Gabrielle Zevin Quotes

It was funny how dad was more honest in a book that anyone in the world could pick up and read than he could be talking to me. Or maybe it was sad. One or the other. Sometimes it's hard to tell. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Daddy once said, If you don't know what you believe, Annie, you'll be a lost soul. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Anticipating the worst doesn't provide insurance from the worst happening ~ Gabrielle Zevin

A good marriage is, at least, one part conspiracy. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I've made room for you, she said. if you want it, there's room. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Showing up is what counts. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

In my opinion, wounds are like water boiled
they heal best left unwatched. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

A life isn't measured in hours or minutes. Its the quality not the length. All things considered I've been luckier than most. Almost sixteen years on Earth, and I've already had eight good ones here. I expect to have eight more before all's good said and done. Nearly thirty-two years total, and that's not too shabby ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Elmo, a character A.J. has always despised because he seems too needy. "Elmo! ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Let's stay young forever. Young, stupid, and pretty. Sounds like a plan, don't you think? ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Every word the right one and exactly where it should be. That's basically the highest compliment I can give. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

A.J. feels for the engagement ring in his pocket. Is this the moment? No, too Jumbotron. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

You tell a kid he doesn't like to read, and he'll believe you ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Rosie crosses her arm. "That's one of those things you say to sound smart, right?" she says. "But, really, you're trying to make someone else feel stupid. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

She takes out her phone and snaps a picture. "I like to take pictures of my drinks."
"They're like family," A.J. says.
"They're better than family. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

There's a strange sort of quiet when you're dying. It's as if you're in a glass room, and the walls keep getting thicker and thicker. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Daddy always said that an option that you know to have a bad outcome is only a fool's option, i.e., not an option at all. And I liked to think that Daddy hadn't raised a fool. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Stop saying that! You sound absurd, and I don't even think you mean it. Besides, I'd never marry you," I told him. "I'm sixteen, and you're a slut, and you can't stop saying preposterous things!"
"True," he admitted. He kissed me on the lips and then I closed the door. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

But you, you can never do anything hard. And I let you be that way. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Maya has chosen to be ring bearer because the job has more responsibility than flower girl. "If you lose a flower, you get another flower," Maya reasons. "If you lose the ring, everyone is sad forever. The ring bearer has much more power."
"You sound like Gollum," A.J. says.
"Who's Gollum?" Maya wants to know.
"Someone very nerdy that your father likes," Amelia says. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

My heart was a little bit broken, but I still had to go to school. I buttoned my dress shirt over it and my winter coat, too. I hoped it didn't show too much. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn't mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Sometimes books don't find us until the right time. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

On some level, I think we want our reading self to represent our best self. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Theo nodded slowly. "You love Balanchine chocolate like I love cacao."
"I wouldn't say love, Theo."
"No, you speak the truth. Love isn't right. It isn't right for me either. Sometimes I hate cacao." Theo looked at me. "You don't love Balanchine chocolate. You are Balanchine chocolate. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I'm meant to love you, no matter how you act, no matter what you do? I couldn't respect myself if I felt that way. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

True conviction is believing something to be right even after it becomes disadvantageous to you. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

It would be so easy, Ismay thinks. You walk out. You swim for a while. You swim too far. You don't try to swim back. Your lungs fill up. It hurts for a bit, but then it's over. Nothing ever hurts again, and your conscience is clear. You don't leave a mess. Maybe your body washes up some day. Maybe it doesn't. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I shouldn't have done that, I said.
That was when I kissed him again.
May God forgive me for this and all these things I've done. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Maybe if I'd been braver in that moment, I would have cried. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

On Earth, Liz was constantly occupied with studying and finding a college and a career and all those other things that the adults in her life deemed terribly important. Since she had died, everything she was doing on Earth had seemed entirely meaningless. From Liz's point of view, the question of what her life would be was now definitively answered. The story of her life is short and pointless: There once was a girl who got hit by a car and died. The end. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

On, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human life is a beautiful mess. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

When I read a book, I want you to be reading it at the same time. I want to know what would Amelia think of it. I want you to be mine. I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart, Amy. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Take heart, Maya. As a bookseller, I assure you that prizewinning can be somewhat important for sales but rarely matters much in terms of quality. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

