Alex Smith > Alex's Quotes

“The thing I realize is, that it's not what you take, it's what you leave.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“The great thing about this life of ours is that you can be someone different to everybody.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“The problem with people is they forget that most of the time it's the small things that count.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“It's my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“You make me lovely, and it’s so lovely to be lovely to the one I love.…”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“You have been in every way all that anyone could be.… If anybody could have saved me it would have been you.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“sometimes there’s beauty in the tough words—it’s all in how you read them.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“We are all alone, trapped in these bodies and our own minds, and whatever company we have in this life is only fleeting and superficial.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I know life well enough to know you can’t count on things staying around or standing still, no matter how much you want them to. You can’t stop people from dying. You can’t stop them from going away. You can’t stop yourself from going away either. I know myself well enough to know that no one else can keep you awake or keep you from sleeping.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I learned that there is good in this world, if you look hard enough for it. I learned that not everyone is disappointing, including me, and that a 1,257-foot bump in the ground can feel higher than a bell tower if you’re standing next to the right person.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I do my best thinking at night when everyone else is sleeping. No interruptions. No noise. I like the feeling of being awake when no one else is.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Stars in the sky, stars on the ground. It’s hard to tell where the sky ends and the earth begins. I feel the need to say something grand and poetic, but the only thing I come up with is “It’s lovely.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“What if life could be this way? Only the happy parts, none of the terrible, not even the mildly unpleasant. What if we could just cut out the bad and keep the good? This is what I want to do with Violet - give her only the good, keep away the bad, so that good is all we ever have around us.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild. So you let them go, or when you open the cage to feed them they somehow fly out past you. And the part of you that knows it was wrong to imprison them in the first place rejoices, but still, the place where you live is that much more drab and empty for their departure.”
― Stephen King, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption

“You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“She is oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. The same elements that are inside the rest of us, but I can’t help thinking she’s more than that and she’s got other elements going on that no one’s ever heard of, ones that make her stand apart from everybody else. I feel this brief panic as I think, What would happen if one of those elements malfunctioned or just stopped working altogether? I make myself push this aside and concentrate on the feel of her skin until I no longer see molecules but Violet.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“No more winter at all. Finch, you brought me spring.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“People rarely bring flowers to a suicide.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Sorry wastes time. You have to live your life like you'll never be sorry. It's easier just to do the right thing from the start so there's nothing to apologize for.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“You deserve better. I can’t promise you I’ll stay around, not because I don’t want to. It’s hard to explain. I’m a fuckup. I’m broken, and no one can fix it. I’ve tried. I’m still trying. I can’t love anyone because it’s not fair to anyone who loves me back. I’ll never hurt you, not like I want to hurt Roamer. But I can’t promise I won’t pick you apart, piece by piece, until you’re in a thousand pieces, just like me. You should know what you’re getting into before getting involved.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Because it's not a lie if it's how you feel.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I remember running down a road on my way to a nursery of flowers. I remember her smile and her laugh when I was my best self and she looked at me like I could do no wrong and was whole. I remember how she looked at me the same way even when I wasn’t. I remember her hand in mine and how that felt, as if something and someone belonged to me.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“You know what I like about you, Finch? You’re interesting. You’re different. And I can talk to you. Don’t let that go to your head.”
… “You know what I like about you, Ultraviolet Remarkey-able? Everything.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Listen, I’m the freak. I’m the weirdo. I’m the troublemaker. I start fights. I let people down. Don’t make Finch mad, whatever you do. Oh, there he goes again, in one of his moods. Moody Finch. Angry Finch. Unpredictable Finch. Crazy Finch. But I’m not a compilation of symptoms. Not a casualty of shitty parents and an even shittier chemical makeup. Not a problem. Not a diagnosis. Not an illness. Not something to be rescued. I’m a person.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“But I bring it up to let you know that this is the way I feel right now. Like Pluto and Jupiter are aligned with the earth and I’m floating.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“You saved my life. Why couldn't I save yours?”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“And in that moment there’s nothing I fear except losing hold of her hand.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I should be happy, but instead I feel nothing. I feel a lot of nothing these days. I've cried a few times, but mostly I'm empty, as if whatever makes me feel and hurt and laugh and love has been surgically removed, leaving me hollowed out like a shell.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places