Author: Kelsey Mihachik

“Every time I would read one, I would think, ‘Why would that person say that? What is the point?’ It can only serve to make people jealous of you and/or hate you. No one ever hears one and actually thinks you are cooler. But people do it because it’s in their nature to prove to others how great their life is, or maybe they’re actually just trying to prove it… to themselves?” – pg. xiii

“You’d think that years of rejection and nobody caring about their work would make them fairly humble, but no.” – pg. 65

“And what I love about smart people humblebragging is that they sound dumb doing it. It conveys a certain degree of unawareness.” – pg. 130

“If I wasn’t there, I don’t care. That’s a good mantra to try and remember if you are ever thinking about bragging about cool places you visited to someone who wasn’t there.” – pg. 190

“Bear in mind that calling people out on humblebragging in your daily life will eventually make everyone so uneasy around you they will stop talking to you altogether.” – pg. 247

“Parenting meant that whether or not your children understood you, your obligation was to understand them.” – pg. 59

“Love may or may not be homesickness, but homesickness is most definitely love.” – pg. 79

“I can’t understand why anyone would write fiction when what actually happens is so amazing.” – pg. 105

“I have nothing whatsoever to do, and I should be lonely but I’m not.”– pg. 120

“Never marry a man you wouldn’t want to be divorced from.” – pg. 123

There weren’t any good “out of context” quotes to take from this book, but it was freaking hilarious so I’m including it anyways. My site, my rules.

“I find that I frequently feel better about myself when I discover that we’re not alone, but that there are, in fact, a number of other people who ail as we do.” – pg. 11

“If my life wasn’t funny it would just be true, and that is unacceptable.” – pg. 17

“When you are a survivor, in order to be a really good one, you have to keep getting in trouble to show off your gift.” – pg. 70

“No motive is pure. No one is good or bad – but a healthy mix of both. And sometimes life actually gives to you by taking away.” – pg. 139

“For every Charles Dickens who catches a break, there’s probably some guy named Bartles Osbrook who was just as good but less lucky.” – pg. 155

“You know you’re gonna get thrown off at some point; the victory is in lasting as long as you can.” – pg. 43

“Every human has individual desires and needs, and in undermining another person’s right to their own joy, we undermine our own.” – pg. 124

“I’ve always felt like ‘love at first sight’ is reserved for people who don’t have much to say.” – pg. 134

“Humans are rarely satisfied for long. Eventually an emptiness creeps back in – a hunger for direction – and a persistent, boundless question: Where to next?” – pg. 216

“Don’t try to participate in anyone else’s idea of what is supposed to happen in a relationship. You will fail.” – pg. 14

“Scrupulous people don’t enjoy causing trouble, but they can be defiant as hell.” – pg. 55

“I think self-doubt is healthy, and having to fight for the thing you want doesn’t mean you deserve it any less.” – pg. 69

“People will find transformation and transcendence in a McDonald’s hash brown if it’s all they got.” – pg. 18

“When you’re beginning to suspect you might be leaving a place, you become hypersensitive to it, as if your mind is subconsciously stacking itself with smells, sounds, sights, and tactile sensations of a place you’ll no longer see every day.” – pg. 86

“Anything we create has to involve simplifying, leaving, or destroying the world we’re living in.
Zombies simplify. Every zombie story is fundamentally about a breakdown of order, with the infrastructure in tact. The world, appearance-wise, survives. Zombies tend to be the most nihilistic of the three. Zombies can’t believe the energy we waste on nonfood pursuits.
Spaceships leave. Spaceships figure it’s easier to build a world and know its history or, better yet, choose the limited customs and rituals that fit the story. Spaceships are the ones most likely to get married and have kids.
Wastelands destroy. They’re confused but fascinated by the world. Post-nuke, post-meteor strike, or simply a million years into the future – that’s the perfect environment for the Wasteland’s imagination to gallop through. Weirdly, Wastelands are the most hopeful and sentimental of the bunch. Because even though they’ve destroyed the world as they know it, they conceive of stories in which a core of humanity survives and endures.” – pg. 97-101

“The Buddhists say that you shouldn’t let shame about pain cause you to feel a second, self-inflicted pain.” – pg. 37

“Groucho replies, ‘If I didn’t know what sad was, why would I spend my whole life trying to make people laugh?’ My head exploded. It felt like everything made sense. I was trying to be funny because I was sad.” – pg. 212

“You think, I wish I was there, not here. But then you get there. And you think, I thought here would be different. I thought it would be more like there. But it’s more like here again. And it never ends.” – pg. 249

“Focus on your own goals and how to achieve them. No one took your spot, there’s room for all of us.” – pg. 159

“When your fears come true, you realize they weren’t as bad as you thought. As it turns out, the fear is more painful than the insult.” – pg. 313