Patrick Ness, The Rest of Us Just Live Here
18 quotes
"Not everyone has to be the chosen one. Not everyone has to be the guy who saves the world. Most people just have to live their lives the best they can, doing the things that are great from them, having great friends, trying to make their lives better, loving people probably. All the while knowing that the world makes no sense but trying to find a way to be happy anyways."
"And yeah, I know most people would think it weird that two guy friends touch as much as we do, but when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too. This is how we work. I hope you get to choose your family and I hope it means as much to you as mine does to me."
"It's love. But it's a different kind,""Doesn't make it any less love, though."
"We share out craziness, our neuroses, our little bit of screwed-up-ness that comes from our family. We share it. And it feels like love."
"But when you choose your family, you get to choose how it is between you, too."
"Funny how you can forget that every family isn't like yours."
"Mikey," she says, but not like she's about to say anything more, just like she's identifying me, making a place for me here that's mine to exist in. I want her so much, my heart feels heavy, like I'm grieving. Is this what they meant about that stomach feeling? They didn't say it felt this sad."
"We stay watching the fire, which probably is just a fire, but we watch it together. Me and my friends. And there'll be a tomorrow, of course there will, when it all begins again, but right now is almost a kind of loop for me, something to feel on the inside of, but this time it's good. It's a loop with my friends that would even be a pretty damn good forever."
"Just remember, please, most of that stuff is in the past. It isn't the story I want to tell. At all.You needed to know it, but for the rest of this, I'm choosing my own story.Because if you can't do that, you might as well just give up."
"But this, all this, isn't the story I'm trying to tell. This is all past. This is the part of your life where it gets taken over by other people's stories and there's nothing you can do about it except hold on tight and hope you're still alive at the end to take up your own story again. So that's what we did. Me, Mel, and Meredith all moved on, and we're the stories we're living now.Aren't we?"
"I don't want to die. I want to live. I want to live long enough so I can really live."
"If you're too specific, people will purposely mishear you so they can be outraged about whatever thing that usually outrages them."
"But I don't care what you think, not about these things anyway. If you don't think they're real or important or you think that we'll all grow out of this nonsense, well, that's not really my business. I can't tell you what's real for you. But in return, you can't say what's real for me either. I get to choose. Not you."
"What happens to you when you get older? Do you just forget everything from before you turned eighteen? Do you make yourself forget?"
"It'll make you look rugged,' Mel says.'Because I woke up this morning,' I say, 'and the one thing I realized I lacked was ruggedness."
"Feelings don't try to kill you,even the painful ones. Anxiety is a feeling grown too large. A feeling grown aggressive and dangerous. You're responsible for its consequences, you're responsible for treating it"
"I love that you're worried,' she says, 'but you're worried about all the wrong things."
"We're each other's questions, aren't we? The question that never gets an answer."