Jay > Jay's Quotes

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“For someone who loved words as much as I did, it was amazing how often they failed me.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“I don't want to survive. I want to thrive.”
― V.E. Schwab, Vengeful

“One thing I'm sure Colborne will never understand is that I need language to live, like food—lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“His face twisted through several contradictory emotions and he said, "For fuck's sake Andrew. Is there anything in this scenario that feels heterosexual or well-adjusted to you?”
― Lee Mandelo, Summer Sons

“In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“He couldn’t stand to look at the truth, even now. All they were—all they had ever been—was a pair of sunflowers who each believed the other was the sun.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“It was a relief and a horror to be known so perfectly”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“They wanted each other in the way of flesh wanting to knit itself together over a wound.”
― Micah Nemerever, These Violent Delights

“Gatsby and I may have been nothing to men like Tom Buchanan, but men like that did not know we were as divine as the heavens. We were boys who had created ourselves. We had formed our own bodies, our own lives, from the ribs of the girls we were once assumed to be.”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix

“I would have sworn to a priest that Gatsby’s smile pulled light in through the windows”
― Anna-Marie McLemore, Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix

“I don't know, it's like I look at you and suddenly the sonnets makes sense. The good ones, anyway.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“James laughed brokenly, and I felt something deep between my lungs crack clean in two.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“You can’t quantify humanity. You can’t measure it—not the way you mean to. People are passionate and flawed and fallible. They make mistakes. Their memories fade. Their eyes deceive them.”
― M.L. Rio, If We Were Villains

“You know, you scare the hell out of me [...] I don't know, it's like, I look at you and suddenly the sonnets make sense.”
― M.L. Rio

“He said my ambiguity was one of the few things that made me "interesting." Afterwards I cried while talking with Charles about it, saying I don't want to be interesting, I want to be happy.”
― Lou Sullivan, We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan

“I am so grateful for having a mind that can be changed.”
― Andrea Gibson, Take Me With You

“Did you know people get rich off of sadness? I want to meet the millionaire of American sadness. I want to look him in the eye, shake his hand, and say, 'it's been an honor to serve my country.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“It’s the chemicals in our brains, they say. I got the wrong chemicals, Ma. Or rather, I don’t get enough of one or the other. They have a pill for it. They have an industry. They make millions. Did you know people get rich off of sadness? I want to meet the millionaire of American sadness. I want to look him in the eye, shake his hand, and say, “it’s been an honor to serve my country.”

The thing is, I don’t want my sadness to be othered from me just as I don’t want my happiness to be othered. They’re both mine. I made them, dammit. What if the elation I feel is not another “bipolar episode” but something I fought hard for? Maybe I jump up and down and kiss you too hard on the neck when I learn, upon coming home, that it’s pizza night because sometimes pizza night is more than enough, is my most faithful and feeble beacon. What if I’m running outside because the moon tonight is children’s-book huge and ridiculous over the pines, the sight of it a strange sphere of medicine?
It’s like when all you’ve been seeing before you is a cliff and then this bright bridge appears out of nowhere, and you run fast across it knowing, sooner or later, there’ll be another cliff on the other side. What if my sadness is actually my most brutal teacher? And the lesson is always this: you don’t have to be like the buffaloes.
You can stop.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous