Jesse Andrews Quotes & Sayings

So in order to understand everything that happened, you have to start from the premise that high school sucks. Do you accept that premise? Of course you do. It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. In fact, high school is where we are first introduced to the basic existential question of life: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad? — Jesse Andrews

Bon Iver: Way too emotionally high stakes for casual listening in the sense that it makes every single part of your life feel like the part of a TV show where you are in a hospital saying goodbye for the very last time — Jesse Andrews

Just because something is weird and hard to understand doesn't mean it's creative. — Jesse Andrews

But the hardest is watching your son watching his friend die. — Jesse Andrews

You can't fight Mom's unstoppable move. It probably how Mom got to be boss of a nonprofit: Nonprofits are all about persuading people to do stuff by talking at them. It's like Will Carruthers talking you into giving him your Doritos 'one time,' except that the nonprofit is going to jump you in the locker room and whip your naked buttocks with a towel. — Jesse Andrews

Earl and I actually didn't have much in common with each other, either, but we were the only ten-year-olds in Pittsburgh who liked Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and that counted for something. It actually counted for a lot. — Jesse Andrews

Basically, being a senior means that when people throw things at your teeth, it's accidental. In other words, being a senior is awesome. — Jesse Andrews

Girls like good-looking guys, and I am not very good-looking. In fact, I sort of look like a pudding — Jesse Andrews

Look, I was an idiot. I didn't want people to think that I had a crush, so I decided to give everyone the impression that I truly, honestly hated Madison Harter. For no reason. Just thinking about this makes me want to punch myself in the eyeball. — Jesse Andrews

He was especially excited about Aguirre, the Wrath of God. "Look at this crazy dude," he yelled, point at Klaus Kinski, who on the cover is wearing a Viking helmet and looks like a psychopath. So
with Dad's permission
we put the film in and watched it. This would turn out to be the single most important thing ever to happen in our lives. — Jesse Andrews

The young nihilists," Dad called us.
"What are nihilists?"
"Nihilists believe that nothing has any meaning. They believe in nothing."
"Yeah," said Earl. "I'm a nihilist.
"Me, too," I said.
"Good for you," Dad said, grinning. Then he stopped grinning and said, "Don't tell your mom. — Jesse Andrews

Even after somebody dies, you can still keep learning about them — Jesse Andrews

Let's face it: Most girls are annoying. I mean, most humans are annoying, so it's not specific to girls. Also, I don't really mean "annoying." I guess I mean that most humans like to try to fuck up your plans. — Jesse Andrews

I am the Thomas Edison of conversational stupidity. — Jesse Andrews

She was now using a voice that women usually reserve for cats. — Jesse Andrews

I entered Excessive Modesty Mode. Nothing is stupider and more ineffective than Excessive Modesty Mode. It is a mode in which you show that you're modest by arguing with someone who is trying to compliment you. Essentially, you are going out of your way to try to convince someone that you're a jerk. — Jesse Andrews

You cats mind if I make it a trio?' he asked me, and it was not a huge surprise that a dude of his appearance was speaking in Jazz Voice. — Jesse Andrews

No, you don't have to live inside my head. For every, just, insanely stupid thing I do or say, there are like fifty even worse ones that I just barely avoid doing or saying, just out of dumb luck. — Jesse Andrews

It's just never a good idea to compliment a girl's boobs. [ ... ] "You have nice boobs." Bad. "You have two nice boobs." Worse. "Two boobs? Perfect." F minus. — Jesse Andrews

Maybe after you die you get sent to a giant room with archives of newspapers that have been written by these angel journalists specifically about your life and then you read them and they look like this. That would be insanely depressing. Hopefully at least some of her headlines would be about the other people in your life and not just you. — Jesse Andrews

Oh! Hello! I didn't see you there. My name is Darth Vader, and I'm the president of Evil Villains In favor of Leukemia, a.k.a. EVIL. Appearing in the lower left-hand corner: Evil Villains In favor of Leukemia — Jesse Andrews

It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucked. — Jesse Andrews

I don't know how to live a normal human life. — Jesse Andrews

The best ideas are always the simplest. — Jesse Andrews

Inevitably, however, a dude approached us. He was white. Jazz camp was mostly white dudes. This dude was clutching a gold-embossed tenor sax case, and on his head was a fedora with two different eagle feathers in it. — Jesse Andrews

I think I might have a disorder where your emotions frequently malfunction and a lot of the time you're sitting there feeling something inappropriate. It should be called Emotional Moron Disorder — Jesse Andrews

Bud, this is it," Mr. McCarthy said. "This is the last year, and then you're gone. Let me tell you this: After high school, life only gets better. You're in a tunnel right now. There's a light glimmering there at the end of it. You gotta make it to that light. High school is a nightmare, bud. It might be the worst years of your life. — Jesse Andrews

The balance of power had shifted in ways that none of us yet understood. There was tension in the air. It was a moment of great opportunity, and greater danger. — Jesse Andrews

Jesus Christ in a cockwagon. — Jesse Andrews

I don't want to sound condescending, so I'm not going to say anything else, except that it is literally impossible to imagine a thing dumber than sports. — Jesse Andrews

You can pretty much take any sentence in this book and if you read it enough times, you will probably end up committing a homocide — Jesse Andrews

Urrrrnngh.
What is that noise.
Regretful polar bear. — Jesse Andrews

One thing I've learned about people is that the easiest way to get them to like you is to shut up and let them do the talking. — Jesse Andrews

Are you done eating that?"
"What?"
"You shouldn't finish that, Dad's gonna want some."
"The hell he will."
"He will."
"It's so nasty. Son, it's so nasty."
"Then why are you finishing it?"
"Taking a bullet. — Jesse Andrews

Liv! The perpetrator has probably not returned to the scene of the crime. Pee Diddy is long gone by now. — Jesse Andrews

No one seemed to know how my broken arm got infected. Pretty quickly I stopped asking questions about it. I was worried I would find out that there were other basic medical facts that nurses didn't know; like where skin comes from, or how surgery works. — Jesse Andrews

And if a jock. God forbid, witnesses you hobnobbing with theater kids, he will immediately assume you are gay, and there is no force on earth greater than the fear jocks have homosexuals. None. It's like the Jewish fear of Nazis, except the complete opposite with regard to who is beating the crap out of whom. So I guess it's more like the Nazi fear of Jews. — Jesse Andrews

It's like a buffet, basically. Like this really expensive buffet, except also you have to eat all of what's on your plate or they expel you. So conceptually that's kind of fucked up. If that happened at real buffets, that would be incredible. If you were like, 'Hmm, this moo shu pork has kind of a chalky dirt taste,' and then some enormous Chinese guy is like, 'EAT IT OR WE WILL GIVE YOU AN F, AND ALSO WE WILL KICK YOU OUT OF THE RESTAURANT,' that just doesn't seem like a good business model. — Jesse Andrews

And the point of Rachel the Film should really have been to express how awful and shitty that loss was, that she would have become a person with a long awesome life if she had been allowed to continue living, and that this was just a stupid meaningless loss, a motherfucking loss, a loss loss loss fucking loss, there was no fucking meaning to it, there was nothing that could come out of it ... — Jesse Andrews

Having friends is how your life gets fucked up. — Jesse Andrews

She's fourteen, which means that any kind of normal interaction with her is doomed to failure. We used to be pretty good friends, but fourteen-year-old girls are psychotic. Her main interests are yelling at Mom and not eating whatever is for dinner. — Jesse Andrews

Mitzvah" is Hebrew for "colossal pain in the ass. — Jesse Andrews

I guess I was actually sort of grateful that someone else was taking over my life. I mean, I'm obviously pretty terrible at managing my own life, so it was nice to know that it was in good hands. But also it was nice to have all these concrete tasks to do and be sort of distracted and consumed by them. It kept me from thinking about every depressing and weird thing that was going on at that time. — Jesse Andrews

The plot of the movie seemed stupid to them: Aguirre and everyone were searching for a city that it said right at the beginning did not exist. They didn't understand that that was the whole point. They didn't get that it was awesome because it was so insanely meaningless. — Jesse Andrews

There was just something about her dying that I had understood but not really understood, if you know what I mean. I mean, you can know someone is dying on an intellectual level, but emotionally it hasn't really hit you, and then when it does, that's when you feel like shit. — Jesse Andrews

I just realized that you may not know what 'fin' means. It is a filmmaking term. Specifically, it is French for 'This movie is over, which is good, because it probably confused the hell out of you, because it was made by French people. — Jesse Andrews

Well, Greg, I think that it just means that even after somebody dies, you can... you can still keep learning about them, you know, their life. It can keep unfolding itself to you just as long... just as long as you pay attention to it. — Jesse Andrews

Mom was asking me to resume a friendship that had no honest foundation and ended on screamingly awkward terms. How do you do that? You can't. — Jesse Andrews

[Earl, on liking someone] Because, honestly, the rational part of me know for a rock-solid fact that I would never, ever get with Madison Hartner. But that was just the rational part of me. There's always a stupid irrational part of you, too, and you can't get rid of it. You can never completely kill off that tiny absurd spark of hope that this girl-against all odds, although she could date any guy at school, not to mention guys at college, and even though you look like the Oatmeal Monster and are a compulsive eater and suffer from constant congestion and say so many stupid things per day that it seems like a Stupid Things company is paying you to do it- this girl might like you. — Jesse Andrews

If after reading this book you come to my home and brutally murder me, I do not blame you. — Jesse Andrews

Usually it's when your guard is down that you find yourself saying the most dick sentences of your life. — Jesse Andrews

It's like when a kitten tries to bite something to death. The kitten clearly has the cold-blooded murderous instinct of a predator, but at the same time, it's this cute little kitten, and all you want to do is stuff it in a shoebox and shoot a video of it for grandmas to watch on YouTube. — Jesse Andrews

Greg: Scott, great horde.
My realization was that I could never *actually* live a life where I had to be constantly doing things like praising a dude's horde.
So that made me feel better about myself. — Jesse Andrews

But a movie doesn't have to be good if it has Hugh Jackman. — Jesse Andrews

When you convert a good book to a film. stupid things happen — Jesse Andrews

Q: Are you guys shooting a movie?
A: No. We're opening a mid-priced Italian restaurant.
Q: Huh?
A: Yes of course we're shooting a movie.
Q: What's the movie about?
A: It's a documentary about human stupidity.
Q: Can I be in your movie?
A: We'd be stupid not to put you in it. — Jesse Andrews

There is no force on earth greater than the fear jocks have of homosexuals. None. It's like the Jewish fear of the Nazis, except the complete opposite with regard to who is beating the crap out of whom. So I guess it's more like the Nazi fear of the Jews. — Jesse Andrews

The most beautiful thing about you is that you're not a sock puppet. — Jesse Andrews

Also, she does this thing women sometimes do with their eyebrows where they just completely shave them off and draw news ones in a different weird place with a Sharpie or something, and the more you think about it, the more your stomach starts churning around and you want to claw your own head. — Jesse Andrews

Greg, we all like weirdos. — Jesse Andrews

I'm gonna do everything I can for you, because you're a good kid. Greg, you're a fucking great kid." I had never heard Mr. McCarthy use the F-word, so this at least was sort of exciting. Still, my Excessive Modesty reflex would not be denied. "I'm not that great of a kid." "You're an absolute beast," said Mr. McCarthy. "That's all there is to it. Get to class. Here's a note. We all think you're a total ... ferocious ... beast." The note said: "I had to meet with Greg Gaines for five minutes. Please excuse his absence. He is a beast. Mr. McCarthy. 11:12 am. — Jesse Andrews

He was was especially excited about Aguirre, the Wrath of God. 'Look at this crazy dude,' he yelled, pointing at Klaus Kinski, who on the cover is wearing a Viking helmet and looks like a psychopath. — Jesse Andrews

We used to be pretty good friends, but fourteen-year-old girls are psychotic. — Jesse Andrews

Mom has never allowed video games in the house, except for the educational kind, like Math Blaster, and that wasn't so much to teach us that video games sucked. — Jesse Andrews

The point is that by seventh period, he's been exposed to four hours of grinding stupidity, and he wants to slit his wrists. For the first ten minutes of lunch, he shakes his head angrily at everything I say. Then eventually he snaps out of it. — Jesse Andrews

But you gotta live your own life. You gotta take care a your own shit before you get started doing things for errybody else. — Jesse Andrews

So if this were a normal book about a girl with leukemia, I would probably talk a shitload about all the meaningful things Rachel had to say as she got sicker and sicker, and also probably we would fall in love and have some incredibly fulfilling romantic thing and she would die in my arms. But I don't feel like lying to you. She didn't have meaningful things to say, and we definitely didn't fall in love. She seemed less pissed with me after my stupid outburst, but she basically just went from irritable to quiet. — Jesse Andrews

So the rich kids aren't the alpha group of the school. The next most likely demographic would be the church kids: They're plentiful, and they are definitely interested in school domination. However, that strength
the will to dominate
is also their greatness weakness, because they spend so much time trying to convince you to hang out with them, and the way they try to do that is by inviting you over to their church. 'We've got cookies and board games,' they say, or that sort of thing. 'We just got a Wii set up!' Something about it always seems a little off. Eventually, you realize: These same exact sentences are also said by child predators. — Jesse Andrews

Even if you do die, I was thinking today, it's really only on the arbitrary human scale that a human life seems fort, or long, or whatever, and like, from the perspective of eternal time, the human life is vanishingly small, like it's really equivalent whether you live to be 17 or 94 or even 20,00 years old, which is obviosusly impossible, and then, on the other hand, from the perspective of an ultra-nanoinstant, which is the smallest measurable unit of time, a human life is almost infinite even if you die when you're like, a toddler. So either way it doesn't even matter how long you live. So I don't know if that makes you feel better, but it's just something to think about. — Jesse Andrews

Also, the movie had the first breasts I had ever seen, although they were not what I had been led to believe that breasts looked like. They were like cow udders, and one of them was bigger than the other. (In retrospect, this may have been responsible for my complete lack of sexual development, which we've already talked about, I guess at least I wasn't going around saying things like, 'The best thing about your two boobs is that they are the same size. — Jesse Andrews

We loved it. We loved how slow it was. We love that it took forever. Actually, we never wanted it to end. We loved the jungle, the rafts, the ridiculous armor and helmets ... I think most of all we loved that it didn't have a happy ending for anyone. The whole time we were sort of expecting that someone would survive because that's how stories work: Even if everything is a total disaster, someone lives to tell the tale. But not with Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Hell no. Everyone dies. That's awesome. — Jesse Andrews

Then, out of the blue, Aaron Winer saved the day. He took her to some movie and made out with her in the back row. The next day, at school, they were boyfriend and girlfriend. Bam! Problem solved. I pretended to be bitter about this, but in fact I was so relieved that I started laughing hysterically in history class and had to be excused to go the nurse. — Jesse Andrews

There are two kinds of hot girls: Evil Hot Girls, and Hot Girls Who Are Also Sympathetic Good-Hearted People and Will Not Intentionally Destroy Your Life (HGWAASGHPAWNIDYL). — Jesse Andrews

I ain't eatin out in no Lawrenceville," said Earl with disdain — Jesse Andrews

This book probably makes it seem like I hate myself and everything I do. But that's not totally true. I mostly just hate every person I've ever been. I'm actually fine with myself right now. — Jesse Andrews

I'm not really putting this very well. My point is this: This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little-Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind for Good, or whatever. And, unlike most books in which a girl gets cancer, there are definitely no sugary paradoxical single-sentence-paragraphs that you're supposed to think are deep because they're in italics. Do you know what I'm talking about? I'm talking about sentences like this:
The cancer had taken her eyeballs, yet she saw the world with more clarity than ever before.
Barf. Forget it. For me personally, things are in no way more meaningful because I got to know Rachel before she died. If anything, things are less meaningful. All right? — Jesse Andrews

oaky sounds grea8~! but can i bring frined earl hes cool ul'l liek him ???/ — Jesse Andrews

I realize that I probably seem obsessed with food and animals. That's because they're the two strangest things in the entire world. Just sit in a room and think about them. Actually, don't, because you might have a panic attack.) So — Jesse Andrews

When girls see two Unattractives dating, they think, 'Hey! Love is possible even for unattractive people. They have to love different things about each other than their physical appearances. That's so sweet.' Meanwhile, dudes see it and think, 'That is one less guy I have to compete with for the most succulent boobs in the Boob Competition that is high school. — Jesse Andrews

So. If this was some normal fictional young-adult book, this is the part of the story where after the film, the entire high school would rise to their feet and applaud, and Earl and I would find True Acceptance and begin to Truly Believe in Ourselves and Rachel would somehow miraculously make a recovery, or maybe she would die but we would Always Have Her to Thank for Making Us Discover Our Inner Talent, and Madison would become my girlfriend and I would get to nuzzle her boobs like an affectionate panda cub whenever I wanted.
That is why fiction sucks. None of that happened. Instead, pretty much everything happened that I was afraid of, except worse. — Jesse Andrews

Cat Stevens is also the only other member of the family who enjoys eating the meats that Dad brings home from the Strip, although sometimes he expresses his enjoyment by barfing. — Jesse Andrews

It was time to ride the wave or drown in a sea of crazy. — Jesse Andrews

I learned nothing. Seriously, I can't tell you anything about Jews, I am a Jew, and I still deserve an F in Jewishness
I think it's Judaism
See, that's what I'm talking about. I don't know what Jews believe. Like, do Jews believe in heaven? Are we suppose to believe in that?
I don't know.
Yeah. Is there Jewish heaven? What happens when Jews die? You know? — Jesse Andrews

Theory: People always get fired up when an unattractive girl an unattractive dude are dating each other. — Jesse Andrews

Have you ever noticed that people look like either rodents or birds? And you can classify them that way, like, I definitely have more of a rodent face, but you look like a penguin. — Jesse Andrews

Who else is there to lead the masses? The smart kids? Please. They have no interests in politics. They're hoping simply to attract as little attention as possible until high school is over. Then they can escape to some college where no one will mock them for knowing how an adverb works. — Jesse Andrews

I might accidentally become like a hermit or a terrorist or something. — Jesse Andrews

He is pacing back and forth humming the theme from Rent or maybe cats. — Jesse Andrews

This book probably makes it seem as if I hate myself and everything I do. I mostly just hate every person I've ever *been*
- Greg Gaines (CHARACTER), Me and Earl and the Dying Girl — Jesse Andrews

The theater kids? My God, it would be a bloody massacre. They would be found beaten to death with their own dog-eared The Wiz songbooks. — Jesse Andrews

I said, in my new loud middle-aged-Jewish-woman voice. — Jesse Andrews

You could have an eight-inch thick titanium diaper bolted to your pelvis, and you would still somehow get laid. It should be their official tourism slogan: Israel Where Virginity Goes to Die. — Jesse Andrews

Basically, my point is not that you listen to people to learn anything listening. You're doing it to be nice and make them like you, because everyone likes to talk. — Jesse Andrews