Laura Ruby Quotes & Sayings

Corn can add inches in a single day; if you listened, you could hear it grow. — Laura Ruby

She's still small and I still want to put her in my pocket.
-Seven Chillman, classmate — Laura Ruby

She was sorry she hadn't been braver when she'd had the chance. — Laura Ruby

We can all look up and say,. okay, there's the South Star,. there's the Big Dogpile, there's the Little Dipshit. Twinkle, twinkle. — Laura Ruby

It was delicious, his horror. She wanted to see it up close. She wanted to eat it. — Laura Ruby

A word about Hope House: there are places in the world where so many desperate people have lived and so many bad things have happened that the places themselves have become desperately bad. They're damp and weird and smell like foot fungus. The windows are never clean, and the linoleum curls up at the edges because it can't stand the floor. Every corner is sprayed with cobwebs and quivering shadows. When you walk into those bad places, you can feel a headache brewing between your eyebrows, a churning in your gut, a cold prickle at the back of your neck. You feel sad and angry and helpless, all at the same time. These bad places seem to hate you but, they also seem to want to keep you there very very much. — Laura Ruby

What?"
Finn remembered sitting at the kitchen table with Sean, both of them trying to say the world "table" in Polish. Roza had said, "You have tongue like cow!" and laughed and laughed.
"What?" Sean said again.
He had tongue like cow, he had mind like cow. Dull, wordless. — Laura Ruby

Because we don't have your typical gaps around here. Not gaps made of rocks or mountains. We have gaps in the world. In the space of things. So many places to lose yourself, if you believe that they're there. You can slip into the gap and never find your way out. Or maybe you don't want to find your way out. — Laura Ruby

There will be boys who will tell you you're beautiful, but only a few will see you. — Laura Ruby

Thinking that you can't protect the ones you love, you have to hope they're smart enough to save themselves. — Laura Ruby

It was his favorite part of the afternoon, or should have been: the sun bright and hot in the sky, the plants twitching their green fingers. — Laura Ruby

You will see the world. You will have love affairs with boys who see past a pretty face. You will be strong. You will call and tell me about it. — Laura Ruby

Everyone loves a villain. Or maybe not a villain, exactly, but someone you can point out and say, I might be weird, but I'm not weird like her. — Laura Ruby

Trying to get a handle on what he thought, what he felt, what he thought about what he felt and vice versa, was like trying to open a locked door by ramming it with his head. — Laura Ruby

You're a big help, Mr. I Read So Many Books. — Laura Ruby

She had no intention of breaking anyone's heart, except maybe her own. — Laura Ruby

Do you have a girl? Where's your girl? Where's your girl?" "She's her own girl, — Laura Ruby

People look, they don't see. — Laura Ruby

There will be boys who tell you you're beautiful, but only a few will see you -Babcia — Laura Ruby

I wanted you to choose this. To choose me. But it isn't always possible for two people to want the same thing. I want you, and that will have to be enough for both of us. — Laura Ruby

When she was little, someone gave her some weird book called The Wife Store. It was about a very lonely man who decided that he wanted to get married. So he went to the wife store, where endless women lined enormous shelves. He picked himself a wife and bought her. She was bagged up and put in a cart. He took her home. After that, the two of them went to the children store to buy a few kids.
Petey read this book over and over. Not because she liked it, but because she kept waiting for the story to change, kept waiting for the day she'd turn the page and a woman would get to the husband store. She kept waiting for justice. But, of course, the story never changed. She never got justice. If Petey were keeping one of her lists of the things she hated, she wold have to add: the fact that there was no justice. But The Wife Store was still on her shelf at home, if only to remind her that there were assholes in the world who would write such things, believe such things. — Laura Ruby

