Boy Underground Quotes

“Enjoying the world just as it is. Understanding that many things are incomplete. Allowing it to be so. One day there will come a time in your life when you know how everything has ended, but, unfortunately, that will be the day you die. On that day, even if you are waiting for an answer to something, you will know how that story ended: you died before learning. But you don’t want this to be the day you die. Nobody does. Those are your two choices. You can be alive and wondering, or you can die and know how everything turned out. Put that way, doesn’t the living option sound better?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground

“let’s just say it’s very common to want to know how everything will be resolved. We have all these situations in our lives that have not yet wrapped up, and we want to know how they will end. It can drive us crazy, wanting to know. But life will always be incomplete. Our situations with people and things will always be in progress. By the time you find out where your friend lives now, there will be other situations in your life to trouble you, and you will be dying to know how they will resolve. But then you will always be dying to know something. And dying is not much of a way to live.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground

“To accept something means you stop trying to fight with what is. You stop trying to change things that are outside of your control to change. That’s exhausting. You must be very tired. Some things are impossible for us to change, and any time we try to do something impossible, it’s going to wear us out. It saps our life force. Our energy. Maybe you hate a thing more than anything. But it’s what is. To accept it means to see that it is that way, and that it won’t be another way no matter how much you hate it.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground

“So many times in life we think we see what we want. That we know what we want. Looking back through the wrong end of that scope, I sometimes wonder why we still believe we know anything at all.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground

“We all have to go from not knowing to knowing. If you have shortcomings, I fully believe it’s better to look them in the eye. Pretending otherwise gets you nowhere.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground

“I didn’t want to pry. I felt like one of those typical white boys who didn’t understand a thing. Who didn’t even know, until a Japanese boy told me, that his family was not allowed citizenship. Maybe he wouldn’t have minded my trying to learn. But I felt intimidated by my own ignorance, sure that every word out of my mouth would be a mistake.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground

“Maybe you hate a thing more than anything. But it’s what is. To accept it means to see that it is that way, and that it won’t be another way no matter how much you hate it.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground

“He had still offered me no return address. I couldn’t have written back and given him my reaction to his words, even if I had known what to say.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground

“If you have shortcomings, I fully believe it’s better to look them in the eye. Pretending otherwise gets you nowhere.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground

“I decided to leave my bags there at the hotel. It was a risky move, because I knew if I didn’t get back to fetch them by noon, I could be on the hook for another day’s two-dollar charge.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground

“The trip started out like hell before it turned into heaven. I point that out because I’ve come to think life might be like that straight across the board.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground

“Run, Steven. Run fast and far.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Boy Underground