Emily > Emily's Quotes

“Not letting the world destroy you. That’s a daily battle.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“You think someone is really important and different, but then you get to know them and it ruins everything”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“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

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

“Show me it’s possible to be an adult and also be happy. Please. This is a free country. You don’t have to keep doing this if you don’t want to. You can do anything you want. Be anyone you want. That’s what they tell us at school, but if you keep getting on that train and going to the place you hate I’m going to start thinking the people at school are liars like the Nazis who told the Jews they were just being relocated to work factories. Don’t do that to us. Tell us the truth. If adulthood is working some death-camp job you hate for the rest of your life, divorcing your secretly criminal husband, being disappointed in your son, being stressed and miserable, and dating a poser and pretending he’s a hero when he’s really a lousy person and anyone can tell that just by shaking his slimy hand—if it doesn’t get any better, I need to know right now. Just tell me. Spare me from some awful fucking fate. Please.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“You were right. When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.”
― 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

“Different is good. But different is hard.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“It worries me that I can be so explosive one day -- volatile enough to commit a murder-suicide -- and then the next day I'm watching Bogart save the day with Walt, like nothing happened at all, and nothing is urgent, and I really don't have to do anything to set the world right or escape my own mind.

I'd like to feel okay all the time -- to have the ability to sit and function without feeling so much pressure, without feeling as though blood is going to spurt from my eyes and fingers and toes if I don't do something.”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“I found posts about how to slit your wrists the "right way", so you will actually die, and that depressed me, because people actually post stuff like that, and even though I wanted to know the answer, so I could weigh my options, that info maybe shouldn't be on the internet...
But really - why do some people post the correct ways to commit suicide on the internet? Do they want weird, sad people like me to go away permanently? Do they think it's a good idea for some people to off themselves? How can you tell when you are one of those people who should slash his wrists the right way with a razor blade? Is there an answer for that too? I Googled but nothing concrete came up. Just ways to complete the mission. Not justification.”
― 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

“Mostly, as I'm sitting here in A.P. English, I think about the way my classmates are always raising their hands and sucking up to Mrs. Giavotella just so she will give them As, which they will send to Harvard or Princeton or Stanford or where-fucking-ever, to go along with their lies about how much community service they supposedly did and essays about how much they care about poor minority children they'll never meet in real life or how they are going to save the world armed with nothing but a big heart and an Ivy League education.”
― 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

“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

“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

“You are all more or less wearing the same types of clothes—look around the room and you will see it’s true. Now imagine you’re the only one not wearing a cool symbol. How would that make you feel? The Nike swoop, the three Adidas stripes, the little Polo player on a horse, the Hollister seagull, the symbols of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams, even our high school mascot that you athletes wear to battle other schools—some of you wear our Mustang to class even when there is no sporting event scheduled. These are your symbols, what you wear to prove that your identity matches the identity of others. Much like the Nazis had their swastika. We have a very loose dress code here and yet most of you pretty much dress the same. Why? Perhaps you feel it’s important not to stray too far from the norm. Would you not also wear a government symbol if it became important and normal to do so? If it were marketed the right way? If it was stitched on the most expensive brand at the mall? Worn by movie stars? The president of the United States?”
― Matthew Quick, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“I'm no expert, but I remember reading somewhere, every time you retrieve a memory, that act of retrieval, it corrupts the memory a little bit. Maybe changes it a little.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“There’s an inherent pleasure in being unseen.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“I don’t know, it just started to seem a little claustrophobic, living in the same place with the same people I’d known since I was born.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“One of our signature flaws as a species: we will risk almost anything to avoid looking stupid.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“How long have I been running? Running, running, running. Christ, I’m sick of running. I should have stayed. I should have faced it. If I had faced it then, I wouldn’t be facing it now, but sooner or later you have to choose between running and facing the thing you thought you could not face.”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

“We're the dead. There's no one else now. There's the past-dead and the future-dead. Corpses and corpses-to-be.”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

“We're all dead...Some of us are just a little further along than others.”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

“Cruelty isn't a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

“Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing.
Cruelty isn’t a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave

“I had it all wrong," he says. "Before I found you, I thought the only way to hold on was to find something to live for. It isn't. To hold on, you have to find something you're willing to die for.”
― Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave