John Corey Whaley Quotes

#1. As smart as I am, it took a boy stuck in his house to teach me that sometimes it doesn't matter where you are at all. It only matters whos with you.

John Corey Whaley

#2. I'm a huge movie nerd.

John Corey Whaley

#3. Janis was completely caught off guard that Lisa finally stood up for herself

John Corey Whaley

#4. They say using your imagination makes you live longer.

John Corey Whaley

#5. I'm beyond thrilled to be working with Faber, whose literary history is second to none. And I'm even more excited to bring my books to a wider audience in the U.K.

John Corey Whaley

#6. You know things are weird when you start appreciating your farts.

John Corey Whaley

#7. I can't seem to be a pessimist long enough to overlook the possibility of things being overwhelmingly good.

John Corey Whaley

#8. Watch it,' her mom snapped. 'Don't start a fight just because it's the easiest thing to do.

John Corey Whaley

#9. I thought, 'What if I were 17, and it was my small town of Springhill, Louisiana? How would I feel if people started flooding in to see some bird?'

John Corey Whaley

#10. The unspoken philosophy of all those in love with Ada was something like this: If I have to die to get that, then death it is.

John Corey Whaley

#11. She hadn't heard the words Star Trek in seven days and it felt amazing. The

John Corey Whaley

#12. But I know what it's like to constantly think about a life you aren't living.

John Corey Whaley

#13. I do come from a very close family. And I'm fascinated, in particular, with family relationships and the relationships that we all form with friends who feel as close, if not closer, than family.

John Corey Whaley

#14. A sibling represents a person's past, present, and future

John Corey Whaley

#15. If this were an indie movie, we'd start talking about the constellations," Solomon said, looking up at the stars.

John Corey Whaley

#16. We are who we are. You know that better than anyone.

John Corey Whaley

#17. I don't think anyone, no matter what, can find perfect happiness until they understand exactly who they are and how every little thing they do can affect the world around them. I think perfect happiness would be a world where everyone is constantly striving to understand everyone else.

John Corey Whaley

#18. I did some research on cryonics and cryogenics, but I kept it to a minimum because I didn't want the science part of the novel to overshadow the fiction. Being medically accurate wasn't my main goal.

John Corey Whaley

#19. Ada Taylor knelt beside me on the floor as I cried for the first time over the thought that my favorite person in the world was probably dead.

John Corey Whaley

#20. I've found that a combination of therapy and medication, along with lifestyle choices like eating better and exercising regularly, helps me cope well with my anxiety.

John Corey Whaley

#21. Now, no matter what they told themselves or each other, it would always be different. After all, no first love goes away overnight, especially one that's always right in front of you, but just out of your reach.

John Corey Whaley

#22. And, long after Clark had gone home, Solomon stayed up wondering if everyone falls in love with someone who can't love them back.

John Corey Whaley

#23. You can find ways to be okay with dying, but you can't fake your way through living.

John Corey Whaley

#24. I'm completely obsessed with Andrew Smith's 'Winger.' A great, hilarious, and moving story.

John Corey Whaley

#25. Secrets, he said, will boil under your skin until it feels like every time you speak, every time you look in the mirror, every time you hug someone or kiss someone or tell someone you love them, it feels like you're going to die.

John Corey Whaley

#26. There are no boring places, only boring people,

John Corey Whaley

#27. I was a terrible reader as a kid. I mean terrible. Super slow and very unfocused. It took me forever to read a book, and I remember being well into high school and still needing my mom to sit down and read aloud to me so I could pass my English tests and such.

John Corey Whaley

#28. He was afraid of the world, afraid it would find a way to swallow him up. But, maybe everyone was sometimes.

John Corey Whaley

#29. And then he spent three years wondering why everyone found that so hard to understand. All he was doing was living instead of dying. Some people get cancer. Some people get crazy. Nobody tries to take the chemo away.

John Corey Whaley

#30. I call it the Pretty Paradox. Pretty girls always want guys who treat them, and most everyone else, like complete shit. It is perhaps one of the most baffling phenomena of history.
Cullen

John Corey Whaley

#31. Not a day on your calendar should ever be empty. It's bad luck. Twenty-four hours of wasted opportunity.

John Corey Whaley

#32. When one of us is dying, they say a part of all of us is. I think that's why it hurts. We go our whole lives losing little chunks until we can't lose any more of them.

John Corey Whaley

#33. It was like looking at the sun and not going blind

John Corey Whaley

#34. I thought maybe a day was coming when I'd stop constantly worrying about how to live. Maybe at some point I'd just start living, no questions asked.

John Corey Whaley

#35. He was an astronaut without a suit, but he was still breathing.

John Corey Whaley

#36. Writing was, is, and will always be my favorite job.

John Corey Whaley

#37. But, you see, it is not so much in the things we say to them about Christ, but more in the things we do for them that mirror the ways of Christ.

John Corey Whaley

#38. I remember, for the first time, sitting down and consuming books in a matter of hours. This was such a new experience for me because reading, up until that point, had been such a struggle and source of stress. I think I just needed to find the right kind of stories with which I could identify.

John Corey Whaley

#39. We talked for a while longer about whether or not I was going to study writing or just be like everyone else who wanted to be a writer and become a teacher instead.

John Corey Whaley

#40. You're like Lady Macbeth without the murder." "Thank you. You have no idea how much of a compliment that is to me.

John Corey Whaley

#41. You ever feel like you know someone so much that they can breathe for you? Like when their chest and your chest rise and fall, they do it together because they have to? That's how it felt. That's how it always felt.

John Corey Whaley

#42. Approaching my second novel was, admittedly, a bit of a struggle. But having an amazing team at Atheneum Books, especially my very patient, brilliant editor Namrata Tripathi, took a stressful situation and turned it into a really great learning experience for me.

John Corey Whaley

#43. It was easier for me to hate everyone in town than hate myself for being afraid I'd be just like them.

John Corey Whaley

#44. Maybe my time's running out, but at least I'm living. And if that's what it is for you, being here inside where nothing ever happens, where you think you're safe, then stay. Stay right here and you let me know how that works for you.
Bacause I'm gessing it'll never be enough.

John Corey Whaley

#45. The gays love me. I think it's the accent.

John Corey Whaley

#46. That's what we do sometimes. We let people disappear. We want them to. If everyone just stays quiet and out of the way, then the rest of us can pretend everything's fine. But everything is not fine.

John Corey Whaley

#47. No matter how often you see or talk to someone, no matter how much you know them or don't know them, you always fill up some space in their lives that can't ever be replaced the right way again once you leave it.

John Corey Whaley

#48. I don't want to lie about who I am, even if it doesn't matter. It's who I am. It's part of me.

John Corey Whaley

#49. He hasn't left his house in three years, he's not crazy, he's a genius; just tv and videogames twenty four-seven, I think he's my new hero ...

John Corey Whaley

#50. Maybe we all just exist, all versions of us exist at times, and we have to figure out a way to get to each of them, to find each one and tell that version that it's okay, that it's all justthe way it works, a concept too powerful to ignore but too complicated to explain.

John Corey Whaley

#51. We all get lots of people. And maybe we don't always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all.

John Corey Whaley

#52. In the middle of my fourth year teaching is when I got my book contract - in 2010. I knew the book would come out in May 2011.

John Corey Whaley

#53. What he feared the most was that all this hiding had made it impossible for him to ever be found again.

John Corey Whaley

#54. Is that what you think I'm going to do? Snap and kill you?" he asked. "Not me, you won't. I keep mace in my purse. You never know what kind of creep'll be shopping for a house." "Wait ... what?" "Invite

John Corey Whaley

#55. Everyone just outgrew me. Now I think I'm just haunting them.

John Corey Whaley

#56. She just looked right at him the only way she ever had, like he was the only other person in the world.

John Corey Whaley

#57. I know what it's like to be from an incredibly small town and the oppressiveness of it and the desire to get out. But I didn't realize that readers in Seattle, New York, and San Francisco might not get that so instinctively.

John Corey Whaley

#58. I was thrilled when this year's National Book Award for Young People's Literature went to Neal Schusterman's 'Challenger Deep.' This brilliant book takes you into the mind of a mentally ill teenager and deserves all the accolades it's received.

John Corey Whaley

#59. Think Han, not Lonely Agoraphobe.

John Corey Whaley

#60. I'm a huge 'Game of Thrones' fan.

John Corey Whaley

#61. He tried to help the world, but the world wouldn't let him.

John Corey Whaley

#62. I'm sorry, Cullen. I really am. I know this sucks. But you're better off anyway. And you'll be fine. You needed me. Now someone else needs me.

John Corey Whaley

#63. Some people sign on for the impossible. And they're the ones everybody remembers.

John Corey Whaley

#64. The Quit Man cometh, his minion at his heels.

John Corey Whaley

#65. Jealous of the crazy gay kid. That doesn't sound right."
"Hey, Sol," she said, her tone getting serious for a second.
"Those are two things about you out of a million. Don't box yourself in.

John Corey Whaley

#66. Life, he says, doesn't have to be so bad all the time. We don't have to be anxious about everything. We can just be. We can get up, anticipate that the day will probably have a few good moments and a few bad ones, and then just deal with it. Take it all in and deal as best we can.

John Corey Whaley

#67. Death can surprise us. It can scare us. It can keep us up at night. But we've also learned the things that death cannot do. It cannot crush our hopes. It cannot take away the love and support of our friends and family.

John Corey Whaley

#68. I jotted down Oslo After Death. This would be a great title for a book, I thought. That is what I do sometimes. I jot down titles for books that I one day intend to write.

John Corey Whaley

#69. She believed in herself maybe more than other people believed in God or the devil or Heaven or Hell.

John Corey Whaley

#70. No matter how evil man gets, he always gets a second chance one way or another.

John Corey Whaley

#71. That's the thing. You come back and you expect everyone to be just the way they were when you left. But it's not that easy, okay? You can't just force us all to be how you liked us.

John Corey Whaley

#72. Dealing with chronic anxiety has taught me to better understand the nuances of mental illness and the very individual nature of it.

John Corey Whaley

#73. God was like the best musician in the world, because he put together all the sounds of nature and gave people like Jimi Hendrix his fingers and John Lennon his brain.

John Corey Whaley

#74. He accepted him for what he was. And that Data concluded, was true friendship.

John Corey Whaley

#75. You're both living these lives you didn't choose to live in a world full of people telling you what that's supposed to mean. That's messed up.

John Corey Whaley

#76. We let them help because they needed it, not us. We didn't let them help us because we needed it, we let them help us because inside of humans is this thing, this unnamed need to feel as if we are usefel in the world. To feel as if we have something significant to contribute.
Cullen

John Corey Whaley

#77. It's not too hard to disappear when no one's looking for you.

John Corey Whaley

#78. I regret waiting until my mid-twenties to really start seeing the world. I think I should have taken more risks when I was younger and worried less about being ready to grow up.

John Corey Whaley

#79. But she believed there was a thin line between accepting one's fears and giving in to them altogether.

John Corey Whaley

#80. I've been an assistant to a folklorist and a teacher. There may or may not have been some sandwich-making at a certain sub chain in my past as well.

John Corey Whaley

#81. We're just floating in space trying to figure out what it means to be human.

John Corey Whaley

#82. I grew up in a little town with about 6,000 or 7,000 people. I always knew from 11 or 12 years old that I wanted to be a writer, and I always wanted to write about growing up in a place like that that's small and you don't fit into.

John Corey Whaley

#83. I love meeting readers and booksellers and am beyond overwhelmed and gratified at the reception. Each day feels like an adventure.

John Corey Whaley

#84. I often found myself in situations where I had, without thinking, said too much to too many with too little caution.

John Corey Whaley

#85. If I'm really under pressure to get work done, I can adapt to most situations, but I prefer to be at home, in a comfortable chair, with as few distractions as possible.

John Corey Whaley

#86. His brother, he thinks, was in love with everyone he knew.

John Corey Whaley

#87. Do you ever stand in here with that garage door open?"

"No I do not."

"Interesting," Clark said.

John Corey Whaley

#88. someone who wants to trust everyone so much that they don't see a lie when it's slapping them right in the face.

John Corey Whaley

#89. You have to forget about people when you can't have them anymore. That's the only way to be okay.

John Corey Whaley

#90. I knew the second I met you that you'd save my life someday.

John Corey Whaley

#91. That's how I knew I loved her so much, because not loving her didn't make any sense once I'd known what it felt like.

John Corey Whaley

#92. Take away the things that make you panic and you won't panic. And then he spent three years wondering why everyone found that so hard to understand. All he was doing was living instead of dying. Some people get cancer. Some people get crazy. Nobody tries to take the chemo away. Solomon

John Corey Whaley

#93. We all get people that help us make sense of the world, right? We just have to figure out how to keep them however we can.

John Corey Whaley

#94. Not only had my brother disappeared, but
and bear with me here
a part of my very being had gone with him. Stories about us could, from them on, be told from only one perspective. Memories could be told but not shared.

John Corey Whaley

#95. Some people say dying alone is a fate worse than death itself. Well, they should try being alone during the living part sometimes. There's no quicker way to make you wonder why the hell you ever thought you'd want to return.

John Corey Whaley

#96. My family and friends have been monumentally supportive from well before I was a published author.

John Corey Whaley

#97. Isn't it better not knowing? Like, just liking each other and seeing each other all the time without any definition to it?

John Corey Whaley

#98. But in that moment I understood what they say about nostalgia, that no matter if you're thinking of something good or bad, it always leaves you a little emptier afterward.

John Corey Whaley

#99. Call it egotistical or narcissist, but I think that's what we all look for in books - the right stories that help us make sense of the world that we, on a very personal level, live in every day.

John Corey Whaley

#100. Cullen?"
"Hey, Mom."
"Can you do me a favor?" she asked in that way that implied that saying no would cause someone to die.

John Corey Whaley