The Shell Collector Quotes

“What felt interminable the first time now passes with a quickness borne of familiarity. It makes me wonder if life seems to accelerate as we get older simply because our days and our experiences become routine. The things we recognize flash right by, where once they held our attention. Only the new bears careful contemplation, and the new gets harder and harder to come by.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“But I can’t say the words. This is how relationships are most like the things I collect: We build these hard exteriors. We pull ourselves inside, block off the only way in, don’t let anyone see our true selves.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“Abusive relationships often go like this: falling in love, not seeing the ugly side, coming up with rationalizations when you do. It’s hard to get free, because you just want to recapture some lost feeling. You want to feel safe, respected, honored again. And you’ll play games with your mind to make that happen. It’s the alcohol’s fault; it’s the stress of their job; you may even make the great sin of blaming yourself.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“I listen to my voice messages like once a month,” I remind Henry. “You should’ve texted me.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“There was no going around it, so we tried to race back to the inlet, but the storm was moving too fast. Winds over fifty miles an hour. It hit us all at once like a heavenly fist, a mighty slam of stinging rain and raucous seas.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“Most of us have simple passions at the core of who we are. Those passions might change over time, but at any one moment, I feel like there’s a striving inside us that frames our decisions. The shame is that most people never ask themselves what their passions are, much less look deep into others. They just do whatever feels right at any one moment,”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“It’s the water beyond the titanium sand that draws me in. Not blue, not even the bright green of a clear lagoon, something more like sea foam. A green so bright it has a tint of yellow. The color of clarity. Of shallow water over white sand.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“I bang my head on a pipe. We both laugh. “This thing was not built for this,” I say.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“And it’s hard to say who moves first. There is a lightning bolt of awareness, an electrical shock as my mind rewires itself to cope with this looming fact: We are about to kiss. And then I’m pulling him into me, and I swear I feel him pulling me as well, and lips that I have damned crash into the lips that damned them. Holding his face, like one might cup a chalice, I realize how thirsty I was for this. How badly I want him right then, in that moment. I don’t care who he is, who I am, or about any story.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“We like to build on the edge, don’t we? Right on the edge of disaster. Because if we don’t, it leaves room for someone else to build between us and whatever it is we desire. We’re all like Icarus in that way.” Ness points toward the natural jetty to the south. “Let’s walk the shell line this way.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“The best kisses in the world take place at night, in the ocean, with two naked bodies coiled around one another, only the stars to keep them company.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“I think that, with a lot of art, you just have to be bad at it a long time before the magic happens.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“What felt interminable the first time now passes with a quickness borne of familiarity. It makes me wonder if life seems to accelerate as we get older simply because our days and our experiences become routine. The things we recognize flash right by, where once they held our attention.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“The sudden infusion of so much threatens to cheapen the intense enjoyment of so little.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“The things we recognize flash right by, where once they held our attention. Only the new bears careful contemplation, and the new gets harder and harder to come by.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“But then I realize that no journey is ever truly the same the second time around. What felt interminable the first time now passes with a quickness borne of familiarity. It makes me wonder if life seems to accelerate as we get older simply because our days and our experiences become routine. The things we recognize flash right by, where once they held our attention. Only the new bears careful contemplation, and the new gets harder and harder to come by.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“Ahead, twin rows of crape myrtles dot the road. They’re losing their flowers. Purple petals ring the trunks, fallen mementos of a past bloom like photos from college years. But unlike people, trees flower again in the spring; they age in great looping circles. We ride a roller coaster once around, shuddering up clacking tracks and then screaming our fool heads off all the way down.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“no journey is ever truly the same the second time around.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“we at the paper are small fries.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“Coastlines around the world were being redrawn while people argued whether anything was even occurring, much less whether it was our fault. When”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“Abusive relationships often go like this: falling in love, not seeing the ugly side, coming up with rationalizations when you do. It’s hard to get free, because you just want to recapture some lost feeling. You want to feel safe, respected, honored again. And you’ll play games with your mind to make that happen. It’s the alcohol’s fault; it’s the stress of their job; you may even make the great sin of blaming yourself. By”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“being in my mom’s skin, feeling what she’d felt those years before. It was the sudden realization that my dying granny, who had been distant and alien to me, was my mom’s mom.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“you think you know what you want, but once you have it, the hole you thought it would fill is that much bigger. The want is what exists, not the thing we lust after.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“Shelling is like relationships,” Ness says. He turns away from me and scans the beach, makes an adjustment with the wheel. “I can see that.” He nods to himself. “Yeah, I can totally see that.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector

“Life has a way of being both more surreal and more predictable than readers can tolerate.”
― Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector