Zevin Gabrielle Quotes & Sayings

When I first started writing, I used to listen to music all the time because it would make time pass more quickly. And then I started to wonder if the music wasn't affecting my writing in ways that I didn't necessarily intend. — Gabrielle Zevin

People tell boring lies about politics — Gabrielle Zevin

...love, he thinks. What a bother. It's completely gotten in the way of his plan to drink himself to death, to drive his business to ruin. The most annoying thing about it is that once a person gives a shit about one thing, he finds he has to start giving a shit about everything.
No, the most annoying thing about it is that he's even started to like Elmo. — Gabrielle Zevin

Oh, all stories are the same, aren't they? Men and women fall in love or out of love. People are born; people die. It al ends happily or it all ends sadly, and the difference matters only to the people involved. — Gabrielle Zevin

The easiest way to get old is to be technologically behind ... — Gabrielle Zevin

A.J. feels for the engagement ring in his pocket. Is this the moment? No, too Jumbotron. — Gabrielle Zevin

All women are many women! I'm afraid you've never known very much about women. — Gabrielle Zevin

Daddy once said, If you don't know what you believe, Annie, you'll be a lost soul. — Gabrielle Zevin

Because if you really want to die, I can put you under psychiatric observation." "I don't want to die," A.J. says after a bit. "I just find it difficult to be here all the time. Do you think I'm crazy? — Gabrielle Zevin

Intimacy doesn't have all that much to do with backseats of cars. Real intimacy is brushing your teeth together. — Gabrielle Zevin

When we're young we think everything has to be wrapped up in a month. But you should take the long view on this one. Before you make a move, be sure, Anya. And even once you're sure, tread carefully. And remember you don't have to do what they expect you to do" -Charles Delacroix — Gabrielle Zevin

Her diaper is soiled. A.J. has never changed a diaper in his life, though he is a modestly skilled gift wrapper. Back when Nic was alive, Island used to offer free gift wrap at Christmas, and he figures that diaper changing and gift-wrapping must be related proficiencies. — Gabrielle Zevin

It is a lie that people who love each other must know everything about each other. Love must occasionally allow for a gap. — Gabrielle Zevin

What I mean to say is that you can make a choice, be reasonably satisfied with it, and still regret that which you did not choose. Maybe it's like ordering dessert. You have it narrowed down to either a warm peanut butter torte or strawberries jubilee. You choose the torte, and it's delicious. But you still wonder about those strawberries... — Gabrielle Zevin

Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again. — Gabrielle Zevin

Beauties" by Anton Chekhov, "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J. D. Salinger, "Brownies" or "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" both by ZZ Packer, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel, "Fat" by Raymond Carver, "Indian Camp — Gabrielle Zevin

What can a single man know about child rearing? — Gabrielle Zevin

The only love she inspires is the canine kind. — Gabrielle Zevin

I worry for you. If you love everyone, you'll end up having hurt feelings most of the time. I suppose, relative to the length of your life, you feel as if you've known me a rather long time. Your perspective of time is really very warped, Maya. But I am old and soon, you'll forget you even knew me. — Gabrielle Zevin

It's a well-known fact that hate shows up on your face once you're forty. — Gabrielle Zevin

I don't think I would have minded you being the keeper of my secrets. — Gabrielle Zevin

On some level, I think we want our reading self to represent our best self. — Gabrielle Zevin

In the fifteen or so years he has known her, A.J. thinks Ismay has aged like an actress should: from Juliet to Ophelia to Gertrude to Hecate. — Gabrielle Zevin

I'm in the middle of a 25-city book tour, and I like watching what people buy in bookstores. I see people buy books that I strongly suspect they will never read, and as an author, I must tell you, I don't mind this one bit. We buy books aspirationally. — Gabrielle Zevin

Remember, Maya: the things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life. — Gabrielle Zevin

Despite what I said before, it had not been a fear of infecting other people or poor health that had stopped me from going, but vanity.
It was a good lesson. — Gabrielle Zevin

I thought of summer as the living time; the rest of the year was the backward time, the writing time — Gabrielle Zevin

There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had. — Gabrielle Zevin

What if there is only an equal ratio of happiness to unhappiness in the world at any given time? — Gabrielle Zevin

Every word the right one and exactly where it should be. That's basically the highest compliment I can give. — Gabrielle Zevin

Before I liked to write, I liked to type. I remember visiting my grandmother Adele in Ponce Inlet, Florida, when I was three years old, and she had an IBM electric typewriter. — Gabrielle Zevin

Why do two people fall in love? It's a mystery. — Gabrielle Zevin

I hadn't ever felt any particular calling to be a novelist, and I clearly remember telling a friend of mine about six months before I started work on 'Elsewhere' that I would never write a novel. — Gabrielle Zevin

I was crying a little for the boy I had wanted him to be and the boy he hadn't turned out to be. — Gabrielle Zevin

People knowing your private business gave them power over you -Anya — Gabrielle Zevin

No Man Is An Island; Every Book Is A World. — Gabrielle Zevin

Pregnant, she looked like a pretty Gollum. — Gabrielle Zevin

He's in the military, serving overseas in Afghanistan."
"Well done. You're marrying an American hero," A.J. says.
"I guess I am."
"I hate those guys," he says. "They make me feel totally inadequate. Tell me something shitty about him so that I feel better. — Gabrielle Zevin

The difficulty of living alone is that any mess he makes he is forced to clean up himself.
No, the real difficulty of living alone is that no one cares if you are upset. — Gabrielle Zevin

The baby, a girl, is born at 6:24 a.m.
She weighs six pounds, ten ounces.
The mother takes the baby in her arms and asks her, "Who are you, my little one?"
And in response, this baby, who is Liz and not Liz at the same time, laughs. — Gabrielle Zevin

What if I had told the boy I loved to leave and it ended up being for nothing? — Gabrielle Zevin

He settles on the Green Animals Topiary Garden in Portsmouth. — Gabrielle Zevin

But in my defense, I knew enough about her to know I wanted to know everything else; I knew as much about her as she wanted me to know; I knew as much about her as anyone ever knows about anyone. And isn't love just curiosity at the beginning anyway? — Gabrielle Zevin

People like what they like, and that's the great and terrible thing. — Gabrielle Zevin

Reaction speaks to the necessity of encountering stories at precisely the right time in our lives. — Gabrielle Zevin

Incidentally, you're not a baby because you have nightmares, Natty. Something terrible happened to you when you were little, and that's why you have them. It isn't your fault."
"You never have them," she pointed out.
"No, I go around pouring spaghetti sauce over boys' heads," I said.
Natty laughed. "Good night, brave Anya. — Gabrielle Zevin

Life used to move much more quickly when I was a girl. We needed to abbreviate just to keep up. — Gabrielle Zevin

Stop saying that! You sound absurd, and I don't even think you mean it. Besides, I'd never marry you," I told him. "I'm sixteen, and you're a slut, and you can't stop saying preposterous things!"
"True," he admitted. He kissed me on the lips and then I closed the door. — Gabrielle Zevin

Do you like Moby Dick?" he asks.
"I hate it," she says. "And I don't say that about many things. Teachers assign it, and parents are happy because their kids are reading something of 'quality.' But it's forcing kids to read books like that that make them think they hate reading. — Gabrielle Zevin

When the baby sees Ismay, she bawls. "She must miss her mother," Ismay says. "Maybe I remind her of her mother?" A.J. nods, though he thinks the real cause is that his sister-in-law frightens the baby. — Gabrielle Zevin

There's a pleasure to loving someone even when you know there's no chance in them loving you back. The pain I felt let me know I was still alive. — Gabrielle Zevin

Yes, Dad. Dad is what I am. Dad is what I became. The father of Maya. Maya's dad. Dad. What a word. What a little big word. What a word and what a world! — Gabrielle Zevin

I have so much paperwork. I'm afraid my paperwork has paperwork. — Gabrielle Zevin

She was pretty and smart, which makes her death a tragedy. She was poor and black, which means people say they saw it coming. — Gabrielle Zevin

They were an indistinct blur of pastel and white uniforms, like chalk doodles on a sidewalk in the rain — Gabrielle Zevin