She is seventy, and she believes you try new things or you may as well die. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

"I accept your condemnation," I said. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I'm allergic to sad memories. It's the worst. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

You wouldn't be abandoning me if you stopped to get a Band-Aid, you know. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

If your last words are somehow meant to encapsulate your entire existence, Liz finds um strangely appropriate. Um means nothing. Um is what you say while you're thinking of what you'll really say. Um suggests someone interrupted before they'd begun. Um is a fifteen-year-old girl who gets hit by a taxicab in front of a mall on the way to help pick out a prom dress for a prom she isn't even going to, for God's sake. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Violence should not always beget more violence. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

When dad says he's going to church, he actually means he's going to a library or a bookstore. - Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

The baby, a girl, is born at 6:24 a.m.
She weighs six pounds, ten ounces.
The mother takes the baby in her arms and asks her, "Who are you, my little one?"
And in response, this baby, who is Liz and not Liz at the same time, laughs. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

But jackets are the redheaded stepchildren of book publishing. We blame them for everything. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

In a way, publishing in 2005 was similar to publishing in 1950. Nobody kept blogs; that was still optional. I didn't even have a website then. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Everything worth loving in this world is difficult. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I don't think I would have minded you being the keeper of my secrets. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

She could remember the sensation of flying through the air, which seemed to last an eternity. She could remember feeling reckless, happy, and doomed, all at the same time. She could remember thinking, I am above gravity. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

It's a tragic fact to die in an accident ~ Gabrielle Zevin

There ain't nobody in the world like book people. It's a business of gentlemen and gentlewomen. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Tell me something from Spanish literature," Schiele said.
"I'll give you a line from my favorite novel. 'Los seres humanos no nacen para siempre el dia en que sus madres los alumbran, sino que la vida los obliga a parirse a si mismos una y otra vez.'"
("Humans are not born forever on the day their mothers have them; life necessitates giving birth to themselves over and over again.") ~ Gabrielle Zevin

We aren't the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I'm like a unicorn; I'm a midlist writer who hasn't done anything else but write. But because I wasn't amazingly famous, I didn't become Stephanie Meyer, or even a huge literary name like a Jonathan Franzen or a Joshua Ferris. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

A.J. several Google searches to determine bathing protocol: appropriate temperature bath water two-year-old; can a two-year-old use grown-up shampoo?; how does a father go about cleaning a two-year-old girl's private parts without being a pervert?; how high to fill tub - toddler; how to prevent a two-year-old from accidentally drowning in tub; general rules for bath safety, and so on. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Galina: You want to control the world and everyone in it, but you can't. Let whatever this is - and it's likely nothing - play out ...
Anya: So we do nothing?
Galina: Sometimes that's the only thing to do. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

It was such a sweet, sad song with such sweet, sad lyrics. Old-fashioned a little, but also timeless. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

It is lucky, she thinks, that we don't feel all the love inside us every moment. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

He's in the military, serving overseas in Afghanistan."
"Well done. You're marrying an American hero," A.J. says.
"I guess I am."
"I hate those guys," he says. "They make me feel totally inadequate. Tell me something shitty about him so that I feel better. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Anya: The more I think about dancing, the more I don't get it
Scarlet: Sop thinking. That's the key. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Read these and know my heart. We are not quite novels. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

When the baby sees Ismay, she bawls. "She must miss her mother," Ismay says. "Maybe I remind her of her mother?" A.J. nods, though he thinks the real cause is that his sister-in-law frightens the baby. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

He smelled like smoke and laundered sheets left to dry in the sun ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I can't keep a baby," A.J. says firmly. "I haven't slept in two nights. She's a terrorist! She wakes up at, like, insane times. Three forty-five in the morning seems to be when her day begins. I live alone. I'm poor. You can't raise a baby on books alone. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Intimacy doesn't have all that much to do with backseats of cars. Real intimacy is brushing your teeth together. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Saying you're through with romance is like saying you're done with living, Betty. Life is better with a little romance, you know. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

He writes a paragraph a day. A paragraph for Maya. It isn't much, but it's what he has left to give. He ~ Gabrielle Zevin

