Raven > Raven's Quotes

“If he wanted to pray, she told him, he should go to a church, not the library.”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

“America's been living on borrowed time all these years... Playing the world's whore, wallowing in our greed. Now we're going to pay the price.”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True

“Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“Because you start a revolution one decision at a time, with each breath you take.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“I want to believe that happiness might at least be possible later on in life for people prone to sadness.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“I realized that the truth doesn’t matter most of the time, and when people have awful ideas about your identity, that’s just the way it will stay no matter what you do.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“Did that ever happen to you? You think someone is really important and different, but then you get to know them and it ruins everything? Do you know what I’m talking about?”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“...and ponder what he said about there being people with worse problems than mine. It takes me all of three seconds to conclude that’s such a bullshit thing to say. Like the people in Iran are more important than me because their suffering is supposedly more acute. Bullshit.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“How do you measure suffering? I mean, the fact that I live in a democratic country doesn’t guarantee my life will be problem-free. Far from it. I understand that I am relatively privileged from a socioeconomical viewpoint, but so was Hamlet—so are a lot of miserable people. I bet there are people in Iran who are happier than I am—who wish to keep living there regardless of who is in charge politically, while I’m miserable here in this supposedly free country and just want out of this life at any cost.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“You call me a princess and sometimes we put on as much gold as we can, and you call me “Jay-Z,” and then laugh so hard.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“Once you understand how adults are controlled by the system, manipulating them is elementary.”
― Matthew Quick

“we can simultaneously be human and monster—that both of those possibilities are in all of us.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“Well, for a lot of reasons. Most of which I can’t really explain properly. That’s why people give presents, right? Because they don’t know how to express themselves in words, so you give gifts to symbolically explain your feelings. I got to thinking that the world would be a better place if they gave medals to great teachers rather than just soldiers who kill their enemies in wars.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“Maybe it was the type of high only kids can get and understand. There were hundreds of adults drinking alcohol and gambling and smoking that night, but I bet none of them felt the high Asher and I did. Maybe that’s why adults drink, gamble, and do drugs—because they can’t get naturally lit anymore. Maybe we lose that ability as we get older.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“It was like once again someone was labeling me and putting me in a box just as soon I expressed myself.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“You could have that sort of life if you ask God for it. If you give your life to God, He will provide for you in marvelous ways. He promises us that. If He takes care of the sparrows, how much more will He take care of us?”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“These people we call Mom and Dad, they bring us into the world and then they don't follow through with what we need, or provide any answers at all really--it's a fend-for-yourself free-for-all in the end, and I'm just not cut out for that sort of living.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“What if I had the power to save both of us—all of us—all along?”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”
― James Baldwin

“He was trying to make us think about how life is hard and people suffer in all sorts of ways without our adding to their suffering to satisfy our sense of vengeance, but I sort of don’t think that the quote holds up in the real world, where literature and schooling and philosophy and morality don’t exist, because Asher and Linda and so many other culpable people seem to be fine—functioning exceptionally well within the world even—while I’m under a disgusting bridge about to put a hole in my skull.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“Or maybe this is justice. Maybe I’ve allowed myself to become this fucked-up, depressed, misunderstood person. Maybe this is all my fault. Maybe I should have killed Asher Beal. I mean, I was so angry. Asher definitely deserved to die.67 Or maybe I should have tried to save Asher back when all the bad shit began—before he turned full-on evil?”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“You can’t expect kids to save themselves, can you?”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“It’s like the P-38 is an old skeleton key I’m trying to fit into an old padlock and when I make that connection I’ll hear a click and a door will open and I’ll walk through and be saved.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”
― Nicholas Klein

“He keeps whispering, “You’re okay,” and I simultaneously love him and hate him for saying that. I’m fucking not okay at all. And yet it’s exactly what I most want to be: okay. He can’t give that to me, but I love him for trying.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“I feel like I’m broken—like I don’t fit together anymore. Like there’s no more room for me in the world or something. Like I’ve overstayed my welcome here on Earth, and everyone’s trying to give me hints about that constantly. Like I should just check out.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“It can. If you’re willing to do the work.'
'What work?'
'Not letting the world destroy you. That’s a daily battle.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“And how stories and objects and people and pretty much everything can blink out of existence at any time.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“If he was able to make her feel even the slightest bit of guilt for being so oblivious—if he could get through all that makeup and high fashion.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“It’s so much easier to shut the refrigerator door, which is totally a metaphor, I realize, for my life”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock