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Every Exquisite Thing QUOTES

Every Exquisite Thing QUOTES

1 " There are a lot of lonely kids in this world, but the problem is that they don't know about each other. If the lonely kids could just team up, a lot of good things would happen, but the world is incredibly afraid of lonely people teaming up, and so it does its best to keep them apart. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

2 " It felt like so many years' worth of anxiety and worry were trying to escape all at once—maybe like an emotional volcano, only my mom and dad, they didn't run away to save themselves but sprinted right into my lava. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

3 " I knew that I had reached the end of childhood once I realized that adults in my life didn't know anymore than I did. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

4 " It felt like so many years' worth of anxiety and worry were trying to escape all at once—maybe like an emotional volcano, only my mom and dad, they didn't run away to save themselves but sprinted right into my lava. They both jumped up off the couch and wrapped their arms around me even though it meant touching each other. We stayed like that for a long time, and it felt good—almost enough to justify everything that had precipitated it, but not quite. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

5 " Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

6 " Just because you're good at something doesn't mean you have to do it. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

7 " And then one day you will look for you in the mirror and you’ll no longer be able to identify yourself—you’ll only see everyone else. You’ll know that you did what they wanted you to do. You will have assimilated. And you will hate yourself for it, because it will be too late. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

8 " People enter our lives for a season, a reason, or a lifetime. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

9 " Far too often, people are woefully predictable. And I know many things. It's a curse. Here's something else I know: You are not doomed to be your parents. You can break the cycle. You can be whoever you want to be. But you will pay a price. You parents and everyone else will punish you if you choose to be you and not them. That's the price of your freedom. The cage is unlocked, but everyone is too scared to walk out because they whack you when you try, and they whack you hard. They want you to be scared, too. They want you to stay in the cage. But once you are a few steps beyond the trapdoor, they can't reach you anymore, so the whacking stops. That's another secret: They're too afraid to follow. They adore their own cages. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

10 " There are a lot of lonely kids in this world, but the problem is they don’t know about each other. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

11 " Sometimes you just have to pick a direction and make mistakes. Then you use what you learn from your failure to pick new, better directions so you can make more mistakes and keep learning. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

12 " There are no such things as fictional characters. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

13 " There are seven billion people in the world and you have only experienced twenty thousand at the most. And those twenty thousand were fairly homogenous. Your experiences with people have been largely dictated by your parents' choices. The neighborhood in which they chose to purchase a house. Where they sent you to school. And maybe those choices weren't the best for you. Maybe you don't fit in where you are now... There are seven billion other people out there. Seven billion. Are you really pessimistic enough to believe that you wouldn't get along with any of them? "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

14 " We live in our heads... which can be very scary places. We forget that we are not just and I, but a she and a you, too. We forget to see ourselves as others see us. For some people, the problem is narcissism - meaning they are selfish, too self-absorbed. But I think that your problem is that you are too selfless. You care about the needs of others more than you care about your own needs. You are strong for them even when it's a detriment to your own well-being. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

15 " And so maybe it isn't the motivating factors that matter so much as simply participating - thrusting your best true, authentic self into the universe with wild abandon. Maybe yielding to our true nature propels us forward into the great unknown, toward targets that we haven't even dreamed up yet but exist nonetheless. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

16 " I mean - when was the last time someone asked if you were happy and then looked you in the eyes in a way that made you feel as though they actually gave a shit about your response? "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

17 " Then we talked a lot about our parents and how we didn't want to become them, but we had no other role models--or "maps," Alex kept saying. "My father is a terrible map, mostly because he doesn't ever lead me anywhere." And I thought about my parents being maps that led to places I didn't want to go-- and it made a shocking amount of sense, using the word maps to describe parents. If almost made you feel like you could fold Mom and Dad up and lock them away in the glove compartment of your car and just joyride for the rest of your life maybe. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

18 " You must sometimes pay a high price for individuality, especially if you are a woman. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

19 " I loved him like I loved walking through summer grass barefoot, like I loved a warm mug in my palms, like I loved driving on a long road as the sun sets in the distance. It was a good, safe, simple sort of friendship—well, at first, anyway. "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing

20 " A life lived well gets messy, "

― Matthew Quick , Every Exquisite Thing