Collected Book Quotes: Everything, Everything

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Best of

Most people are good with their bodies or their minds but not both.
— “First Contact, Part Three.” Everything, Everything

Our bodies are having their own conversation separate and apart from us. Is this the difference between friendship and something else? This awareness that I have of him?
— “Forecast.” Everything, Everything

I try to ignore the feelings that surface when I think about them. There’s sadness that’s not quite sadness, and then guilt. ‘It’s weird to miss something you’ve never had-or don’t remember having, anyway.
— “Forecast.” Everything, Everything

I nod slowly, certain I agree with what he’s saying now, but equally certain that I’m going to disagree with whatever’s next.
— “Forecast.” Everything, Everything

I want to say something, not just something, but the perfect thing to comfort him, to make him forget his family for a few minutes, but I can’t think of it. This is why people touch. sometimes words are just not enough.
— “Olly Says.” Everything, Everything

Isn’t growing apart a part of growing up?
— “A Tale of Two Maddys.” Everything, Everything

Asymptote: A wish that continually approaches but never achieves fulfillment.
— “Madeline’s Dictionary.” Everything, Everything

It’s a strange thing to realize that you’re willing to die. It doesn’t come in a flash, a sudden epiphany. It happens slowly, a balloon leak in reverse.
— “Half Life.” Everything, Everything

Sometimes you do things for the right reasons and sometimes for the wrong ones and sometimes it’s impossible to tell the difference.
— “Other Worlds” Everything, Everything

They tried to stop me. They said it wasn’t worth my life, but I said that it was my life, and it was up to me to decide what it was worth. I said I was going to go and either I was going to die or I was going to get a better life.
— “Infected.” Everything, Everything

Promise: The lie you want to keep.
— “Madeline’s Dictionary.” Everything, Everything

I turn in his arms, thinking how quickly it’s become my favorite place in the world. Familiar, foreign, comforting, and thrilling all at once.
— “Remembrance of Things Present.” Everything, Everything

In my head I know I’ve been in love before, but it doesn’t feel like it. Being in love with you is better than the first time. It feels like the first time and the last time and the only time all at once.
— “The Murphy Bed.” Everything, Everything

Infinite: The state of not knowing where one body ends and another begins.
— “Madeline’s dictionary.” Everything, Everything

I once told Olly that I know my heart better than I knew anything else, and it’s still true. I know the places in my heart, but the names have all changed.
— “Geography.” Everything, Everything

Nothing hurts except my heart, but I’m trying not to use it. I keep the blinds closed. I read my books. Existential or nihilist ones. I have no patience for books that pretend life has meaning. I have no patience for happy endings.
— “Pretending.” Everything, Everything

My heart is too bruised and I want to keep the pain as a reminder. I don’t want sunlight on it. I don’t want it to heal. Because if it does, I might be tempted to use it again.
— “Reunion.” Everything, Everything

The Rest

I felt like I knew him, but now with him standing in front of me it doesn’t feel that way at all.
— “Olly.”

We are awkward together for a few moments, unsure what to say. The silence would be much less noticeable over IM. We could chalk it up to any number of distractions. But right now, in real life, it feels like we both have blank thought balloons over our heads.
— “Olly.”

Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience everything.
— “Perspectives.”

[…] wanting scares me. It’s like a weed that spreads slowly, just beneath your notice. Before you know it, it’s pitted your surfaces and darkened your windows.
— “Wonderland.”

One thing I’m certain of: Wanting just leads to more wanting. There’s no end to desire.
— “Wonderland.”

Madeline: You can find the meaning of life in a book.
[…]
Olly: What book can you find the meaning of life in?
Madeline: OK, maybe not just a single book, but if you read enough you’ll get there.
— “No Yes Maybe.”

What is it about being in the same room with him that makes me so conscious of my body and all its parts? He even makes me aware of my skin.
— “Forecast.”

[…] it’s not a competition if one person can’t even show up for the event.
— “Higher Education.”

I am not lonely […] I am alone. Those are different things.
— “Aloha Means Hello and Good-Bye, Part One.”

A photograph is a kind of time machine.
— “Aloha Means Hello and Good-Bye, Part One.”

I almost wish I hadn’t met him. How am I supposed to go back to my old life, my days stretching out before me with unending brutal sameness?
— “Madam, I’m Adam.”

I was happy before I met him. But I’m alive now, and those are not the same thing.
— “Happy Already.”

You’re not living if you’re not regretting.
— “Infected.”

Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love.
— “Zach.”

Just because it’s the first time doesn’t make it less real, does it? Even the universe has a beginning.
— “The Murphy Bed.”

You are delicious, but inedible.
— “This Time.”

My guilt is an ocean for me to drown in.
— “Readmitted.”

I’d rather be alive than out there living.
— “Geography.”