“You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.”
The great thing about this life of ours is that you can be someone different to everybody.
“I stand in front of the mirror and study my face.…It is the face of a sad, lonely girl something bad has happened to. I wonder if my face will ever look the same again, or if I’ll always see it in my reflection - Finch, Eleanor, loss, heartache, guilt, death.”
The problem with people is they forget that most of the time it's the small things that count.
“I think of my own epitaph, still to be written, and all the places I’ll wander. No longer rooted, but gold, flowing. I feel a thousand capacities spring up in me.”
“I’ve got a map in my car that wants to be used, and I think there are places we can go that need to be seen. Maybe no one else will ever visit them and appreciate them or take the time to think they’re important, but maybe even the smallest places mean something.”
It's my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.
You make me lovely, and it’s so lovely to be lovely to the one I love.….
“She sets down the bucket and undoes the latch. For a few seconds, all she does is breathe in the scent of the flowers, and then she turns to me and, without a word, kisses me. When she pulls away, she says, ‘No more winter at all. Finch, you brought me spring.’”
“Which of my feelings are real? Which of the mes is me? There is only one me I’ve ever really liked, and he was good and awake as long as he could be.”
“Worthless. Stupid. These are the words I grew up hearing. They’re the words I try to outrun, because if I let them in, they might stay there and grow and fill me up and in, until the only thing left of me is worthless stupid worthless stupid worthless stupid freak. And then there’s nothing to do but run harder and fill myself with other words: This time will be different. This time, I will stay awake.”
sometimes there’s beauty in the tough words—it’s all in how you read them.
You have been in every way all that anyone could be.… If anybody could have saved me it would have been you.
I do my best thinking at night when everyone else is sleeping. No interruptions. No noise. I like the feeling of being awake when no one else is.
“I don’t need to worry that Finch and I never filmed our wanderings. It’s okay that we didn’t collect souvenirs or that we never had time to pull it all together in a way that made sense to anyone else but us. The thing I realize is that it’s not what you take, but it’s what you leave.”
“Maybe, if I wear the glasses long enough, I can be like her. I can see what she saw. I can be both of us at once so no one will have to miss her, most of all me.”
“We alternate choosing places to go, but we also have to be willing to go where the road takes us. This means the grand, the small, the bizarre, the poetic, the beautiful, the ugly, the surprising. Just like life.”
I learned that there is good in this world, if you look hard enough for it. I learned that not everyone is disappointing, including me, and that a 1,257-foot bump in the ground can feel higher than a bell tower if you’re standing next to the right person.
We are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our own minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial.
She is oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. The same elements that are inside the rest of us, but I can’t help thinking she’s more than that and she’s got other elements going on that no one’s ever heard of, ones that make her stand apart from everybody else. I feel this brief panic as I think, What would happen if one of those elements malfunctioned or just stopped working altogether? I make myself push this aside and concentrate on the feel of her skin until I no longer see molecules but Violet.
No more winter at all. Finch, you brought me spring.
People rarely bring flowers to a suicide.
Sorry wastes time. You have to live your life like you'll never be sorry. It's easier just to do the right thing from the start so there's nothing to apologize for.
“‘You’ll be departing our…great state, and before…you do, you should…see it. You should…wander….’”
“Your hope lies in accepting your life as it now lies before you, forever changed. If you can do that, the peace you seek will follow. Forever changed. I am forever changed.”
When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?
“‘He’s a gentleman.’ There aren’t many people who would say this about me, but the great thing about this life of ours is that you can be someone different to everybody.”
“You saved my life. Why couldn't I save yours?”
“Because it's not a lie if it's how you feel.”
“The future is uncertain, but that can be a good thing.”
“If a song's meant to stay around, you carry it with you in your bones.”
“If that blue could stay for ever; if that hole could remain for ever." There was nothing to make him last.”
“I think this is the ugliest place I’ve ever seen. Not just here. The whole state.” I hear my parents telling me not to be negative, which is funny because I’ve always been the happy one. It’s Eleanor who was moody. “I used to think that. But then I realized, believe it or not, it’s actually beautiful to some people. It must be, because enough people live here, and they can’t all think it’s ugly.” He smiles out at the ugly trees and the ugly farmland and the ugly kids as if he can see Oz. As if he can really, truly see the beauty that’s there. In that moment I wish I could see it through his eyes.”
“The thing is, there are good days and bad days. I feel almost guilty saying they aren't all bad.”
“You are driving me crazy. You have been driving me crazy for weeks.”
“I like writing, but I like a lot of things. Maybe out of those things, I'm best at writing. Maybe it's what I like best of all. Maybe it's where I've always felt most at home. Or maybe the writing part of me is over. Maybe there's something else I'm supposed to do instead. I don't know.”
“Theodore Finch—I was alive. I burned brightly. And then I died, but not really. Because someone like me cannot, will not, die like everyone else. I linger like the legends of the Blue Hole. I will always be here, in the offerings and people I left behind.”
“Thank you to my family and friends for unwavering support, even when I am insufferably consumed by my work (which is most of the time). I couldn't do it without you.”
“Thanks most of all to my beautiful mother and fellow author, Penelope Niven, who made the world lovelier just by being in it.”
“She taught me from childhood that my mountain was waiting, and she never stopped encouraging me to keep climbing.”
“What a terrible feeling to love someone and not be able to help them.
Actually, I know exactly how that feels.”
“May your eye go to the Sun, To the wind your soul...You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.”
“I want to stay in here, where it's warm and bright, surrounded by things that are living and not dead.”
“Decent friends—check. Roof over my head—check. Food in my mouth—check.”
“This is the single loveliest thing anyone's ever done for me. It's movie lovely.”
“So it's good and it's bad and it hurts, but I like thinking about him. If I think about him, he won't be completely gone either. Just because they're dead, they don't have to be. And neither do we.”
“I am trying not to let it bother me because jealousy is a mean, unpleasant feeling that only eats you from the inside.”
I can't tell you what was different this time around, only that when I woke up, I felt deader than usual. Awake, yeah, but completely empty, like someone had been feasting on my blood.
I smile so she can see what I mean. Everything where it should be, on the outside at least.
“It's all just time filler until we die.”