Wendy Wunder Quotes & Sayings

If Cam finally learned one lesson before she died, it would be that being kind was sometimes more important than being right. — Wendy Wunder

So, what is the opposite of a "helicopter parent?" I wonder. A subway parent? A Sinking ship parent? A hibernating bear? — Wendy Wunder

Maybe hope and sadness can coexist, she thought. That felt like a significant idea. Maybe Cam could hope without denying that huge part of herself that needed to be sad. She didn't have to sacrifice one for the other. Maybe all people were both hopeful and sad in every moment of their lives. — Wendy Wunder

Is he drunk?' the attendant asked as they boarded the early morning flight.
'Not yet,' said Grey. — Wendy Wunder

Mind if I take the flamingo?"
"It's $2.89."
"Whoa, Darren, you drive a hard bargain. How about I'm just going to take it? — Wendy Wunder

At the end of the street the sharp white needle of the church's steeple poked into the sky as if heaven were a big balloon that needed to be popped. — Wendy Wunder

*Go cow-tipping.* Close enough to donkey-napping. — Wendy Wunder

The magic thing about home is that it feels good to leave, and it feels even better to come back. — Wendy Wunder

Perfect should never be a goal. Perfect just happens if you let it. — Wendy Wunder

You need to be flagrantly insouciant.
You care way too much.
And because of that you will be paralyzed for life and miss out on everything. — Wendy Wunder

We weren't put on this earth to go it alone. — Wendy Wunder

She'd trained herself for so long not to want or to hope or to wish, that she had a hard time pinning down something to ask for. — Wendy Wunder

She really needs to believe she's special. I admire that about her. Because you have to believe you're special before you can do anything special — Wendy Wunder

I think there could be different versions of truth, he says. You choose your truth, and then you build your life around it. — Wendy Wunder

Ms Brennan is telling the very few people who attended an educational event: "You are warriors against the cult of stupidity that is taking over our nation. — Wendy Wunder

Infinity fascinated her. How systems and universes could keep getting infinitely smaller in one direction and infinitely larger in another. How the shape of an atom so precisely mimicked the shape of the solar system. How there wasn't an end to anything. — Wendy Wunder

Ah. Alicia, see? Didn't I tell you that's what she needed to begin with? Maybe a little schtupping and it would make the cancer go away. It works with pimples.'
'Nana! — Wendy Wunder

Perry was in charge of music; Asher, lighting, seating, and structures; and presiding the service was Elaine, who was, not suprisingly, a certified minister and wedding planner. — Wendy Wunder

I have left behind what tethered me to the lake. The sadness. The self-pity. The dark tentacles of the murky sea monster only I could see. And I have come to appreciate the ocean. How the sun and salt together can leave things weightless, easy, and smooth around the edges. Like sea glass and driftwood. — Wendy Wunder

My retelling of events to Zoe is what grounds them, shapes them, makes them real. If I can't tell Zoe about kissing Danny Spinelli, it didn't happen. — Wendy Wunder

Just go with it. You are a princess.'
'What does that *mean*, though?' Cam asked. 'How-'
'Oh, my God, Campbell. Be quiet!' He laughed. — Wendy Wunder

And I learn that facing your greatest fear is liberating. You no longer have to worry about it, because it has already happened. And you have survived. I want to face some more fears, it feels so freaking liberating. I want to just jump off the freaking Brooklyn Bridge. — Wendy Wunder

This is the part of the horror film where you yell at the girl on the screen,'Don't *go*. You idiot! Don't go! Why are they always so stupid?' Cam *told* her mom he could be a serial killer. — Wendy Wunder

Get used to that, Nana. He has a way of appearing out of thin air.'
'Oh my. Asher. Hm. Hm. Hm. Turn around. He's beautiful, Campbell. Are you schtupping my granddaughter?' she asked him.
'No, ma'am.'
'Well, I give you my permission.'
And just liked that, Cam's love life was ruined forever. If and when she ever 'schtupped' Asher, she'd have to do everything she could not to think of her grandmotehr. — Wendy Wunder

No one can understand exactly what grief feels like for another person, because depending on your relationship to the deceased, you feel your grief differently from everyone else on the planet. -Hannah — Wendy Wunder

muted tones of puce--the color of tongue and bologna — Wendy Wunder

I've never known anyone who was saved who did not first save herself. — Wendy Wunder

