Jeff Zentner Quotes & Sayings

That wouldn't be a bad way to die...giving off light for millions of years after you're gone. — Jeff Zentner

We are a fallen species, spitting on the gift of salvation. Humanity is irredeemable. — Jeff Zentner

For the most part, you don't hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone. — Jeff Zentner

Nothing stops when we're gone," Lydia said. "The seasons don't stop. This river doesn't stop. Vultures will keep flying in circles. The lives of the people we love won't stop. Time keeps unspooling. Stories keep getting written. — Jeff Zentner

So when I watch trains, it makes me think about how much movement there is in the world. How every train has dozens of cars and every car has hundreds of parts, and all those parts and cars work day after day. And then there are all these other motions. People are born and die. Seasons change. Rivers flow to the sea. Earth circles the sun and the moon circles Earth. Everything whirring and spinning toward something. And I get to be part of it for a little while, the way I get to watch a train for a minute or two, and then it's gone. — Jeff Zentner

Stick to the key of C, dude. No sharps or flats. More forgiving. — Jeff Zentner

Sometimes, though, you want to remember every minute you spent with someone. You want to remember even the most mundane moments. You wish you had inhabited them more completely, and marked them with yourself more indelibly - not in spite of their ordinariness, but because of it. But you only discover this when it's too late — Jeff Zentner

Some fall in glorious ways. One green fields of battle as old warriors, surrounded by friends, fighting for their homes, fighting cruelty.

Some fall crawling in the dirt of Forrestville, Tennessee, in the dark, impossibly young and alone, for no good reason at all. — Jeff Zentner

Funny how people move through this world leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what'd happen if all those people put their puzzle pieces together. — Jeff Zentner

Do you guys not get it? You can't hurt us anymore. You can't do anything to us. You can't take anything from us. You're nothing now. — Jeff Zentner

I've made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery. — Jeff Zentner

You're never safe from yourself. Your own blood will poison you. — Jeff Zentner

...Please take care of yourselves, my young friends."
"We will," Lydia said. Or at least we'll try. The world sometimes has different ideas. — Jeff Zentner

She's it. She's my everything. She's the standard by which I'll judge beauty for the rest of my life. I'll measure every touch to her breath on my skin. Every voice to her voice. Every mind to her mind. My measure of perfection. The name carved into me. If I could, I would lie with her under these stars until my heart burst. — Jeff Zentner

There are books stacked high around them - the way opportunity and possibility are stacked around them. — Jeff Zentner

You're telling someone in a wheelchair 'Walking is awesome. You should get up and walk.' It's not that easy. — Jeff Zentner

Irrationality loves company. — Jeff Zentner

Love deserves monuments, and this is the only kind I know how to build. — Jeff Zentner

What you call pride, I call courage. — Jeff Zentner

Writing is something that you can learn only by doing. To become a writer, you need an imagination, which you clearly have. You need to read books, which you clearly do. And you need to write, which you don't yet do, but should. — Jeff Zentner

Because we should do things we're afraid of. It makes it easier every time we do it. — Jeff Zentner

I write to make things death can't steal. — Jeff Zentner

I'm tired of watching children perish. I'm tired of watching the world grind up gentle people. I'm tired of outliving those I shouldn't be outliving. I've made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery. I needed to say that out loud to somebody other than my cats. Please take care of yourselves, my young friends. — Jeff Zentner

I watch the tip of my tie sway to and fro and wonder how humans got to a place where we said, "Whoa. Hold on. Before I can take you seriously, you need to hang a brightly colored strip of narrow pointy cloth around your neck. — Jeff Zentner

Wanting to believe something is powerful — Jeff Zentner

She got up , walked around the table, and gave him a lingering hug, running her fingers through the back of his hair. She'd been finding more excuses to hug him lately.

"What was that for?" Dill asked.

"Because you looked like your heart stepped on a Lego. — Jeff Zentner

They went to the column, where they stole a few more quiet minutes together, listening to the river wear its way deeper into the earth, the way people wear grooves into each other's hearts. — Jeff Zentner

If you're going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things. — Jeff Zentner

Pareidolia. One of my favorite words. It's when your mind sees a pattern you recognize where there isn't one. Like seeing a face in the moon. or shapes in the clouds."
Dr. Mendez smiles and says, mostly to himself, "Pareidolia. What a beautiful word."
"For something that isn't always beautiful."
"For something that isn't always beautiful. — Jeff Zentner

Our memories of our loved ones are the pearl we form around the grain of grief that causes us pain. — Jeff Zentner

The day may come when it takes some discernment to tell when someone loves you for you and when someone wants to stand near your fire. — Jeff Zentner

Lydia shook her head. "This is my life. Getting yelled at in a Walmart parking lot on a Friday night by somebody doing a bad impression of PG-13 fart-joke-movie comedian. — Jeff Zentner

We live in a series of moments and seasons and sense memories, strung end to end to form a sort of story. — Jeff Zentner

The worst days spent with her were better than the best days spent without her. — Jeff Zentner

How is it every time we're talking about the real world, you manage to bring up fantasy, and every time we're talking about fantasy, you manage to bring up the real world?

Travis shrugged. "My fantasies are more interesting than the real world and machines and tools are more interesting than you guys' fantasies. — Jeff Zentner

I sometimes look at my bookshelf now and think about how someday I'm going to die without ever reading a lot of the books there. And one might be life-changingly good and I'll never know. — Jeff Zentner

Nothing makes you feel more naked than someone identifying a desire you never knew you possessed. — Jeff Zentner

His mother was quiet for a moment. "I get out of bed every day because I never know where I'll meet with one of God's small graces. Maybe I'll be cleaning a room and find a dollar bill. Maybe I'll be at the gas station on a slow night, and I'll get to sit and be paid to watch the sun set. Or maybe I just won't hurt much that day. What a miracle each day is. To see the spirit of God move across the face of our lives like he did the waters in the darkness of creation. — Jeff Zentner

Whatever this is, I like it. However reckless, however unwise this is, I don't care. I'd rather lose him this way than any other way. — Jeff Zentner

I want you to be careful in this world. My heart is wrapped up in you. — Jeff Zentner

People live quiet lives and that's okay. There's dignity in that, no matter what you may think. — Jeff Zentner

music was the only beautiful thing he owned — Jeff Zentner