And I was crying for gravity. It had sent me down the stairs, and I'd thought that meant something, but maybe it was just the direction that all things tend to flow. — Gabrielle Zevin

Every book is a world. — Gabrielle Zevin

Your extracurricular activities are definitely somewhat lackluster, Annie."
"What? Being the daughter of a celebrated criminal doesn't count as an extracurricular activity?"
"No," Scarlet said. "A case could be made for poisoning your ex-boyfriend however. — Gabrielle Zevin

The scent is sweet and meloncholy. A bit like dying, a bit like falling in love. — Gabrielle Zevin

It is the secret fear that we are unlovable that isolates us," the passage goes, "but it is only because we are isolated that we think we are unlovable. Someday, you do not know when, you will be driving down a road. And someday, you do not know when, he, or indeed she, will be there. You will be loved because for the first time in your life, you will truly not be alone. You will have chosen to not be alone. — Gabrielle Zevin

To begin, it is narrated by Death! — Gabrielle Zevin

A.J. watches Maya in her pink party dress, and he feels a vaguely familiar, slightly intolerable bubbling inside of him. He wants to laugh out loud or punch a wall. He feels drunk or at least carbonated. Insane. At first, he thinks this is happiness, but then he determines it's love. Fucking love, he thinks. What a bother. — Gabrielle Zevin

A.J. has never changed a diaper in his life, though he is a modestly skilled gift wrapper. — Gabrielle Zevin

I can't keep a baby," A.J. says firmly. "I haven't slept in two nights. She's a terrorist! She wakes up at, like, insane times. Three forty-five in the morning seems to be when her day begins. I live alone. I'm poor. You can't raise a baby on books alone. — Gabrielle Zevin

The casualities seemed to go on and on. Just when I thought I was done losing her, I would find yet another way to love her all over again. — Gabrielle Zevin

He was so handsome. I nearly wanted to swoon. The word swoon had never even popped into my head before I saw him that night, let alone as something that I might do. — Gabrielle Zevin

Diving is a leap of faith plus gravity. — Gabrielle Zevin

I know you did, lass. You're the toughest girl I know." "'Lass'? Where did that come from?" "I don't know. I just felt the urge to call you that. — Gabrielle Zevin

Her mother likes to say that novels have ruined Amelia for real men. This observation insults Amelia because it implies that she only reads books with classically romantic heroes. She does not mind the occasional novel with a romantic hero but her reading taste are far more varied than that. Furthermore, she adores Humbert Humbert as a character while accepting the fact that she wouldn't really want him for a life partner, a boyfriend, or even a casual acquaintance. She feels the same way about Holden Caulfield, and Misters Rochester and Darcy. — Gabrielle Zevin

His heart is too full, and no words to release it. — Gabrielle Zevin

I'm allergic to sad memories. It's the worst. — Gabrielle Zevin

In Amelia's experience, most people's problems would be solved if they would only give more things a chance. Amelia — Gabrielle Zevin

Theo looked at me with his smoldering Jesus eyes, and the Catholic schoolgirl in me crossed her legs. — Gabrielle Zevin

There are many challenges to long distance running, but one of the greatest is the question of where to put on's house keys. — Gabrielle Zevin

I always wanted to try the Turkish Delight in Narnia. When I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a boy, I used to think that Turkish Delight must be incredibly delicious if it made Edmund betray his family," A.J. says. "I guess I must have told my wife this, because one year Nic gets a box for me for the holidays. And it turned out to be this powdery, gummy candy. I don't think I've ever been so disappointed in my entire life. — Gabrielle Zevin

I loathe collectible books anyway. People getting all moony over particular paper carcasses. It's the ideas that matter, man. The words, — Gabrielle Zevin

Let's stay young forever. Young, stupid, and pretty. Sounds like a plan, don't you think? — Gabrielle Zevin

It was funny how dad was more honest in a book that anyone in the world could pick up and read than he could be talking to me. Or maybe it was sad. One or the other. Sometimes it's hard to tell. — Gabrielle Zevin

