Quotes from Andrew Smith

What kind of world did our fathers abandon us to?

We only think of days and months to keep track of times that aren't now. Fuck days. Fuck months. This was how it was going to be from now on: forever.

I was certain about this: In the best new language, there would be no words for me or you. Those words have caused all the trouble started by the old languages. In any new language, there should only be we.

I always bring back books for the library. Books have everything in them. After the end of the world, you cannot learn a goddamned thing from a computer or a television screen.

after midnight Just words. No more pictures. No charts or plays or poems. Now it's just about the words.

Mr. Wellins said it didn't matter what a writer intended his work to mean, that the only thing that mattered was what it meant to the reader, and I guess I could see his point, but I still thought he was a creepy old pervert.

In September 1939, Krzys Szczerba was killed as he walked in a marching column of refugees along a muddy farm road in western Poland. In September 1939, Germany was unstoppable, and Russia shared in the spoils of Polish conquest. Nobody needed Polish boys. Too bad for Poland, Too bad for boys like me. This was just one of the things in history that gave us Polish boys sleepy bags under our watchful eyes. We see everything. It is our job to pay attention to details.

Because things just happen, and like Bartleby told me, you can't just live your life with the singular mission of trying to never fall into a hole.

For a moment, stunned, Robby Brees and I had sat there, watching what was happening on the bridge ahead of us. Then I realized we were all stuck anyway, and Robby and I still had our paintball guns that were loaded with the blood of a real, cigarette-smoking, homosexual teenage God.

Man will tell woman he will die for her, but I say, tell woman that you will die for her both physically and interior

Just as I opened the door from the boys' floor, I stumbled onto Mr. Farrow and that freakishly unhot witch from downstairs, Mrs. Singer. Together. Standing at the landing on the tenantless girls' floor. They were kissing, and it wasn't one of those innocent oh-hello-you-frosty-and-cadaverous-old-hag-from-downstairs-so-nice-to-see-you-this-afternoon pecks on the cheek, either.

I know it's kind of ridiculous, but I realize now how wrong that old pervert Mr. Wellins is. Almost nothing at all is ever about sex, unless you never grow up, that is. It's about love, and maybe not having it. What an old, delusional idiot he is. But what do I know? I'm just fourteen.

That day, getting through my world was like trying to swim in a pool of warm mayonnaise while carrying two bowling balls.

There's not a single thing on this planet —not an organism, a sea, a river or lake, and even the weather that surrounds us, that hasn't been changed by human beings. For good or bad, we're in charge of the rate at which everything changes now.

That's really what all books are, isn't it? I mean, lists of secrets and things you only wish you'd done - a sort of deathbed confession where you're trying to get it all out while the lights are still on.

Clocks are as pointless on the Tennessee as poets are on Earth.

It almost boosts your self-esteem being screamed at by someone with an English accent.

I guess that's a sign of growing up: When your dad shuts up but you can hear him anyway.

You fill my sombrero with sexual pudding!

I am going to build something big for you.

And if we were stuck here forever - and maybe this was just a naturally morbid thought for a teenage boy- I wondered who among us would die first and who ultimately would be left alone.

I saw you dead.

If I could pray--and I'd stopped doing that nonsense long before the miracle of the refrigerator--I imagined praying, but I didn't know who to direct it to.

I don't let just anyone fine me, you know?