he's not afraid to show his "feminine side. ~ Bill Konigsberg

The finite, to me, was a thing of beauty. There was a start and an end. Someday we'd all be history, and if I was going to be history then, it meant I existed now.

Sometimes I wasn't so sure of that. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Selflessness involves giving up your self. You become a martyr. Like the Hindu kamikaze warriors. These Japanese Hindus chose to give up their lives, and they were killed if they didn't. Imagine what their families felt. One day you have a father, and next, you're watching him fly a plane into a ship on Pearl Harbor on television. Those kids didn't do anything wrong. They just lived in an evil country. The axis of evil. That sort of evil is beyond anything you or I will experience in our lifetimes. So be glad. Be glad we live in the US of A. Be glad we get to choose, with our freedoms. Now get out there and fight! ~ Bill Konigsberg

Then Albie reached into his pocket and pulled out one shiny Jonathan apple.
"Hungry?" he asked us.
"How'd you do that?" I asked, wondering when he'd had time to pocket an apple.
"Oh, I have four of them," he said, patting his megalarge pockets. "Next time you won't laugh when I tell you to watch Survival Planet. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Mom always says all sorts of shit goes down in the world, and it's up to me to decide how to take it. The one way you're sure to be unhappy is to frown your way through life, she says, and she's right. Always look for the bright, vibrant color through the darkness. It's always there, but sometimes hard to see. ~ Bill Konigsberg

As I said, it wasn't even a gay thing. But it made me think how hard some kids have it with their families. Me, I could show up as Lady GaGa dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, and Mom would be like, "How was your day, honey?" That's just not the case for most kids. ~ Bill Konigsberg

You can be anything you want, but when you go against who you are inside, it doesn't feel good. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Yes, my name is Seamus - pronounced SHAY-mus - Rafael Goldberg. Try being five with that name. ~ Bill Konigsberg

With my white friends, I'm always half Mexican. They never say I'm half Irish. Never say I'm half white. Like I'm tainted halfway from the standard. It's like when I was a kid and I thought vanilla ice cream meant no flavor, like it was the base of all of the flavors. But vanilla is a bean. Like chocolate is a bean. Like cinnamon is a root. All roots and beans. All flavors. There is no base. No ice cream without a flavor. ~ Bill Konigsberg

When trust is violated, it's like you're left with an empty piggy bank. Building trust again, she said, is like putting big, fat nickels into the slot. They clank against the bottom, and that sound is jarring. But in order to heal, you have to keep adding those nickels, and soon enough, there will be coins to cushion the nickel's fall and make the sound not so grating. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Vulnerability is allowing people to see you exactly as you are, which is really hard, because when you're vulnerable you can get hurt. Most people armor up with bravado or something, but those people are missing out, because without allowing yourself to be vulnerable, it's tough to have, like, any emotional experience at all. Letting people in is really vulnerable, and most people - especially introverts - have trouble. ~ Bill Konigsberg

I don't know. I mean, it's not all beautifully harmonic, this world we find ourselves in. Clearly. There's shit music, and sometimes the melody goes away completely. There's silence and dissonant chord that cringe your ears. But the synchronicity of a perfectly created chorus? And the fact that you never know when one is coming? And that amazing feeling, the first time you hear a song and now it's going to be with you forever?
I have to think that's worth everything. ~ Bill Konigsberg

The Greeks were smarter than us, and they had different words for different kinds of love. There's storge, which is family love. That's not us. There's eros, which is sexual love. There's philia, which is brotherly love. And then there's the highest form. Agape." He pronounced it 'aga-pay'. "Thats transcendental love, like when you place the other person above yourself. ~ Bill Konigsberg

We were at a swap meet in Cochituate last year, and there was this Boy Scout troop with a sign that read, 'Help Boy Scouts, Blind Kids.' Toby saw it, and he grabbed my shirt collar and pulled me away. I asked what was wrong, and with this scared expression on his face, he said, That's not right. They need to be stopped.'
I cracked up. 'Oh, no,' I said.
'When I asked him why helping blind kids and Boy Scouts was bad, Toby's whole face went white. He said, 'Forget it. Let's go.' But I had to know what the hell he was talking about, so I made him walk back over with me. We looked at the sign together, and finally he mumbled, 'I didn't see the comma. ~ Bill Konigsberg

More and more these days, I'm realizing that I might be crazy, but I'm loved too. I don't think I ever really knew that before, but I do now. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Having no room of my own to "take care of things" had begun to weigh on me. I wondered if storing up semen would have a health impact on me, positive or negative, like shinier hair or weight gain. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Acceptance is an affirmation that you're good enough. ~ Bill Konigsberg

He's a good looking guy, no question. All bluster and confidence while I'm whatever the opposite of that is. Apologies and embarrassment. Awkwardness and sorrow. First dead in a zombie apocalypse ~ Bill Konigsberg

Straight people don't have to think every time they talk, about whether they are coming out. We do. That might be hard, but that's also why we have to come out. if we don't, it's pretty much impossible to have a conversation about anything beyond the weather without lying. we really have no choice, do we ? ~ Bill Konigsberg

Well, I definitely believe that there are more things under the sun than we understand, and people are just people. Live and let live and all that."
- Benjamin Carver ~ Bill Konigsberg

Is this your boyfriend?" the first nun asked.
Clair Olivia looked me up and down. "No. This is my gay friend who decided he was straight and single-handedly wrecked havoc at an all-boys school in Massachusetts this fall. He's gay again and home for Christmas, so yay! ~ Bill Konigsberg

But I do think that when we choose the easy path, where people or society reward us for being what they want us to be, against who we really are, a kind of death occurs. To the soul. ~ Bill Konigsberg

I shivered. Careful, I told myself. You don't want to set yourself up for a fall. Be happy. Just not too happy. ~ Bill Konigsberg

To me, religion is the Walmart of spirituality ... I mean it's prepackaged. Lowest common denominator. People just have to follow the present motions and rituals and rules. The don't have to think about how the words reconcile with their own hearts. Their own experience. ~ Bill Konigsberg

All's I know is the following: Stamina means never having to give up. Stamina means your body never builds up lactic acid. We're going to get stamina this year, boys."

I made a mental note to look up the word stamina later. ~ Bill Konigsberg

Maybe in life, most of us feel inferior because we compare our dress rehearsals to [Janelle Monae's] final performance.
page 113 ~ Bill Konigsberg

And I think, What's the opposite of suffocation? ~ Bill Konigsberg

Remember what dad said. You're still alive-- you still fight. ~ Bill Willingham

In adversity man is saved by hope. ~ Bill Vaughan

I always say when you see that old black-and-white footage of the rocket on the launch pad and it falls over and explodes, that's because people had slide rules. Not having the decimal point is a real drawback. You want the decimal point, take it from me. ~ Bill Nye

At 49, I can say something I never would have said when I was a player, that I'm a better person because of my failures and disgraces. ~ Bill Walton

Women are not gonna put up with this kind of philandering, disrespectful behavior from their men. And there she [Hillary Clinton] is not only putting up with it, she is helping to destroy the women who come forward and say that Bill Clinton was having an affair with them in Arkansas. Why did she do this? ~ Rush Limbaugh

I found a 1992 New York Times article:Bill Clinton playing golf at a club that he played at all of his adult life as governor, that didn't allow black membership! I guarantee most Americans don't know that. ~ Sean Hannity

I have to follow my thoughts and mine for the gold. I have to dig it out. ~ Bill Cosby

Every day that goes by shortens our opportunity of booking it successfully. Whether it's members pulling their condos for personal use, whether it's a convention booking our conference center, whether it's golf packages being booked .. not hearing makes it that much harder to accommodate them. ~ Bill Vaughan

Over time, yes, countries will need to look at specific GMO products like they look at drugs today, where they don't approve them all. They look hard at the safety and the testing. And they make sure that the benefits far outweigh any of the downsides. ~ Bill Gates

Will this massive outcry [about pollution] continue long enough to have effective results? Will federal and state laws be enacted with effective enforcement clauses? Will people be concerned long enough to pay the bill through higher prices? Will towns tole lost jobs when it proves too costly to clean obsolete plants? ... I think so, but it sure won't be as easy as the present outcry and political oratory suggest. The answers to preserving a livable environment are not all simple, and some of the nuts now pushing simplistic cure-alls won't help bring about any lasting solutions. ~ Malcolm Forbes

If I read the small print, and I see that what I love to taste has pantonaponamene or fake smeinlioaimine, then I have to hide in my room when I eat it. I'm still gonna eat it, it's just gonna be 'Don't come in here!' ~ Bill Cosby

McCain was introduced at the convention last night by his wife
I won't say 'trophy wife'
but she did $300,000 worth of clothes and jewelry on, no matter to the party of the little guy. But Cindy McCain talked about how his character, honor and integrity made him the exact kind of married man she was looking to pick up at a bar. ~ Bill Maher

To be developed as a leader, failure must be allowed. Failure only helps us improve. ~ Bill Hybels

I liked comedy as a kid. When I was a kid, I'd go to sleep to, like, Bill Cosby albums every night. I'd listen to 'Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow ... Right!' and 'Wonderfulness,' which are two of his most famous albums. Then the next night, I'd flip them over, 'cause it was the old stackable turntable. ~ Stephen Colbert

Annie Jump Cannon (left) and Henrietta Leavitt, whose unsung labours and incisive deductions made Hubble's breakthroughs possible. ~ Bill Bryson

I will not lower the standard of the Bible to my level of experience. ~ Bill Johnson

Meeting a dragon is like falling in love. Even though you have never experienced it before, you will know when it has happened. ~ Bill Richardson

America offers the most amount of people the best opportunity to pursue happiness on the planet. That's why millions of illegal immigrants have poured into the country - most of them poor. They believe they have a shot to improve themselves economically. ~ Bill O'Reilly

Who's the president on the $100 bill? I don't know. I don't need to know because I don't use cash. I only use travelers checks. ~ Chelsea Handler

The best way to honor past accomplishments is by building on top of their breakthroughs. ~ Bill Johnson

It is essential that there should not only be a limit on campaign spending but it should be required to say where that money is spent and how it is spent. I think there has been more abuse in campaign spending, actually, than in campaign contributors. ~ Bill Scott

Quick as lightning Wild Bill pulled his revolver. The stranger fell dead, shot through the brain. ~ Buffalo Bill

Whoever wants to be a leader should educate himself before educating others. Before preaching to others he should first practice himself. Whoever educates himself and improves his own morals is superior to the man who tries to teach and train others. ~ Bill Vaughan

The queen also toyed with the idea of making the whole of St. James's Park private, and asked her prime minister, Robert Walpole, how much that would cost. "Only a crown, Madam," he replied with a thin smile. ~ Bill Bryson

Almost 30 years ago, I started seeking help from a counselor with a master's of social work in New York City, but we were never a good match. It was like being in a bad relationship, except the guy could actually bill my health insurance company for lousy dates. ~ Gina Barreca

Truth be told, nobody thought Dell's direct business model would work, at least back in the early 90s. As Bill Sharpe, head of the advertising agency that held the Dell Canada account from 1996 to 2006, told me, "I had a business partner in California who said, we have a client, Dell. It sells computers over the phone, and ships them to you. I said, 'There's no way, who's gonna buy a computer over the phone? They're complicated. ~ Heather Simmons

Church work ought to be at its core the work of loving people
like God loves them ~ Bill Hybels

It's probably healthier to find fame later in life. ~ Bill Nighy

New Rule: If you get to serve me a quarter-head of lettuce with dressing on it, which proves you could have made a salad but chose not to, then I get to pay you with an ATM receipt, which proves I have the money but you're not getting any. ~ Bill Maher

If your child gets asthma, the fossil fuel industry doesn't pay. Or if there's a natural disaster, the bill is paid by the taxpayer, not the fossil fuel company. ~ James Hansen

And this is what we called our childhoods. Little more than a dress rehearsal for adding our digits to the butcher's bill of war. ~ Stefan Molyneux

By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Almost all countries will be what we now call lower-middle income or richer. ~ Bill Gates

Frank," I said when I reached him late that afternoon, "do you remember in 1978 when you told me that Bill Walsh was the most impressive young coach you'd ever met?" "Did I?" he replied modestly. "And then you told me how impressed you were with that young attorney general in Arkansas, a guy named Bill Clinton?" "Well, I remember thinking highly of him," he responded, still trying to play it down. "Yes, you did," I reminded him. "So Frank, now that Walsh is headed to the Hall of Fame, and Clinton is headed to the White House, I'm calling you for only one reason. "Who do you like in the fifth tomorrow at Santa Anita? ~ Al Michaels

Listen more to the other players on the bandstand than you do to yourself. ~ Bill Kirchen

Eventually, mercifully, the waitress prised the spoons out of our hands and took the dessert stuff away, and we were able to stumble zombielike out into the night. ~ Bill Bryson

For the first 99.99999 per cent of our history as organisms, we were in the same ancestral line as chimpanzees. Virtually nothing is known about the prehistory of chimpanzees, but whatever they were, we were. Then, about seven million years ago, something major happened. A group of new beings emerged from the tropical forests of Africa and began to move about on the open savanna. These ~ Bill Bryson

The dollar bill is God in the States. All those Pelican people just believe in money and nothing else. ~ Jimi Hendrix

What a great day for football, all we need is some green grass and a ball. ~ Bill Shankly

Women priests. Great, great. Now there's priests of both sexes I don't listen to. ~ Bill Hicks

I do find London exciting. Much as I hate to agree with that tedious old git Samuel Johnson, and despite the pompous imbecility of his famous remark about when a man is tired of London he is tired of life ... I can't dispute it. ~ Bill Bryson

Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth's mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so ~ Bill Bryson

The deception of others is almost always rooted in the deception of ourselves. ~ Bill W.