You use what moves you. — Laura Ruby

How do you know which one's the queen?'
'She's bigger than the others,' said Mel.
'That doesn't always help,' Petey said, 'I can't always find her.'
'Because she's not that much bigger, said Mel. 'You don't rely on her size as much as you try to use the way she moves. It's hard to describe. It's as if she walks in a more determined way' She pulled off her hat and smoothed her long, straight hair. 'She's got a big job. Babies to bear. Workers to inspire. A colony to manage. She moves like that. Like she's a woman with a plan. The best way to see her is to let your eyes lose their focus, let things get a bit fuzzy on you. See the bees as a whole rather than individuals. When you do that, you understand the entire pattern. The queen's movements will stick out because they're so different from everyone else's. — Laura Ruby

I have found that people never love the way they say they do. They can't. They are just people. Full of lies and sentiment and fear. — Laura Ruby

He preferred her barefoot, he said. She had such lovely feet. Roza didn't agree. What was lovely about feet that could not take you anywhere? What was lovely about feet that could not run? — Laura Ruby

I like to rub Twinkies under my arms. — Laura Ruby

I didn't care if it was magic. I just cared that I was riding with you. — Laura Ruby

People say the word 'nice' and they mean 'boring.' A lot of times nice is boring. But that's not what I mean. Roza was nice and not boring at all. — Laura Ruby

Is your work finished or is it just due? — Laura Ruby

THE SUN TOUCHED HER FACE LIKE THE SOFTEST CARESS. — Laura Ruby

Propose a theory to explain one of there eternal mysteries: Mona Lisa's smile, crop circles, or Velveeta.
Here is a theory of love:
you find a sister, you gain
a brother; you lose
a sister, you lose
a brother; you lose a cat,
you find a girl, you kiss
a girl, you find the cat,
you hope
that there is nothing left to lose, and
all there is, is there to find. — Laura Ruby

He was tired of everyone believing they knew everything there was to know about him, as if a person never grew, a person never changed, a person was born a weird and dreamy little kid with too-red lips and stayed that way forever just to keep things simple for everyone else. — Laura Ruby

You're only hurting yourself. Besides, the citizens like blood, don't they? They smell it. — Laura Ruby

But wasn't that love? Seeing what no one else could? — Laura Ruby

Finn fell asleep draped in Kittens and dreamed that the corn walked the earth on skinny white roots, liked to joke with the crows, and wasn't afraid of anything. — Laura Ruby

If Petey were keeping one of her lists of the things she hated, she would have to add: the fact that there was no justice. — Laura Ruby

She got icing all over her face. I think that's why I like her. For the good stuff, she's willing to get icing all over her face. Who wouldn't want a girl like that? — Laura Ruby

Mean as yellow jackets, dumb as dirt. He sighed, the sharp exhale like the hiss of the plants all around. — Laura Ruby

She clenched the blanket in her fist, and sighed, and breathed his name, and if she hasn't said it out load, he wouldn't have known what to call himself, because everything was her. — Laura Ruby

I've never understood why people choose to do the things that are hardest for them. — Laura Ruby

The principal: You're a smart girl, so I'm going to be blunt. I think you'd be a lot happier if you stopped acting so weird.
Me: Who says I'm not happy? — Laura Ruby

I'd rather tell you about a new horse, a forest of glass, and a long good night. — Laura Ruby

He grew out his hair," June says. "He looks amazing."

"He looks like a giant caramel with some carpet lint stuck to the top of it. — Laura Ruby

The way they knew that Bone Gap had gaps just wide enough for people to slip through, or slip away, leaving only their stories behind. — Laura Ruby

The way you learn to ride is by riding. — Laura Ruby

He clears his throat. 'Do you want to go to a movie or something?' The wings stop flapping. 'I can't. I'm sort of under house arrest.'
'Till when?'
'Till pigs fly and hell freezes over.'
'Soon, then.'
'Any minute. — Laura Ruby

Hoping so hard that there was one boy out there who wanted you as much as you wanted him, because you wouldn't know what you would do with yourself if this were not true. — Laura Ruby

Scarecrows weren't meant to scare the crows, they were meant to scare the corn. It was enough to give a person nightmares. Otherwise, why would so many horror movies have cornfields in them? — Laura Ruby

