Gabrielle Zevin citations

Page 3

“You tell a kid he doesn't like to read, and he'll believe you”

“But then again maybe "I will" is nicer. It has a future in it.”

“When I was in my twenties and broke, I'd buy books before food. A meal will sustain you for a few hours, a good book will sustain you for life.”

“I have so much paperwork. I'm afraid my paperwork has paperwork.”

“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.”

“His heart is too full, and no words to release it.”

“Did you know that there are over three hundred words for love in canine?”

“What are you reading?" Owen asks.
"Charlotte's Web," Liz says. "It's really sad. One of the main characters just died."
"You ought to read the book from end to beginning," Owen jokes. "That way, no one dies, and it's always a happy ending.”

“Betty inhales sharply, 'It's just I thought I had lost you forever.'
Oh, Betty, don't you know there's no such thing as forever?”

“Daddy always said the only thing worth begging for was your life, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe sometimes your love is a little bit worth begging for, too.”

“It's when you don't need something that you tend to lose it.”

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

“In a way, whoever you know in a certain place defines that place for you.”

“It was a nice day, and I don't mean that it was sunny either. It was humid and not too cool, like winter was getting annoyed with itself and wanted it to be spring just as much as everyone else.”

“Hi there," squeaked a precocious little voice, "you are speaking to Chloe Fusakawa, and I have just learned how to answer the phone.”

“If this were a novel, I'd stop reading right now. I'd throw it across the room.”

“A. J. nods out of politeness, but he doesn’t believe in random acts. He is a reader, and what he believes in is narrative construction. If a gun appears in act one, that gun had better go off by act three.”

“Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down the road and someday, you do not now when, you will make a wrong tun. At the end of the road, when you're least expecting it, he (or indeed she) will be there.”

“Eye contact made people think you were being truthful even if you weren't.”

“But I wondered if all this kissing was a bad habit with him and me. The thing we did with our mouths instead of talking.”

“I don't like to feel so crazy about someone," he said. "I don't like to feel like my happiness is so tied up in another person.”

“Showing up is what counts.”

“Every book is a world.”

“I don’t want to die,” A. J. says after a bit. “I just find it difficult to be here all the time.”

“It was such a sweet, sad song with such sweet, sad lyrics. Old-fashioned a little, but also timeless.”

“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.”

“Life used to move much more quickly when I was a girl. We needed to abbreviate just to keep up.”