Susan Beth Pfeffer Quotes

It was easier to agree than to tell the truth. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I never really thought about how when I look at the moon, it's the same moon as Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I have scars. No one alive today doesn't. But Alex's scars have to be much deeper than mine. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

There's a difference between charity and love," I said. "What we're offering is love. Love lasts forever. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

They say asteroids hit the moon pretty often, which is how the moon gets its crater, but this one is going to be the biggest asteroid ever to hit it and on a clear night you should be able to see the impact when it happens, maybe even with the naked eye but certainly with binoculars. They made it sound pretty dramatic, but I still don't think it's worth three homework assignments. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

What we were concerned about - what seems to be happening now - is volcanoes, ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

The only way you can be the best at something is to be the best you can be. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald's would still be open. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

We're all alive. We're all healthy. These are the good times. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

What about desserts?" I asked. "If the world comes to an end, I'm going to want cookies. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Carlos was probably somewhere warm, eating three meals a day, and sleeping in a real bed. That was the life ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Peter always brings death with him, along with spinach or nuts. He said he'd seen 20 cases of West Nile during the week and five deaths from it. He also said two people had died from food allergies.
"They're so hungry they're taking their chances eating foods they're seriously allergic to," he said. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I thought about how unlikely it was I would ever meet any guy,fall in love, get married, have babies. Especially since I was going to spend the rest of my life in the cellar, where, in the not too distant future, I'd turn into a toadstool. I hoped I'd be the poisonous variety. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

This past year I grew up to know hunger, grief, darkness, fear. I began to understand how lonely you can feel even when all you want is to be alone. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

If God wanted a world filled with saints, He never would have created adolescence. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

So what if I don't learn algebra?'
'Someday schools will be open again,' Mom said. 'Things will be normal. You need to do your work now for when that happens.'
'That's never going to happen,' Jon said. 'And even if schools do open up somewhere, they're not going to open up here. There aren't enough people left.'
'We don't know how many people are like us, holed up, making do until times get better.'
'I bet whoever they are, they aren't studying algebra,' Jon said. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

We can't accept that things will always be bad. If we do, we won't fight to make things better. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

We're all alive. We're all health. These are the good times. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Matt looked up kids from his high school class. Only three were listed as dead, but a bunch were listed as missing/presumed dead. As a test, he looked us up, but none of our names were on any of the lists. And that's how we know we're alive this Memorial Day. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Even in good times we didn't socialize with most of our neighbors. Mom says when she was growing up she did, but so many of the old families have moved out and new people moved in and neighborliness has changed. Now being a good neighbor means minding your own business. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

When I came back, I found Mom sobbing at the kitchen table ... Then I asked her what had happened.
'Nothing,'she said. 'I was thinking about that man ... I started thinking about ... if he and his wife and their other child are okay, and I don't know. It just got to me.'
'I know,' I said, because I did know. Sometimes it's safer to cry about people you don't know than to think about people you really love. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Nothing good happened to Romeo or Juliet. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I wonder if I cry whether my tears would be gray. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Maybe I'm wrong," Mom said. "Maybe the world really is coming to an end."
"Should I try Fox News?" I asked.
Mom shuddered. "We're not that desperate," she said. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

The last living boy in America drops into my bedroom only he wants to be a monk. I think that pretty much sums up my life. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Librarians! Librarians always know how to find out things. That was their job even before the Internet. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I have no privacy. But I feel so alone. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

What's the point of God making us human if He doesn't want us to act like we're human?' 'To see if we can rise above our natures,'Megan said. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I live about 60 miles northwest of New York City, and whenever there's news of a big snowstorm coming, everyone runs for the store. The perishable items are usually the first things to go, which doesn't make sense because they perish. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Woman must not depend on the protection of man, but must learn to protect herself ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

So we baked and sweated together. I like punching the dough. I told myself it was the moon and punched it senseless. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I thought about the earth then, really thought about it, the tsunami's and earthquakes and volcanoes, all the horrors I haven't witnessed but have changed my life, the lives of everyone I know, all the people I'll never know. I thought about life without the sun, the moon, stars, without flowers and warm days in May. I thought about a year ago and all the good things I'd taken for granted and all the unbearable things that had replaced those simple blessings. And even though I hated the thought of crying in from of Syl, tears streamed down my face. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

