Lauren Bachman > Lauren's Quotes

“Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. So we're all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding.”
― Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything

“I'm not concentrating on anything in particular, just reading a lot of fiction now - ... - everything I can get my hands on - feeding a hunger that can't be satisfied.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Strange about learning; the farther I go the more I see that I never knew even existed. A short while ago I foolishly thought I could learn everything - all the knowledge in the world. Now I hope only to be able to know of its existence, and to understand one grain of it. Is there time?”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Whatever happens to me, I will have lived a thousand normal lives by what I might add to others not yet born. That’s enough.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“No one really starts anything new, Mrs. Nemur. Everyone builds on other men's failures. There is nothing really original in science. What each man contributes to the sum of knowledge is what counts.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

“Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“But the you who you are tonight is the same you I was in love with yesterday, the same you I’ll be in love with tomorrow.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“All relationships are tough. Just like with music, sometimes you have harmony and other times you have cacophony.”
― Gayle Forman

“Shouldn't I stay? Soldier through it? Maybe if I'd had some practice, maybe if I'd had more devastation in my life, I would be more prepared to go on. It's not that my life has been perfect. I've had disappointments and I've been lonely and frustrated and angry and all the crappy stuff everyone feels. But in terms of heartbreak, I've been spared. I've never toughened up enough to handle what I'd have to handle if I were to stay.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today.”
― Gayle Forman , Where She Went

“You don’t share me. You own me.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“I've become to realize there's a world of difference between knowing something happened, even knowing why it happened, and believing it.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“In the calculus of feelings, you never really know how one person's absence will affect you more than another's.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“We were both music-obsessed, each in our own way. If we didn't entirely understand the other person's obsession, it didn't matter, because we understood our own.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“They've poisoned you with this 'love is patient, love is kind' bullshit since you were a kid. But love is scientific, man. I mean, it's really just a chemical reaction in the brain. Sometimes that reaction lasts a lifetime, repeating itself over and over again. And sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it goes supernova and then starts to fade. We're all just chemical hearts. Does that make love any less brilliant? I don't think so.”
― Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts

“Draft Three
Because I never realized that you could fall in love with humans the same way you fall in love with songs. How the tune of them could mean nothing to you at first, an unfamiliar melody, but quickly turn into a symphony carved across your skin; a hymn in the web of your veins; a harmony stitched into the lining of your soul”
― Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts

“Because I have never met anyone that I wanted in my life that way before.
But you.
I could make an exception for you.”
― Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts

“The universe is not the magical place people like to paint it as. It's excruciatingly beautiful, but there's no magic there, just science.”
― Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts

“Draft Six
Because you're worth nothing less than stardust, but all I can give you is dirt”
― Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts

“I like to have answers ready when people ask me about myself. I mean, if I don't know who I am, how is anyone else ever supposed to?”
― Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts

“As it turns out, forever is not as long as I thought it would be.”
― Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts

“Because it seems like a lot of hassle, liking someone. Your brain runs hot, the cogs inside your mind jarring together until all the oil of your thoughts is burned away. The fire spreads to your chest, where it chars your lungs and turns your heart to embers. And right when you think the flames have burned away everything but your skeleton, the spark skips from your bones to immolate not only your flesh, but your entire life.”
― Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts

“Human beings could not be mended with gold seams.”
― Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts

“People aren't empty vessels for you to fill up with your daydreams.”
― Krystal Sutherland, Our Chemical Hearts

“We - as readers or writers, tellers or listeners - understand each other, we share knowledge of the structures of our myths, we comprehend the logic of symbols, largely because we have access to the same swirl of story. We have only to reach out into the air and pluck a piece of it.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

“In a sense, every story or poem is a vacation.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: For Kids

“The amazing thing about books is how they have lives of their own.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

“Now we know, as she does, that she can carry on, that discovering that men can't be counted on doesn't mean the world ends, that she's a whole person.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

“The thing about loss-of-innocence stories, the reason they hit so hard, is that they're so final. You can never go back.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

“We want strangeness in our stories, but we want familiarity, too. We want a new novel to be not quite like anything we've read before. At the same time, wee look for it to be sufficiently like other things we've read so that we can use those to make sense of it.”
― Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines