Quotes from book

Just Listen

“Because the truth sometimes hurts," I said.
Yeah," he said. "So do lies, though.”

“Don't think or judge, just listen.”

“This is personal, she'd said. Real. This moment was too, even if you couldn't see it at first glance. It was fake on the outside, but so true within. You only had to look, really look to tell.”

“As if it didnt matter what was on, but instead how hard i was listening.”

“Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. It just doesn’t catch up, it overtakes … blotting out the future.”

“There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn't sure I had it in me to keep looking back.”

“I don't lie."
"You don't lie," I repeated.
"That's what I said."
"Ever."
"Nope."
Sure you don't, I thought.”

“I understood now. This voice, the one that had been trying to get my attention all this time, calling out to me, begging me to hear it -- it wan't Will's. It was mine.”

“I just do the best I can under the circumstances.”

“Then what are you like, Annabel?" he shot back. "A liar, like you told me that first day? Come on. That was the biggest lie of all.”

“So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story.”

“I wanted to tell him so. Find the right words, string them together in the ideal way, knowing that here they would have the best chance of sounding perfect.”

“This was how I was dealing with everyone and everything lately, taking the good when it came, and the bad the same way, knowing each would pass in its own time.”

“Told you. Everything sounds better in the car wash.”

“It was like when you're a little kid and you run into your teacher or librarian at the grocery store or Wal-mart and it's just so startling, because it never occurred to you they existed outside of school.”

“There was no short answer to this; like so much else, it was a long story. But what really makes any story real is knowing someone will hear it. And understand.”

“You punched him by accident.”

“Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.”

“Pieces and parts were always easier to process. The full picture, the entire story, was another thing entirely. But you just never knew. Sometimes, people could surprise you.”