Justina Chen, North of Beautiful
19 quotes
"If art made you think, then this was Art. Staring at the ball, made of layers and layers of cloth, I wondered about the glass marble at its heart. What if you wanted to reach that marble? Make sure it was still whole?You'd have to remove the layers. You'd have to risk breaking the ball for a chance at freeing it. Fear, knowledge, certainty - you'd have to be willing to let them all go."
"To dream is to starve doubt, feed hope."
"There must be a few times in life when you stand at a precipice of a decision. When you know there will forever be a Before and an After...I knew there would be no turning back if I designated this moment as my own Prime Meridian from which everything else would be measured."
"Flawed, we're truly interesting, truly memorable, and yes, truly beautiful."
"What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I've ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself."
"I preferred my brand of beauty where Norah was more beautiful than any bimbette, and Mom was beautiful whether sized extra-small or extra-large. Where Peony could look at herself in the mirror and murmur, wow, look at me. Just look at me."
"From her dubious tone alone, I could see how Karin had no idea how terrifying words spoken quietly could be. How words chosen precisely to wreak maximum damage ticked like a bomb in your head, but exploded in your heart hours later, leaving you scarred and changed."
"My confidence was of the hothouse variety, carefully cultivated under highly regulated conditions. One wrong look, one mean comment, and my facade would wither."
"Silence, too, can be torture."
"So, really," continued Jacob as if this were perfectly normal to expound on art in these circumstances, "when you think about it, the artists who make people stop and think, who push the form, who make you uncomfortable, who are laughable, well, they're the ones who get remembered." Idly, Jacob dug a hole in the snow with his shovel and then another one next to it. "So why wouldn't you want to join the ranks of the ridiculed?"
"Hey, if it's a good philosophy, it works. Death is imminent. Live every day like it's your last."
"Jacob: "Let her stare."Terra: "What?"Jacob: "Yeah most of the starers are just curious. Smile back. That's what I used to do."
"Progress is hard on history."
"I wondered about her chicken-and-egg relationship with Dad. Which came first? Her helplessness or his controlling?"
"Getting lost is just another way of saying 'going exploring."
"North-ish." A pause, and then: "Is that Terra for I'm lost-ish?"
"how many times had I begged Mom to divorce him already?"
"Safe, I decided, didn't leave much room for fun."
"The pressure of his touch through my jacket and my sweater was more assurance than any promise ever made to me. It was a touch that said, I have your back and I am here for you. If a girl wasn't careful, she could fall in love with a touch like that."