Matthew Quick

Although once when we were talking after class, Herr Silverman told me that when someone rises up and holds himself to a higher standard, even when doing so benefits others, average people resent it, mostly because they__e not strong enough to do the same.

Pat, it's not sexual _ it's modern dance.

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.

Why would god allow the Holocaust to happen? If god made everything, why did he invent sin to trick us and then hold our sins against us? Why are there so many religions in the world if god created the world and wants us to be Christian? Why does god allow people to fight wars over him? What if you were born in a different culture and never even heard of Jesus Christ__ould god send you to hell for not being Christian? And if so, do you believe that's fair? Why are men always the leaders in your church? Aren't women capable of leading too? Isn't such a patriarchal system sexist in this day and age? Why do so many babies die? Why are there so many poor people in the world? Did Jesus visit any other planets in distant unknown universes?

Sounds like the start of a beautiful friendship, Leonard. It really does._ __ere__ looking at you, kid.

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

The problem with the stigma around mental health is really about the stories that we tell ourselves as a society. What is normal? That's just a story that we tell ourselves.

When I was in high school, I used to have breakfast with my grandpa every morning. He instilled a lot of values in me: hard work, loyalty. He grew up during the Great Depression in Philly in poverty - he didn't have enough to eat as a kid. Sometimes his family would get kicked out of their apartment because they couldn't pay the rent.

She__ fulfilled her obligation, assuaged her conscience by finding me in the hallway and giving me the chance to freak out, and I__e played my role too, by remaining calm, pretending to be okay, and therefore giving her permission to cross me off her things-to-do list. Now she can move on, and I can too.Once you understand how adults are controlled by the system, manipulating them is elementary.

Mom could make small things seem miraculous. That was her talent.

He never once tells me what Tiffany thinks or what is going on in her heart: the awful feelings, the conflicting impulses, the needs, the desperation, everything that makes her different from Ronnie and Veronica, who have each other and their daughter, Emily, and a good income and a house and everything else that keeps people from calling them "odd.

You're different. And I'm different too. Different is good. But different is hard. Believe me, I know.

Why didn't my father get to give Mom the fairy tale? Why do most people fail to give each other the fairy tale?

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

it__ a long race and you can always outwork talent in the end

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.

Miracles happen on Christmas, Pat. Everybody knows that shit.

The P-38 WWII Nazi handgun looks comical lying on the breakfast table next to a bowl of oatmeal.