Quote collection
1.4K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I am crying, he thought, opening his eyes to stare through the soapy, stinging water. I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it's impossible to tell because I'm underwater. But he wasn't crying. Curiously, he felt too depressed to cry. Too hurt. It felt as if she'd taken the part of him that cried."
"On the morning in question, she wore white shorts and a pink T-shirt that featured a green dragon breathing a fire of orange glitter. It is difficult to explain how awesome I found this T-shirt at the time."
"Colin's skin was alive with the feeling of connection to everyone in that car and everyone not in it. And he was feeling not-unique in the very best possible way."
"Of course, sweetie," his mom said. "We'll be here all day. You just come down whenever you want and we love you and you're so so special, Colin, and you can't possibly let this girl make you think otherwise because you are the most magnificent, brilliant boy-" And right then, the most special, magnificent, brilliant boy bolted into his bathroom and puked his guts out. An explosion, sort of."
"Babies are made through an act that you will eventually find intriguing but for right now will just sort of horrify you, and also sometimes people do stuff that involves baby-making parts that does not actually involve making babies, like for instance kiss each other in places that are not on the face."
"That feeling of finishedness does not come all at once, and it is not easily won, but I think once you get there it is hard to go back."
"Keys show up when you reconcile yourself to the bus."
"Not to ask the obvious question, but why Alaska?"
"Too pissed off to cry, I said, 'This is only making me hate her. I don't want to hate her. And what's the point, if that's all it's making me do?' Still refusing to answer how and why questions. Still insisting on an aura of mystery. I leaned forward, head between by knees, and the Colonel placed a head on my upper back. 'The point is that there are always alsweres, Pudge.' And then he pushed air out between his pursed lips and I could hear the angry quiver in his voice as he repeated, 'There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough.' ~Miles/Pudge and Chip/the Colonel, pg 168"
"Meriwether Lewis's last words were, 'I am not a coward, but I am so strong. So hard to die.' I don't doubt that it is, but it cannot be much harder than being left behind."
"So she became impulsive, scared by her inaction into perpetual action. When the Eagle confronted her with the expulsion, maybe she blurted out Marya's name because it was the first that came to mind, because in that moment she didn't want to get expelled and she couldn't think past that moment. She was scared, sure. But more importantly, maybe she'd been scared of being paralyzed by fear again. ~Miles/Pudge on Alaska, pg 120-121"
"So why don't you go home for vacations?' I asked her. I'm just scared of ghosts, Pudge. And home is full of them."
"Sometimes I don't get you,' I said. She didn't even glance at me. She just smiled toward the television and said, 'You never get me. That's the whole point."
"I thought you hung the moon."
"Was it animal pee or human pee? Someone asked. How would I know? What, am I an expert in the study of pee?"
"It is worth it to leave behing my minor life for grander maybes."
"We are engaged here in the most important pusuit in history. The search for meaning. What is What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person?How did we come to be, and wha will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules this game, and how might we best play it?"
"For she had embodied the Great Perhaps--she had proved to me that it was worth it to leave behind my minor life for grander maybes, and now she was gone and with her my faith in perhaps."
"As I followed Margo's directions through the maze of one-way streets, we saw a few people sleeping on the sidewalk or sitting on benches, but nobody was moving. Margo rolled down the window, and I felt the thick air blow across my face, warmer than night ought to be. I glanced over and saw strands of her hair blowing all around her face. Even though I could see her there, I felt entirely alone among these big and empty buildings, like I'd survived the apocalypse and the world had been given to me, this whole and amazing and endless world, mine for the exploring."
"You know what I hate? The outdoors. I mean, generally. I don't like outside. I'm an inside person. I'm all about refrigeration and indoor plumbing and Judge Judy."