Top 100 Jennifer E. Smith Quotes
#1. Even the not saying can balloon into something bigger than words themselves.
Jennifer E. Smith
#2. You," he says, laughing in spite of himself, "are mad as a hatter.
Jennifer E. Smith
#3. Yeah, but what if we got separated?
Why would we?
But just, what if?
We won't
Jennifer E. Smith
#4. She wondered if there was a word for loneliness that wasn't quite so general.
Jennifer E. Smith
#5. But it's there in his face, a fleeting reluctance that matches her own. They stand there together for a long time, for too long, for what seems like forever, each unwilling to part ways, letting the people behind them stream past like a river around rocks. Page: 91
Jennifer E. Smith
#6. But a small part of him also knew that the reason he'd never ventured anywhere was because of the worry that the reality of the world wouldn't match up to his dreams.
Jennifer E. Smith
#7. Hadley knows this isn't some Disney movie. Her parents aren't ever getting back together
Jennifer E. Smith
#8. Graham glanced up at the sky, which was pale and pocked with birds, the whole thing like a negative of yesterday's fireworks display.
Jennifer E. Smith
#9. This time she didn't bother correcting him. Just this once, she'd like to believe that he's right.
Jennifer E. Smith
#10. Look what a hard time I've given him. But no matter how many times I've pushed him away, he always comes back around again. And I wouldn't want it any other way.
Jennifer E. Smith
#11. It was real," she said, her voice thick. "Wasn't it?" He looked up at her. "What was?" "Us," she said. "Last summer." "Yeah," he said, stepping back again. "It was.
Jennifer E. Smith
#12. Hi,' he says.
'Hi,' she says back, and then to her great surprise, she begins to cry.
'You know,' Nick says as he hands her a tissue from the bedside table,' for all this talk about how you don't cry, you sure are sprouting a lot of water.
Jennifer E. Smith
#14. I like how you're neither here nor there. And how there's nowhere else you're meant to be while waiting. You're just sort of suspended.
Jennifer E. Smith
#15. The geography of the thing wasn't the point; it didn't matter where they were: there was still too much space between them.
Jennifer E. Smith
#16. There's always that tiny piece of hope that this day - your day - will be the one to turn out differently.
Jennifer E. Smith
#17. How are you supposed to find what you're looking for if you're not convinced it's even out there?
Jennifer E. Smith
#18. There's a space between forgetting and moving on, and it's not easy to find.
Jennifer E. Smith
#19. The truth is, she's still waiting for her heart to get on board with the decision her heart has made.
Jennifer E. Smith
#20. What are you doing a study on right now?"
"A study on the statistical probablity of love at first sight.
Jennifer E. Smith
#21. Aidan is the only person she knows who would mend a pair of sweatpants. He hates to give up on anything.
Jennifer E. Smith
#22. When you're on the other side of it," she says, "fifty-two years can seem like about fifty-two minutes.
Jennifer E. Smith
#23. Wasn't it just so typical that all the things you never really meant to say were the very ones that came back around to you in the end?
Jennifer E. Smith
#26. Is the kind of smile she loves best: It's like a sneeze, a reflex, a twitch, helpless and automatic, and it only happens when he looks at her.
Jennifer E. Smith
#27. Soon enough, his shapeless future would start to mold itself into something more concrete. In the meantime, he was in no hurry.
Jennifer E. Smith
#28. He'd mistaken loneliness for independence, and had become so good at closing himself off from the world that it took an e-mail from Ellie to remind him what it was like to have a real conversation.
Jennifer E. Smith
#29. Maybe they were never meant to have more than just one night. After all, not everything can last. Not everything is supposed to mean something.
Jennifer E. Smith
#30. They discover that sometimes it is a person rather than a place that anchors you most in the world.
Jennifer E. Smith
#31. There are so many ways it could have all turned out differently.
Jennifer E. Smith
#32. It was not all that different from the circus, and it came to town in much the same way. Only instead of elephants and giraffes, there were cameras and microphones. Instead of clowns and cages and tightropes, there were production assistants and trailers and yards upon yards of thick cables.
Jennifer E. Smith
#33. There's a kind of unfamiliar electricity that goes through her at the nearness of him, and she can't help wondering if he feels it, too.
Jennifer E. Smith
#34. Maybe growing up was really nothing more than growing away: from your old life, from your old self, from all those things that kept you tethered to your past.
Jennifer E. Smith
#35. He looks at her and smiles. "You're sort of dangerous, you know?"
She stares at him. "Me?"
"Yeah," he says sitting back. "I'm way too honest with you.
Jennifer E. Smith
#36. What are you really studying?"
He leans back to look at her. "The statistical probability of love at first sight.
Jennifer E. Smith
#37. Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?
Jennifer E. Smith
#38. - Know any good sailing jokes? - I've got one about seagulls. - Okay. - Why do seagulls fly over the sea? - Why? - Because if they flew over the bay, they'd be bagels.
Jennifer E. Smith
#39. Yeah," Violet says from where she's stooped on the floor. "But those weren't family tears." Whitney rakes her fingers through Hadley's hair. "What were they, then." "Those were boy tears," Violet says with a smile.
Jennifer E. Smith
#40. The morning felt like a mixing bowl just waiting for its ingredients; there was a sense of possibility to it, a promise of something more to come.
Jennifer E. Smith
#41. She hates the fact that she won't know. It's feels like the last day of school, the final night at summer camp, like everything is coming to an abrupt and dizzying end.
Jennifer E. Smith
#43. It was like falling into a dream, and she felt herself getting lost inside the lines, the simplicity of the page a safety net against the memory of the day it was made.
Jennifer E. Smith
#44. And I want to be able to stand in front of a room full of people and actually be able to say the thing I want to say," she told him.
"And I want to be able to stand in front of just one person and day the thing I want to say.
Jennifer E. Smith
#45. They'd become unaccustomed to the brightness of their own city, and, faced with it now in all its intensity, they cupped their hands over their eyes as if staring into the sun.
Jennifer E. Smith
#46. He hadn't realized how much it could mean, having someone to talk to like that; he hadn't realized that it could be a kind of lifeline, and that without it, there would be nobody to save you if you started to drown.
Jennifer E. Smith
#48. That was the thing about playing with a band, Peter thought. There was always someone else to rescue you when it seemed certain you might fall behind. Only the solo acts left themselves open to those kinds of disasters.
Jennifer E. Smith
#50. This house is about two dictionaries away from caving in,' she'd say, 'and you're buying duplicates?
Jennifer E. Smith
#51. And in August it will be fifty-two years together."
"Wow," Oliver says. "That's amazing."
"I wouldn't call it amazing," the woman says, blinking. "It's easy when you find the right person.
Jennifer E. Smith
#52. It took a moment to right himself, and he pulled his shoulders back as he regained his equilibrium. He didn't want to be half asleep the first time he kissed Ellie. For that, he wanted to be wide awake.
Jennifer E. Smith
#54. Maybe the world isn't full of signs so much as it's full of people trying to use whatever evidence they can find to convince themselves of what they hope to be true.
Jennifer E. Smith
#55. Suddenly, it seemed there were about a million times he was supposed to have kissed her, even without the benefit of a script, even without any sort of direction.
Jennifer E. Smith
#56. Because the truth is that now that he's here, she can't imagine it any other way. Now that he's here, she worries that crossing an entire ocean with someone between them might be something like torture.
Jennifer E. Smith
#57. She filed those moments away like precious documents, wore them smooth with memory, collected them like bits of prayers.
Jennifer E. Smith
#58. Salutations," he said, and she smiled.
"Good morning."
"Yeah," he said. "It really is.
Jennifer E. Smith
#59. But cemeteries are like mousetraps for memories, catching grief by the tail before it knows what's what.
Jennifer E. Smith
#60. They were just so different, and she kept wondering if he'd realize this was a mistake at some point; if, once she stopped being the novelty, the random American, he would recognize who she really was -- a nerdy bookworm, a happy loner -- and move on.
Jennifer E. Smith
#61. They weren't so much a constellation, the five of them, as a series of scattered stars.
Jennifer E. Smith
#62. It didn't help that she was right; when had that ever made anything better?
Jennifer E. Smith
#63. What does it really look like?
Isn't it obvious?
Not especially ...
You. It looks like you.
Jennifer E. Smith
#65. That's the way these things work, kiddo," he says. "Love isn't supposed to make
sense. It's completely illogical.
Jennifer E. Smith
#66. Once," he says, "I was flying to California on the Fourth of July."
She turns her head, just slightly.
"It was a clear night, and you could see all the little fireworks displays along the way, these tiny flares going off below, one town after another.
Jennifer E. Smith
#67. But it wasn't just the pace that made them feel suspended, like they were doing little more than drifting. It was the odd feeling that they'd been set loose into the world with nothing - and no on - left to reel them back again.
Jennifer E. Smith
#68. Maybe this was why Owen had been so desperate to travel, why she'd longed for it herself without ever really knowing why. It wasn't just that you got to be somewhere else entirely. It was that you got to be someone else entirely, too.
Jennifer E. Smith
#70. That light he'd felt when he first saw her
he understood now that it was only a lightbulb. It was quick and easy, full of electricity, but there was something artificial about it. What he wanted was fire: heat and spark and flame.
Jennifer E. Smith
#71. Looks like the wrong kind of bait can get you the right kind of fish.
Jennifer E. Smith
#72. Husbands make the best kinds of heroes. - Lisa JacobsonMarriage is a mosaic you build with your spouse. Millions of tiny moments that create your love story.
Jennifer E. Smith
#74. But just as she turns to walk away she hears him behind her, the word like the opening of some door, like an ending and a beginning, like a wish.
"Wait," he says, and so she does.
Jennifer E. Smith
#75. He'd come back to her, it was true. He was the one to walk out of the woods and onto the beach, to cross the space between them. But he wasn't the only one. It was there in her eyes: she was coming back to him too.
Jennifer E. Smith
#76. It wasn't that we forgot. But things like that sometimes get stored away, and there never seems to be a good time to dig them up again. It hurts a lot less to keep them buried. That doesn't make it right, but it's just the way it is.
Jennifer E. Smith
#77. There was so much I was trying not to say. I guess it was easier to talk about nothing than about how much I missed you.
Jennifer E. Smith
#78. Her eyes travel down to where he's gripping the handle of her suitcase. "What're you doing?" she asks, blinking at him.
"You looked like you needed some help."
Hadley just stares at him.
"And this way it's perfectly legal," he adds with a grin.
Jennifer E. Smith
#79. Parents aren't always right about everything," Hadley says. "Sometimes it just takes a while to figure that out.
Jennifer E. Smith
#80. Someone once told her there's a formula for how long it takes to get over someone, that it's half as long as the time you've been together. Hadley has her doubts about how accurate this could possibly be, a calculation so simple for something as complicated as heartbreak.
Jennifer E. Smith
#81. And see those clouds?'
'Hard to miss'
'Those are cumulus clouds. Did you know that?'
'I'm sure I should.'
They're the best ones.'
'How come?'
Because they look the way clouds are supposed to look, the way you draw them when you're a kid. Which is nice, you know? ...
Jennifer E. Smith
#82. Is it possible not to ever know your type-not to even know you have a type-until quite suddenly you do?
Jennifer E. Smith
#83. That's the thing about flying: You could talk to someone for hours and never even know his name, share your deepest secrets and then never see them again.
Jennifer E. Smith
#84. Hadley didn't know it was possible to miss someone who's only a few feet away, but there it is.
Jennifer E. Smith
#86. So that explains all the mind games."
"You say mind games, I say research.
Jennifer E. Smith
#87. The quiet between them had gone on for far too long now to pretend it was anything other than what it was. There were no more words; all that was left were two faintly beating hearts.
Jennifer E. Smith
#88. But no escape route." "Ah," he says. "So you're looking for an escape route." Hadley nods. "Always.
Jennifer E. Smith
#89. Why did the scarecrow win the Nobel Prize?"
"Why?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.
"For being outstanding in his field.
Jennifer E. Smith
#90. Just like when you're young and in love, a seven-hour plane ride can seem like a lifetime.
Jennifer E. Smith
#92. And for the first time in his life Peter understood what the opposite of lost was: that it had nothing to do with maps or directions or staying on course; that it was, in fact, nothing more than being found.
Jennifer E. Smith
#93. Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?
Jennifer E. Smith
#94. [Hadley] "I have a fear of mayo, so I've actually gotten pretty good at it over the years."
[Oliver] "You have a fear of mayo?"
She nods again."It's in my top three or four."
"What are the others?" he asks with a grin. "I mean what could possibly be worse than mayonnaise.
Jennifer E. Smith
#95. And the boy's eyes are searching hers with something like loneliness, like the very last thing he wants is to be left behind right now.
Jennifer E. Smith
#96. I mean, come on. If they really wished you were there, they'd have invited you in the first place, right? It's kind of mean, if you really think about it. It should say: 'Greece: Where nobody's all that upset you're not here.
Jennifer E. Smith
#97. But how could she tell him that the reason she always acted so disinterested in everything was because of the worry that she herself wasn't all that interesting?
Jennifer E. Smith
#98. She's four minutes late, which doesn't seem like all that much when you think about it's a commercial break, the period within classes, the time it takes to cook a microwave meal. Four minutes is nothing.
Jennifer E. Smith
#99. I might not say it, but I obviously show you how I feel," she says. "Why do the words have to be so important?"
"They just are," he says, standing up and brushing off the back of his jeans. "Not because you're saying them, but because you're not.
Jennifer E. Smith
#100. People talk about books being an escape, but here on the tube, this one feels more like a lifeline ... The motion of the train makes her head rattle, but her eyes lock on the words the way a figure skater might choose a focal point as she spins, and just like that, she's grounded again.
Jennifer E. Smith
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