Matthew Quick

“Life is random and fucked-up and arbitrary, until you find someone who can make sense of it all for you— if only temporarily.”

“The world will break your heart ten times till Sunday,that's guaranteed”

“Let me tell ya. You gotta pay attention to signs. When life reaches out with a moment like this it's a sin if you don't reach back... I'm telling you.”

“And I still love you in my own fucked-up way. I miss you, I really do. Can we still be friends?”

“But I'll tell you the same thing I tell my students when they complain about the depressing nature of American literature: life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly, like our marriage did, Pat. And literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for people to endure nobly.”

“I will not be quoting Hemingway anytime soon, nor will I ever read another one of his books.And if he were still alive, I would write him a letter right now and threaten to strangle him dead with my bare hands just for being so glum.No wonder he put a gun to his head, like it says in the introductory essay.”

“...but Cliff keeps pushing for the truth like therapists do, because they all have some sort of psychic ability that allows them to see through your lies, and therefore they know you will eventually tire of the talking game and will offer up the truth.”

“When she needed help most, she was abandoned—and only when she offered help to others was she beloved.”

“I believe in happy endings," I tell him, "And it feels like this movie has gone on for the right amount of time.”

“You need to know it's your actions that will make you a good person, not desire.”

“I think all it really takes for different people to get along is a common rooting interest and a few beers.”

“This next song is familiar—surprisingly gentle, like a kitten walking through high grass—and it seems so unlike Jake to create something this beautiful.”

“She looks sad. She looks angry. She looks different from everyone else I know—she cannot put on that happy face others wear when they know they are being watched. She doesn’t put on a face for me, which makes me trust her somehow.”

“He doesn’t ever feel the war that goes on in my chest every single fucking day—the chemical explosions that light up my skull like the Fourth of July and the awful needs and impulses and…”

“...I am now watching the movie of my life as I live it.”

“When I run, I always pretend I am running toward Nikki, and it makes me feel like I am decreasing the amount of time I have to wait until I see her again.”

“My other friends are in music relaxation class, which I do not attend, because smooth jazz makes me angry sometimes.”

“I am practicing being kind over being right.”

“Maybe you will never be able to forgive me, but I wanted you to know I had the best intentions-and I still love you in my own fucked-up way.”

“If clouds are blocking the sun, there will always be a silver lining that reminds me to keep on trying.”

“Most people lose the ability to see silver linings even though they are always there above us almost every day.”

“You may exist inthis world--but I exist tooand I will not yield”

“Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.”

“You need to make time for your family no matter what happens in your life”

“I can always look up at the cosmos and marvel, no matter what happens. And when I look up at it, I feel as though my problems are small. I don't know why, but it always makes me feel better.”

“Someday an opportunity will come. Think about Harry Potter. His life is terrible, but then a letter arrives, he gets on a train, and everything is different for him afterward. Better. Magical.""That's just a story.""So are we- we're stories too.”

“Air goes in and outof my nose, throat, lungs, blood, heartbrain - and so I am”

“You can lose yourself in repetition—quiet your thoughts; I learned the value of this at a very young age.”

“In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatcher's Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I'm on, and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. There's something honest about all this, and I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer field with me - in the middle of a snowstorm even - impossibly hoping to see a single cloud break free of a nimbostratus.”

“I need you so fucking bad.”

“I still love you in my own fucked-up way.”

“Life is hard, and children have to be told how hard life can be…So they will be sympathetic to others. So they will understand that some people have it harder than they do and that a trip through this world can be a wildly different experience, depending on what chemicals are raging through one’s mind.”

“It hurts to look at the clouds, but it also helps, like most things that cause pain.”

“I don't want to stay in the bad place, where no one believes in silver linings or love or happy endings.”

“I want to have an assistant someday who will make freaky teens cool T-shirts so that they can do good things in style. I want to be Donna. So frickin' much.”

“I marvel at her - a woman with stocks and business suits and her own house.”

“...I like the way Chee kept God magical, sorta like Santa Claus when you're a kid. More priests should take this approach, because there is a frickin' reason why Santa Claus is more popular than Jesus nowadays.”