The Book of Hidden Things Quotes

“you can lie to everybody but yourself, because when you lie to yourself, all you do is train yourself to believe in lies, which makes it easier for your opponents to feed you theirs”
― Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things

“When you are young, you are immense—then you shrink. Everything is possible at five, but what is left for you at forty? With every choice you make you renounce all the choices you could have made instead, and so you become smaller and smaller, each choice consuming you a little, burning your possibilities, until nothing is left of you. Death is a progressive shrinking that brings you from vastness to nothingness”
― Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things

“The secret is that we all, boys and girls, think we are the centre of the universe. We think we are significant. You make someone believe that you think that too, that you think they are significant, and they'll do whatever you want, just to please you and confirm your belief. It's as simple as that.”
― Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things

“Memory is like Alice's medicines; it makes things bigger and smaller at whim.”
― Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things

“What we call a coincidence, he would say, is a system we don’t understand yet.”
― Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things

“But we didn’t know what we were afraid of; we were just afraid, and our incapacity to put a name on that fear made it infinitely worse.”
― Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things

“What’s more, you have an intellectual obligation to do so. Wherever there is a boundary, wherever it is said that you are not allowed to walk any further, any intelligent person will be moved to do just that.”
― Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things

“He fishes from a pocket the bag of weed he took from Art’s car. ‘Here. A tried and tested painkiller. All natural, too.’ ‘I’m obliged.’ ‘I’m not kidding. If the itchin’ gets bitchin’, roll a joint. You’ve got your doctor’s blessing, so, go for it.”
― Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things

“Swim or drown, boy, that’s the way it is.”
― Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things

“I haven’t heard that sound in fifteen, sixteen years, and it hits me so hard that is sends me flying, not through space, but through time, to travel back to when I was a teenager, to when I knew beyond a doubt that I was going to do brilliantly in life, that I had my friends on my side, and I was immortal.”
― Francesco dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things

“How is it that seventeen years have passed? Surely there is a mistake. They are dead and I am a grown-up who has wasted his best years following pipe dreams, squandering what little talent he had.”
― Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things

“Every grown man carries a dick-driven teenager inside, and we have to be careful not to unleash him;”
― Francesco Dimitri, The Book of Hidden Things