“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
“Fake confidence on the outside, as I will later learn, often trumps truthful turmoil on the inside.” – pg. 58
“There was a price to be paid for a culture that idealizes the relentless pursuit of, ‘self.'” – pg. 65
“I do the best job I can and then let the results be what they will. I am out of the people-pleasing business.” – pg. 264
“Say yes to any opportunity to grow and/or do good work. You never know where it will lead or who might be paying attention.” – pg. 266
“If you can’t get honest with yourself, if you can’t look yourself in the mirror, no matter how much money they pay you, or how much you are lauded, you are literally putting your life at risk.” – pg. 271
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