Jesse Freedom > Jesse's Quotes

“Sage's parents might just as well have been in a plane crash. They had fallen out of her life, and Sage had been horribly hurt. The kind of hurt that could turn you mean, when what you really were was scared. Scared and lonely. She guessed Owen had been trying to tell her that about Sage. But she hadn't wanted to listen-couldn't listen. Then. (pg. 117)”
― Barbara Garland Polikoff, Riding the Wind

“I don't mean to be insolent. I'm truthful. I tell the truth and the truth sometimes hurts. For instance, you have bad breath, Lieutenant. I can smell it from here. It must offend a lot of people. That's the truth. But how many people have told you that? Instead, they either lie or try to avoid your company.”
― Robert Cormier, Tenderness

“The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?”
― Robert Cormier, After the First Death

“I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“She didn't give a damn about some of them, but she had grown to learn that inattention can be a stratagem to avoid pain, and that it is often misread as shallowness and indifference.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“It's fear, Jack. The man deals with a huge amount of fear.'
Because he got hurt?'
No, not entirely. Fear comes with imagination, it's a penalty, it's the price of imagination.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“What he has in addition is pure empathy and projection,” Dr. Bloom said. “He can assume your point of view, or mine – and maybe some other points of view that scare and sicken him. It’s an uncomfortable gift, Jack. Perception’s a tool that’s pointed on both ends.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

“You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“I wonder if there's a difference between being a dutiful mother and being a good mother.'

There is,' I said, and Charlotte looked up at me, expectant.

Even if I couldn't articulate the difference as an adult, as a child I had felt it. I thought for a moment. 'A dutiful mother is someone who follows every step her child makes,' I said.

And a good mother?'

I lifted my gaze to Charlotte's. 'Is someone whose child wants to follow her.”
― Jodi Picoult, Handle with Care

“Do I dare disturb the universe?

Yes, I do, I do. I think.

Jerry suddenly understood the poster--the solitary man on the beach standing upright and alone and unafraid, poised at the moment of making himself heard and known in the world, the universe.”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“Sometimes I wake up at night in a panic. Wondering: What will my life be like? And sometimes I even wonder: Who am I? What am I doing here, on this planet, in this city, in this house? And it gives me the shivers, makes me panic.”
― Robert Cormier, Beyond the Chocolate War

“Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?”
― Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

“What have I done, Obie?"

Obie flung his hand in the air, the gesture encompassing all the rotten things that had occur under Archie's command, at Archie's direction. The ruined kids, the capsized hopes. Renault last fall and poor Tubs Casper and all the others including even the faculty. Like Brother Eugene.

"You know what you've done, Archie. I don't need to draw up a list-"

"You blame me for everything, right, Obie? You and Carter and all the others. Archie Costello, the bad guy. The villain. Archie, the bastard. Trinity would be such a beautiful place without Archie Costello. Right, Obie? But it's not me, Obie, it's not me...."

"Not you?" Obie cried, fury gathering in his throat, his chest, his guts. "What the hell do you mean, not you? This could have been a beautiful place to be, Archie. A beautiful time for all of us. Christ, who else, if not you?"

"Do you really want to know who?"

"Okay, who then?" Impatient with his crap, the old Archie crap.

"It's you, Obie. You and Carter and Bunting and Leon and everybody. But especially you, Obie. Nobody forced you to do anything, buddy. Nobody made you join the Vigils. Nobody twisted your arm to make you secretary of the Vigils. Nobody pain you to keep a notebook with all that crap about the students, all their weaknesses, soft points. The notebook made your job easier, didn't it, Obie? And what was your job? Finding the victims. You found them, Obie. You found Renault and Tubs Casper and Gendreau-the first one, remember, when we were sophomores?-how you loved it all, didn't you Obie?" Archie flicked a finger against the metal of the car, and the ping was like a verbal exclamation mark. "Know what, Obie? You could have said no anytime, anytime at all. But you didn't...." Archie's voice was filled with contempt, and he pronounced Obie's name as if it were something to be flushed down a toilet.

"Oh, I'm an easy scapegoat, Obie. For you and everybody else at Trinity. Always have been. But you had free choice, buddy. Just like Brother Andrew always says in Religion. Free choice, Obie, and you did the choosing....”
― Robert Cormier, Beyond the Chocolate War

“Angry at his parents and all grown-ups who thought that school life was a lark, a good time, the best years of your life with a few test and quizzes thrown in to keep you on your toes. Bullshit. There was nothing good about it. Tests were daily battles in the larger war of school. School meant rules and orders and commands. To say nothing of homework.”
― Robert Cormier, Beyond the Chocolate War

“They make everything they touch turn absolutely academic and useless. To my mind, They're mostly to blame for the mob of ignorant oafs with diplomas that are turned loose on the country every June.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“There isn't anyone anywhere who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know — listen to me, now — don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? . . . Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“I'm not afraid to compete. It's just the opposite. Don't you see that? I'm afraid I will compete — that's what scares me. That's why I quit the Theatre Department. Just because I'm so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else's values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn't make it right. I'm ashamed of it. I'm sick of it. I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I'm sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“In the first place, you’re way off when you start railing at things and people instead of at yourself. ”
― J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

“We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.”
― Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

“People always clap for the wrong reasons.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Oh! if people knew what a comfort to a horse a light hand is, and how it keeps a good mouth and a good temper, they would surely not chuck, and drag, and pull at the rein as they often do.”
― Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”
― J.D. Salinger

“You need luck to keep going. It takes more than skill to stay alive.”
― Walter Farley, The Black Stallion Challenged

“I don’t even like old cars. I mean, they don’t even interest me at all. I'd rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“Dedicated to all boys and girls who love horses but never have had one of their own”
― Walter Farley, The Island Stallion

“You did right my boy, whether the fellow gets a summons or not. Many folks would have ridden by and said ‘twas not their business to interfere. Now, I say, that with cruelty and oppression it is everybody’s business to interfere when they see it.”
― Anna Sewell, Black Beauty