How long will I be in here?" I asked.
"Varies," said the guard as he closed the door and locked me in. "Usually until Mrs. Cobrawick thinks you learned your lesson. I hate this job. Try not to lose your mind, girl."
Those were the last words spoken to me for a very long time.
The guard had given me good advice, which turned out to be nearly impossible to follow. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

A.J. decides to call Lambiase. He suggests frozen shrimp from Costco, which A.J. now recognizes as Lambiase's default party-throwing suggestion. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

It had not been a lonely childhood, though many of her intimates had been somewhat less than real. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

There's a pleasure to loving someone even when you know there's no chance in them loving you back. The pain I felt let me know I was still alive. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Theo looked at me with his smoldering Jesus eyes, and the Catholic schoolgirl in me crossed her legs. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I wish I could tell you to always follow your heart, but I think it is bad advice. You have a heart, yes, it is true, but also a brain and also a soul. I've come to believe that we love with our brains as much as our hearts. Real Love is not just instinct, but intent ... From year to year, you may not always be the same Jane. This is perfectly normal. A Jane is many Janes in a lifetime. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

You can't avoid orphan stories, child. Every story is an orphan story. We are all orphaned sooner or later. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Infinite Jest is an endurance contest. You manage to get through it and you have no choice but to say you like it. Otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that you just wasted weeks of your life, ~ Gabrielle Zevin

No substance," A.J. mutters. "They leave you hungry. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I've been a police officer for twenty years now and I'll tell you, pretty much every bad thing is life is a result of bad timing, and every good thing is the result of good timing. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

The man who has no memory makes one out of paper. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

In the fifteen or so years he has known her, A.J. thinks Ismay has aged like an actress should: from Juliet to Ophelia to Gertrude to Hecate. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

My brain said no.

But my heart! ~ Gabrielle Zevin

The more I believe that this is what the point of it all is. To connect, my dear little nerd. Only connect. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

loathe collectible books anyway. People getting all moony over particular paper carcasses. It's the ideas that matter, man. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

When small wounds are left untreated, they can fest and become far more serious injuries. -Mr. Kipling ~ Gabrielle Zevin

And when she dreams, she dreams of a girl who was lost at sea but one day found the shore. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

It's when you don't need something that you tend to lose it. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Love stories are written in millimeters and milliseconds with a fast, dull pencil whose marks you can barely see, they are written in miles and eons with a chisel on the side of a mountiantop ~ Gabrielle Zevin

And I was crying for gravity. It had sent me down the stairs, and I'd thought that meant something, but maybe it was just the direction that all things tend to flow. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

For the record, everything new is not worse than everything old. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I hadn't ever felt any particular calling to be a novelist, and I clearly remember telling a friend of mine about six months before I started work on 'Elsewhere' that I would never write a novel. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Did you have a ship?" Maya asks. "Yes. It had books on it, and it really was more of a research vessel. We studied a lot." "You're ruining this story." "It's a fact, Maya. There are murdering kinds of pirates and researching kinds of pirates, and your daddy was the latter. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

My dad always says to listen for the pauses when you want to know if someone's hiding something. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Does it count for anything that I just told you I love you?" Gable asked.
I considered this briefly before deciding that it didn't. "Not really. Not when I know you don't mean it. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I told him I didn't want to have sex until I got married. Without missing a beat, he nodded and said, So let's get married. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

For the record, I have long suspected that my favorite book is actually 'Charlotte's Web.' ~ Gabrielle Zevin

I did learn something about insanity while I was down there. People go crazy, not because they are crazy, but because it's the best available option at the time. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Though he can't remember how he got there or having taken off his clothes, A.J. wakes in bed wearing only his underwear. He remembers that Harvey Rhodes is dead; he remembers being an asshole to the comely Knightley Press rep; he remembers throwing the vindaloo across the room; he remembers the first glass of wine and the toast to Tamerlane. After that, oblivion. From his point of view, the evening had been a triumph. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

People, you'll find, aren't usually all good or bad. Sometimes they're just a little bit good and a whole lot bad. And sometimes they're mostly good with a dash of bad. And most of us, well, we fall in the middle somewhere. ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Novels certainly have their charms, but the most elegant creation in the prose universe is a short story. ~ Gabrielle Zevin