The Christmas after Mom & Dad split up, they both went crazy buying us presents. Matt, Jonny, and I were showered with gifts at home and at Dads apartment. I thought that was great. I was all in favor of my love being paid for with presents.
This year all I got was a diary and a secondhand watch.
Okay, I know this is corny, but this really is what Christmas is all about. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

This morning the electricity came on for a few minutes, and when it did, Jonny said, "Hey, it's a black-on." This is what passes for humor around here. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

A lot of my YA novels are about family problems. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

You have to fight for happiness. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

My existence is the only gift I have left to give, but it will have to do. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Back in the time when life was easy, the Internet would have told me what I needed to know. The great thing about the Internet was it didn't care why you were asking. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Life's sloppy ... You think you know how tomorrow's going to be, you've made your plans, everything is set in place, and then the unimaginable happens. Life catches you by surprise. It always does. But there's good mixed in with the bad. It's there. You just have to recognize it. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

The electricity came on for the second time today wile we were eating.
This may be a fool's paradise, but it's a paradise nonetheless. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I hate the moon. I hate tides and earthquakes and volcanoes. I hate a world where things that have absolutely nothing to do with me can destroy my life and the lives of people I love. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Even the rats are drowning,' Alex said.
Nah,' Kevin said. 'They've been taking swimming lessons at the Y. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I never really thought about when I look at the moon it's the same moon Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at. Not to mention all those zillions of people I've never heard of. All those Homo sapiens and Neanderthals looked at the very same moon as me. It waxed and waned in their sky too. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I wonder if I'll ever have to decide which is worse, life as we're living or no life at all. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I feel myself shriveling along with my world, getting smaller and harder. I'm turning into a rock, and in some ways that's good, because rocks last forever.
But if this is how I'm going to last forever, then I don't want to. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Don't stop believing in miracles. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

So we each had a piece of chocolate for dessert. I'd almost forgotten how much I love chocolate, how there's something about it that makes life a little more wonderful. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Well, no one says you can be happy about everything," I said. "I know I should be glad for you, Megan, but frankly I think you're crazy. And if Reverend Marshall is making you this way, I think he's evil. This life, this everyday existence, is the one gift we're given. To throw it away, to want to be dead, to me that's the sin. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I'm 16 years old. Let me get my learner's permit first. then I'll worry about lifetime commitments ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

He taught me to trust in tomorrow. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Bad times made for big secrets. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

He walked out of the office to find Kevin Daley standing there. 'I like your style,' Kevin said.
Thank you,' Alex said. 'I like it, too. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Which means every tomorrow is going to be worse than every today. Why feel sorry for myself today when tomorrow's bound to be worse? ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Just in case the world ends tomorrow," she said. "We might as well enjoy today. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

I wondered how many people had sung By the dawn's early light' yesterday and were dead today. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

The darkest sky is filled with stars, that the sun casts its warmth on the coldest day. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

But today when I am 17 and warm and well fed, I'm keeping this journal for myself so I can always remember life as we knew it, life as we know it, for a time when I am no longer in the sunroom. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

It wouldn't be New Year's without a resolution. I've resolved to take a moment every day for the rest of my life to appreciate what I have. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Do people ever realize how precious life is? I know I never did before. There was always time. There was always a future. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

But she's wrong about hell. You don't have to wait until you're dead to get there. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

What interests me more than dramatic heroics are the domestic things: How do people do laundry and find food when the world is about to end? ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

His loss. I know a hell of a lot more about headstrong teenage girls than he does."
Colin gave her his most quelling look. "You're baiting him again."
Ryan studied first one of them and then the other. "What's going on with you two?"
"Nothing."
Unfortunately, they spoke together, automatically making them look like liars. Sugar Beth recovered first and handled the situation in her own way. "Relax, Ryan. Colin's done his best to get rid of me, but I'm blackmailing him with some unsavory facts I've unearthed about his past, which may or may not involve the ritual deaths of small animals, so if my body ends up in a ditch somewhere, tell the police to start their interrogations with him. Plus you might warn everybody to be careful with their cats. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I love smart commercial fiction. Susan Isaacs, for example and the readers who interest me are, in the preponderance, women. I am one of them; I like the books they like. ~ Beth Gutcheon

The most glorious thing about working in the collaborative art is when you have somebody like Susan Kingsley or Kathy Bates who are better than your play. ~ Beth Henley

Anna would say that she was a cat like Gemma, with nine lives to spend, all nine precious and delicious. ~ Beth Kephart

My dear little daughter," said he, "you cannot be so glad to come back as my arms and my heart will be to receive you. ~ Susan Bogert Warner

In moments when I question if I should be having kids, I think of all those phone calls from my sister-in-law, in which, 3,000 miles away, I hear my nephews screaming for her attention. I tell her I have to go because I am packing to leave for Europe, and her tone flatlines: 'That must be nice.' ~ Beth Ditto

I don't know what would happen in a fight between a gang of angels and a school of great white sharks but I'm glad I won't be close enough to see it. Since the angels are squarely in the sharks' territory, my bet is with the sharks. Who ~ Susan Ee

Pilot season after pilot season, I read the same part: the wife who rolls her eyes at her somewhat immature husband that she still loves. Literally. ~ Beth Littleford

Small children will talk to anyone, once the guard of shyness has fallen, and they have, like the elderly, a sense of immediacy, a need to say or do something, now, now, the minute it is thought of, combined with that other sense, of the complete irrelevance of time. ~ Susan Hill

She understood about the comfort you can get from a small separate world, whether it's a theatre or a basketball team or the inside of a book. ~ Susan Cooper

You're so seventeenth century. ~ Susan Catalano

Do one's best. Be true to one's truth. Love as fully as one can. Understand that anything else is chaos and try to navigate around it. ~ Susan Fanetti

Take it off first, soldier."
He looked at her suspiciously. "Take what off?"
"Your clothes. Entertain the troops."
"My clothes?" He frowned. "I was sort of thinking you might want to do that for me."
She shook her head and leaned back on one elbow, giving him her witchiest, bitchiest smile. "Strip."
"Now, listen here, Francie
"
Lifting a languid hand, she once again pointed toward the center of the room. "Do it real slow, good-looking," she purred. "I want to enjoy every minute. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I think that for the five-year-old watching MTV right now, Lady Gaga is going to be an iconic person. In 20 years, the people who are here and talking to journalists will be like, 'Oh Lady Gaga changed my life, Nicki Minaj changed my life.' They'll be saying who influenced them and it will be Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj, artists like that. ~ Beth Ditto

There is something very healthy about finding support from others during difficult times. I needed it for my own healing. ~ Beth Moore

Life is a sum made up of small parts, Kacie. Some are good; some are bad. You and the girls are definitely one of the good. The best good there is and I'll fight like hell to keep you here. ~ Beth Ehemann

To dance is to reach for a word that doesn't exist,
To sing the heartsong of a thousand generations,
To feel the meaning of a moment in time. ~ Beth A. Jones

Yet each disappointment Ted felt in his wife, each incremental deflation, was accompanied by a seizure of guilt; many years ago, he had taken the passion he felt for Susan and folded it in half, so he no longer had a drowning, helpless feeling when he glimpsed her beside him in bed: her ropy arms and soft, generous ass. Then he'd folded it in half again, so when he felt desire for Susan, it no longer brought with it an edgy terror of never being satisfied. Then in half again, so that feeling desire entailed no immediate need to act. Then in half again, so he hardly felt it. His desire was so small in the end that Ted could slip it inside his desk or a pocket and forget about it, and this gave him a feeling of safety and accomplishment, of having dismantled a perilous apparatus that might have crushed them both. Susan was baffled at first, then distraught; she'd hit him twice across the face; she'd run from the house in a thunderstorm and slept at a motel; she'd wrestled Ted to the bedroom floor in a pair of black crotchless underpants. But eventually a sort of amnesia had overtaken Susan; her rebellion and hurt had melted away, deliquesced into a sweet, eternal sunniness that was terrible in the way that life would be terrible, Ted supposed, without death to give it gravitas and shape. He'd presumed at first that her relentless cheer was mocking, another phase in her rebellion, until it came to him that Susan had forgotten how things were between them before Ted began to fold ~ Jennifer Egan