I'm sorry,' Finn mumbled, a global apology for everything he was, and everything he was not, and all the ways he couldn't let it go. — Laura Ruby

In despair, he left that farm and came to Bone Gap when it was a huge expanse of empty fields, drawn here by the grass and the bees and the strange sensation that this was a magical place, that the bones of the world were little looser here, double-jointed, twisting back on themselves, leaving spaces one could slip into and hide. — Laura Ruby

What have you got against people?"
Finn hated crowds. Thousands of people bumping and churning. "Too many opinions. — Laura Ruby

Miguel hated the corn, said the plants seemed . . . alive. When Finn reminded him that, duh, of course the corn was alive, all plants were alive, Miguel replied that the corn sounded alive alive. As if it wasn't just growing, it was ripping itself out of the ground and sneaking around on skinny white roots. — Laura Ruby

I'd be okay with that kind of trouble, Amber said, as a pair of flannel-clad farm boys headed toward them. — Laura Ruby

In the soil too fat and happy, the praying mantises too pious and too plentiful, — Laura Ruby

The nice part about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you're doing, someone else does. - ANONYMOUS — Laura Ruby

Rus, dancing alongside Roza like a monstrous, bedraggled pony. — Laura Ruby

Finn drifted around, rootless and aimless as dandelion fluff in the wind. — Laura Ruby

If other people thought art was important, then it would be required to graduate. But no, I don't have to take art. I do have to take math, which is just a waste of time because the numbers get all switched up in my brain, plus, calculators exist for a reason. I do have to take history, which is basically memorizing tariff acts till your brain bleeds. I do have to take four years of gym class with a bunch of jerks who punch me if they don't like what I say. But art? Optional. Even though art and music and literature and all that are what make us human. Algebra doesn't make us human. Games don't make us human. — Laura Ruby

Our moon is the same moon, our sun is the same sun, and the stars will sparkle for us no matter who or where or what erare
not sluts, not players, just people. — Laura Ruby

And I was thinking that it was so weird that the world could keep turning. I mean, that honey would still need to be delivered and vegetables would have to be picked and laundry would need to be done when I was so miserable. — Laura Ruby

All five of them were short and bowlegged, making them look like a chorus line of wishbones. — Laura Ruby

When you think about it, building this fence is crazy. Animals will keep climbing over it, or under it, or chewing their way through it. All kinds of animals. Maybe even some we didn't know existed. — Laura Ruby

Sean asked her if she was an Olympic weight lifter.
"No," she said. "I am Polish. — Laura Ruby

What a dumb accident a family was. Some people got lucky, some not so lucky, and some people got the booby prize. — Laura Ruby

It is nice. But a pretty face is just a lucky accident. Pretty can't feed you. And you'll never be pretty enough for some people. — Laura Ruby

Least, that's what it looked like. A roped-off room in a castle somewhere, a room made entirely of blocks of stone, icy and cold, even though a fire burned low in the hearth. A room where doomed queens went to die. — Laura Ruby

Abruptly, she let go of his wrists and allowed him to push her to her knees. She looked up, waited for his smile.
And then she punched him in the nuts. — Laura Ruby

Before you say it, Derek's boyfriend doesn't look anything like me. "

"How would you know? — Laura Ruby

Funny how you notice how beautiful things are just when you're about to leave them. — Laura Ruby

You are spiky spring
Humming Summer, wings that
beat
Back ghosts of winter. — Laura Ruby

Love the people who love you back. — Laura Ruby

Scarecrows weren't made to scare the crows, they were made to scare the corn — Laura Ruby

God will break California from the surface of the continent like someone breaking off a piece of chocolate. It will become its own floating paradise of underweight movie stars and dot-commers, like a fat-free Atlantis with superfast Wi-Fi. — Laura Ruby

And when your brother cries for her, I will feed on his tears. — Laura Ruby

The truth is," I say, "he's having my baby. It's a medical miracle. Someone call the newspapers. — Laura Ruby