There is such thing as a shy extrovert. People think extroverts are all loud and mouthy ... but that's not true. The definitions of extrovert and introvert have to do with how you process the world and from where you draw your energy. I'm shy, but I process my world by talking about it. Which makes me an extrovert. But I don't talk about it with just anyone. -Hannah — Wendy Wunder

So maybe God is orgasm. — Wendy Wunder

Some people say you should pay attention to coincidence. It can show you your path. Besides, these coincidences are enough to keep people believing. To give them some hope. — Wendy Wunder

A'ohe I pau ka 'ike I ka halau ho'okahi, she said. It was a popular hula adage that meant:All knowledge is not contained in only one school. — Wendy Wunder

Sometimes, Cam thought, men really are the fairer sex. The more gallant and pure and innocent and understanding. Perhaps because they didn't have to fight so hard. — Wendy Wunder

There is such a thing as a shy extrovert. People think extroverts are all loud and mouthy, like Rebecca Forman, but that's not true. The definitions of extrovert and introvert have do with how you process the world and from where you draw your energy. I'm shy, but I process my world by talking about it. Which makes me an extrovert. But I don't talk about it with just anyone. I have to talk about it with Zoe. — Wendy Wunder

Cam lifted the back of the U-Haul door to find Perry holding up a pair of Nana's enormous, silky white underpants.
'Whoops,' said Cam. 'You'll have to make do.' And she shut the door, ignoring Perry's continued pounding on the side of the trailer.
'I packed some cute stuff for her, too,' Asher said regretfully. — Wendy Wunder

How can anyone grow up with parents and still believe that love conquers all? What teenager on the planet has parents who are still in love? — Wendy Wunder

I am a freshwater girl. I live on the lake, and in New Jersey, that's rare. The girls on the other side of town have swimming pools, and the girls in the south have the seashore. Other girls are dry, breezy, salty, and bleached. I, on the other hand, am dark, grounded, heavy, and wet. Fed by springs, tangled in soft fernlike seaweed, I am closer to the earth. Saturated to the bone. I know it, and so do the freshwater boys, who prefer the taste of salt. — Wendy Wunder

If you believed that thoughts were energy and energy is matter (E=mc2) and matter never disappears, then a person can never truly leave you unless you stop thinking about them. Everything you shared with a person is still there swirling around in the universe. Love, Cam had to admit, might be real. And love endures. Relationships endure. Because thoughts are energy, energy is matter, and matter never disappears. — Wendy Wunder

Only the present moment matters. — Wendy Wunder

We never really went to church so AA is the closet thing I had to religion. And secretly, I do like it. All you have to do at AA is: Come to believe that a power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity. That's it.
You don't have to believe that someone died and came back to life. You don't have to believe that you're God's chosen people, or that women should hide their hair, or that some guy found a golden book that told him to go west and polygamize.
You don't have to eat God's body or drink his blood. You don't even have to call him God. And you don't have to call it him. You call it a higher power. And you can imagine it any way you want. — Wendy Wunder

Or just don't wear it. Then you can check off the skinny-dipping and kill two birds.'
'I'm not surfing naked, Asher.'
'Rats,' he said. — Wendy Wunder

You can't force your will with the universe. You just have to trust how things unfold. — Wendy Wunder

Cam stepped inside the music and let it close around her like a bubble. — Wendy Wunder

It's like being dropped into a black hole. A vacuum of existence. When I turn around, I will be instantly orphaned because I'll know no one can hack it. And no one is in charge. But it's worse than being orphaned because at the same time I am tethered to his failure. His problems are tied around my heart. I will never get away. I am afraid. But I turn around. — Wendy Wunder

This is what it felt like to have a broken heart. It felt less like a cracking down the middle and more like she had swallowed it whole and it sat bruised and bleeding in the pit of her stomach. — Wendy Wunder

I want to grow roots and vines from my body and ensnare him forever in my branches. No wonder we scare men away. — Wendy Wunder

None of them are wholesome. There are straight men, and there are gay men, but there are no wholesome men. — Wendy Wunder

I called your bluff,' he said.
'I see that,' she answered. 'I'll be down in five minutes.'
'Right on. — Wendy Wunder

you can pass a football,you can gas,but you yourself cannot just pass~cam after lilly's mother informs her that lilly has passed — Wendy Wunder

I think some girls get so caught up in the wedding part that they forget about the marriage part, and they end up bonded for life to the wrong person. It's not the wedding part that matters. — Wendy Wunder