...the past still held secrets, the past threw its shadows... ~ Susan Hill

I'm gonna be sick," I say.
"I'm ordering you not to," says Obi.
"Ah, don't say that," says Dee-Dum. "She's a born rebel. She'll puke just to make a point."
"You're here for a reason, Penryn," says Obi. "And throwing up in my car is not part of it. Buck up, Soldier."
"I'm not your soldier."
"Not yet," says Obi with a wide grin. "Why don't you fill us in on what happened at the aerie? Tell us everything you saw and heard, even if you think it won't be helpful."
"And if you have to get sick," says Dee-Dum, "shoot for Obi's direction, not mine. ~ Susan Ee

Frustrated by the superficiality of dining-hall conversation, ~ Susan Cain

What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine. ~ Susan Sontag

It's pathetic, but I don't really remember my first time reading 'The Great Gatsby.' I must have read it in high school. I'm pretty sure I remember it being assigned, and I generally did the reading. But I don't remember having a reaction to the book, even though I loved literature, and other works made a lasting impression on me at that age. ~ Susan Choi

Plays are so much more special if they've never ever had a production, but I think you can really work on a play and make it better with each production. ~ Beth Henley

I'm pleased the administration is endorsing the need for legislation dealing with the chemical sector. In the past, the administration's position has been ambiguous. ~ Susan Collins

Our surface relationships are leaving us increasingly lonely ... We ache for deeper connections as we're blinded by the spotlight of public superficial relationships. We leave someone sitting before us, waiting while we "finish one more thing" on our phone screen. But that's just it; we never seem to finish. A heart without a face looks like any other heart. It's the face to face that tells us if a heart-to-heart is real. ~ Beth Moore

I had to hold on to the mad so the sad didn't drown me. ~ Susan Crandall

That's when I realized that part of me would probably always be lost in the past. That just seemed to be my personality: I was the one who couldn't stand change. ~ Beth Harbison

There are many people that we meet in our lives. But only a very few will make a lasting impression on our minds and hearts. ~ Susan Polis Schutz

I often think of the space of a page as a stage, with words, letters, syllable characters moving across. ~ Susan Howe

Merik turned away, pretending not to hear. Not to care. But the truth was, he did hear and he did care. ~ Susan Dennard

I might have missed my calling as an editor. In the spring, the sight of my empty garden beds gives me the horticultural equivalent of writers' block: So much space! So many plants to choose among, and yet none of them seem quite right! ~ Susan Orlean

Gotten butt-ass, bone-dog naked for your vadge-cam?" Dante offered with an angelic smile, standing close.
"Fucking hell, D." Griff turned to Beth with an apology, but she spoke first.
"Huh-yeah. Thanks, cockbreath. ~ Damon Suede

Susan was already rehearsing excuses in case she was caught: I just got my period and I was looking for a tissue to stuff in my underpants. Men didn't question menstruation stories. Ever. You could probably get into the White House if you said you needed a tampon ASAP. ~ Chelsea Cain

We are all spiritual beings, having a spiritual experience, while in physical bodies. What this means is that we continue to be through eternity, always changing and expanding. When we accept this, we realize that there are no limitations, other than those that we impose upon ourselves. Mastery is within our power - if we wish it to be. ~ Susan Barbara Apollon

I can't believe I'm mated to someone who's allergic to me. (Ravyn)
You? I'm the one who should be having a hissy. How do I introduce you to people? Hi, this is my ... what? Significant other? Mate? Pet? (Susan) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

We all do make foolish mistakes. ~ Susan Ford