I believe when it is convenient for me to believe. — Gabrielle Zevin

For the record, everything new is not worse than everything old. — Gabrielle Zevin

It is lucky, she thinks, that we don't feel all the love inside us every moment. — Gabrielle Zevin

Turns out I really like bookstores. You know, I meet a lot of people in my line of work. A lot of folks pass through Alice Island, especially in the summer. I've seen movie people on vacation and I've seen music people and newspeople, too. There ain't nobody in the world like book people. It's a business of gentlemen and gentlewoman. — Gabrielle Zevin

People choose to read, and it takes effort. It's not one of those hobbies that asks nothing of the person who is doing it. It's more than a hobby. — Gabrielle Zevin

No, I've been doing this myself forever. I could have gone in here myself, but my daddy doesn't want me to get raped. That happens all the time in bathrooms. — Gabrielle Zevin

Speak up,' says Myrna who has a fuzzy white caterpillar of a moustache. 'My hearing's not so good.'
'I WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD.'
Liz turns to Thandi. 'I thought you said you didn't remember how you got the hole in your head.'
Thandi apologizes. 'I just remembered.'
'Shot in the head!' Florence-scratchy-voice says. 'Oy, that's rough.'
'Aw, it's nothing special. Happens pretty regularly where I'm from,' Thandi says.
'WHAT?' asks Myrna with the moustache. 'Say it toward my left ear, that's the good one.'
'I SAID, "IT'S NOTHING SPECIAL,"' Thandi yells/ — Gabrielle Zevin

He knows she isn't perfect. She knows he definitely isn't perfect. They know there's no such thing as perfect. — Gabrielle Zevin

My heart was a little bit broken, but I still had to go to school. I buttoned my dress shirt over it and my winter coat, too. I hoped it didn't show too much. — Gabrielle Zevin

It was strange, really. A couple months ago, I had thought I couldn't live without him. Apparently I could. — Gabrielle Zevin

His eyes were blazing and I swear I could smell the testosterone coming off him. — Gabrielle Zevin

She doesn't recognize the number - none of her friends use their phones as phones anymore. — Gabrielle Zevin

And I and him, and him and me. (I will always remember that he tasted like cigarettes and something passing sweet, which I could not quite identify.) Andiandhimandhimandme. (And so on.) — Gabrielle Zevin

Always with a book and content at home or at the store. — Gabrielle Zevin

I had never been good with words. On the path from my heart to my brain to my mouth, phrases became twisted and hopelessly convoluted. The intent - what I meant to say - never quite made it out. — Gabrielle Zevin

Love you," Maya says. "Yes, she keeps saying that," A.J. says. "I warned her about giving love that hasn't yet been earned, but honestly, I think it's the influence of that insidious Elmo. He loves everyone, you know? — Gabrielle Zevin

Someday, we'll run into each other again, I know it.
Maybe I'll be older and smarter and just plain better. If that happens,
that's when I'll deserve you. But now, at this moment, you can't hook
your boat to mine, because I'm liable to sink us both. — Gabrielle Zevin

If Jenny were a book, she would be a paperback just out of the box - no dog ears, no waterlogging, no creases in her spine. — Gabrielle Zevin

He's got one thick book. He's in the middle of Infinite Jest. You ever heard of it? — Gabrielle Zevin

The words you can't find, you borrow.
We read to know we're not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.
My life is in these books, he wants to tell her. Read these and know my heart.
We are not quite novels.
The analogy he is looking for is almost there.
We are not quite short stories. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.
In the end, we are collected works. — Gabrielle Zevin

Our moment had passed somehow. I was different. He was, too. Without our "madness" to unite us, there wasn't anything much there. Or maybe too much had happened in too short a time. It's like when you take a trip with someone you don't know very well. Sometimes you can get very close very quickly, but then after the trip is over, you realise all that was a false sort of closeness. An intimacy based on the trip more than the travellers, if that makes any sense. — Gabrielle Zevin

Infinite Jest is a masterpiece," Harvey had said. "Infinite Jest is an endurance contest. You manage to get through it and you have no choice but to say you like it. Otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that you just wasted weeks of your life," A.J. — Gabrielle Zevin