My best friend Zoe has a perfect rear end and stick legs, and long, silky black hair. She is obviously not descended from William Penn. There are no dowdy pilgrims in her ancestry. Whereas I am grounded and mired in this place, she's like milkweed fluff that will take off with the first strong breeze. Stronger than fluff, though. She's like a bullet just waiting for someone to pull the trigger. — Wendy Wunder

There is no stronger bond than the one that gets you through childhood. — Wendy Wunder

He smiles at me, feeling the same elation I am, I can tell. I can tell because the feeling hangs between us like a rope. When you share a feeling with someone it takes on matter and weight. Even if you're the only ones who can sense it, it becomes a tangible thing with properties like shape and weight and heat. -Hannah — Wendy Wunder

You are the only girl worth pursuing. And that's why no one pursues you. -Danny — Wendy Wunder

Being kind is one of the hardest thing to be in high school because you're so terrified of being cut down yourself that you're always on your guard. But don't be like that. Be kind and you will be truly different. A standout. Unique and happy. — Wendy Wunder

It is a clusterfuck of stars. — Wendy Wunder

I come from a long line of downtrodden women who marry alcoholics. All the way back to my Lenni Lanape great-great-great-(lots of greats) grandmother, Scarlet Bird, a red-haired New Jersey Indian who married William Penn. I know this to be true because of the red highlights in my hair, and because, if you ever see the statue of William Penn in Philadelphia, the one that dictates the height of all the buildings in its perimeter, you will notice, if you look at him from behind, that he and I have the exact same rear end. — Wendy Wunder

We drive northwest for an hour to Michigan. Michigan is pretty much like rural New Jersey, except it's flattened out and well planned and pristine. Michigan would be New Jersey if you ran over it with a steamroller, excavated everything, and then put it back in neat rows with lots of space for everyone to move around in. It is practical and pretty, and it's a place where nothing spontaneous happens. This is a place where nothing happens unless people sit around and have a meeting about it first. The people are mostly white, which is weird, and the squirrels are black, also weird. — Wendy Wunder

Kind of like people. We're too lazy to change, so we'll just keep doing what we're doing until it's too late. — Wendy Wunder

We just wanted to see how you were doing,' Asher said.
'Well, that *is* a miracle,' said Perry. She took out her notebook and said out loud as she wrote, Number forty: Campbell ... has ... friends. — Wendy Wunder

Thank God no one was bouncing.'
'You can say that again, Ass Whisperer.'
'Thank God no one was bouncing,' Cam said, and she started to drift off to sleep. — Wendy Wunder

Having a resentment is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die — Wendy Wunder

She didn't want anyone reading her impermanent thoughts after she had permanently left the planet. — Wendy Wunder

But perception becomes truth if you can get people to see it your way. Truth is a much more fluid concept than you choose to believe it is -Danny — Wendy Wunder

Old people always exaggerate the danger and lawlessness of their youth, thought Cam, because their adult lives have become so boring. — Wendy Wunder

You cannot conceive of the depths of my sorrow, Campbell Maria Cooper." Alicia brought her fist to her mouth and her other hand to the rail of the bed and took a deep breath before she continued. "I will never be the same when you are gone. Things for me will be dim and gray and flat. But there is one thing that will keep me going, Campbell, and that is the belief in my connection to you. This thing. This crazy enmeshed love feeling that I have is real. Like this cup is real. Or this phone is real. And it will not just go away when you do. Okay? Wherever you are going, you will be connected to me by this thing, and you will never, ever be alone, okay? I want you to know that. — Wendy Wunder

The present moment can be chopped into infinitely smaller present moments. This moment is forever. And it is all that matters. — Wendy Wunder

Connections between people were temporary. Selfish. Opportunistic. Designed to perpetuate the species. "Love"
romantic love, anyway
was a fantasy people indulged in because otherwise, life was just too boring to tolerate. — Wendy Wunder

People keep talking about this unfolding. I can't trust the unfolding, okay? If there is some higher power making origami out of the universe, it hates my guts. I was a fat kid whose parents got divorced, whose father died, and then who got cancer herself. So no. I don't trust how things are going to unfold. — Wendy Wunder

Beauty didn't seem to be a priority for people anymore. If you had to judge by I-95, America had become a cancerous clusters of cheap houses, replicating out of control ... People just needed places to collect their stuff. — Wendy Wunder