Jay's Quotes

When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know. "Oh, sure you know," the photographer said. "She wants," said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything.

The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families.

No one knows for certain how much impact they have on the lives of other people. Oftentimes, we have no clue. Yet we push it just the same.

A lot of you cared, just not enough.

You can't stop the future You can't rewind the past The only way to learn the secret ...is to press play.

You don’t know what goes on in anyone’s life but your own. And when you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re not messing with just that part. Unfortunately, you can’t be that precise and selective. When you mess with one part of a person’s life, you’re messing with their entire life. Everything. . . affects everything.

But you can't get away from yourself. You can't decide not to see yourself anymore. You can't decide to turn off the noise in your head.

Atticus said to Jem one day, "I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. "Your father’s right," she said. "Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.

You can't go back to how things were. How you thought they were. All you really have is...now.

If my love were an ocean, there would be no more land. If my love were a desert, you would see only sand. If my love were a star- late at night, only light. And if my love could grow wings, I'd be soaring in flight.

Everything...affects everything

Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don't understand. Thoughts that aren't even true—that aren't really how we feel—but they're running through our heads anyway because they're interesting to think about.

Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.

It's hard to be disappointed when what you expected turns out to be true.

If you hear a song that makes you cry and you don't want to cry anymore, you don't listen to that song anymore. But you can't get away from yourself. You can't decide not to see yourself anymore. You can't decide to turn off the noise in your head.

The books we love, they love us back. And just as we mark our places in the pages, those pages leave their marks on us. I can see it in you, sure as I see it in me. You're a daughter of the words. A girl with a story to tell.

Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.

When you try rescuing someone and discover they can't be reached, why would you ever throw that back in their face?

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

Too many books. Too few centuries.

A flood of emotions rushes into me. Pain and anger. Sadness and pity. But most surprising of all, hope.

I hope you're ready, because I'm about to tell you the story of my life. More specifically, why my life ended. And if you're listening to these tapes, you're one of the reasons why.

Am I not merciful?

You deserve every star in the galaxy laid out at your feet and a thousand diamonds in your hair. You deserve someone who'll run with you as far and as fast as you want to. Holding your hand, not holding you back.

In the end....everything matters.

I sat. And I thought. And the more I thought, connecting the events in my life, the more my heart collapsed.

You've got the look of a girl who's no stranger to the page. I can tell. You've got words in your soul.

I'm listening to someone give up. Someone I knew—someone I liked. I'm listening... but still, I'm too late.

It’s always been you even when I didn’t want it to be, even when it broke my heart over and over again. It’s just always been you.

He presses the triggers. And like roses in his hands, death blooms.

I appear to have misplaced the fucks I give for what you think.

You can hear rumors. But you can't know them.

I wanted people to trust me, despite anything they'd heard. And more than that, I wanted them to know me. Not the stuff they thought they knew about me. No, the real me. I wanted them to get past the rumors. To see beyond the relationships I once had, or maybe still had but that they didn't agree with.

The brighter the light, the deeper the shadow.

After the sharp-eyed jay and the roaring lion, peace will come on dove's gentle wing.

That's why you did it. You wanted your world to collapse around you. You wanted everything to get as dark as possible.

We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.

After all, how often do we get a second chance?

How can you call it love when it hurt you so badly?" "It was love because it was worth it.

I can't. You can't rewrite the past.

But sometimes there’s nothing left to do but move on.

Soul Alone by Hannah Baker I meet your eyes you don't even see me You hardly respond when I whisper hello Could be my soul mate two kindred spirits Maybe we're not I guess we'll never know My own mother you carried me in you Now you see nothing but what I wear People ask you how I'm doing You smile and nod don't let it end there Put me underneath God's sky and know me don't just see me with your eyes Take away this mask of flesh and bone and See me for my soul alone

Never flinch" A cold whisper in her ear. "Never fear. And never, ever forget.

I’m sorry.” Once again, those were the words. And now, anytime someone says I’m sorry, I’m going to think of her.

Fun drunks make a nice addition to any party. Not looking to fight. Not looking to score. Just looking to get drunk and laugh.

Like driving along a bumpy road and losing control of the steering wheel, tossing you—just a tad—off the road. The wheels kick up some dirt, but you're able to pull it back. Yet no matter how hard you try to drive straight, something keeps jerking you to the side. You have so little control over anything anymore. And at some point, the struggle becomes too much—too tiring—and you consider letting go. Allowing tragedy... or whatever... to happen.

Every story needs its hero. And its villain. And its monster.

Because when you're posed, you know someone's watching. You put on your very best smile. You let your sweetest personality shine.

Love isn’t meant to be hidden away and life is too short for shame.

It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop and think how many of them would cause serious and drastic unhappiness after The End? Why are sick and dangerous personality types so often shown a passionate and tragic and something to be longed for when those are the very ones you should run for your life from? Think about it. Heathcliff. Romeo. Don Juan. Jay Gatsby. Rochester. Mr. Darcy. From the rigid control freak in The Sound of Music to all the bad boys some woman goes running to the airport to catch in the last minute of every romantic comedy. She should let him leave. Your time is so valuable, and look at these guys--depressive and moody and violent and immature and self-centered. And what about the big daddy of them all, Prince Charming? What was his secret life? We dont know anything about him, other then he looks good and comes to the rescue.

Beauty you're born with, but brains you earn.

Iron or glass? they'd ask. She was neither. She was steel.

I hate not knowing what to believe anymore. I hate not knowing what's real.

Men wants us so badly for our bodies, yet hate us so much for our minds.

A life without books is a life not lived.

The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.

Maybe it didn’t seem like a big deal to you Zach. But now, I hope you understand. My world was collapsing. I needed those notes. I needed any hope those notes might have offered. And you? You took that hope away. You decided I didn’t deserve to have it.

Who am I to deny gravity, Aurora? When you shine brighter than any constellation in the sky?

but it's not safe and I can feel him slipping away, so I just get out one more sentence. "Stay with me." As the tendrils of sleep syrup pull me down, I hear him whisper a word back but I don't catch it.

He's not the heart and flowers kind of guy, but he's the heart and soul kind, and fuck if every girl would rather that than flowers.

Opposites don't just attract they freaking catch fire and burn the entire city down1

Normally when a person has a stellar image another person's waiting in the wings to tear them apart. They're waiting for that one fatal flaw to expose itself.

Betrayal. It's one of the worst feelings.

You don't know what goes on in anyone's life but your own.

I left. When I should have stayed.

It's easy to lose yourself in the idea of a person and be blinded to their reality.

What you don't understand, you can make mean anything.

When the right moment appears, the key is to not let it pass.

The entitled assholes of the world are sustained by girls who forgive too easily.

I could picture life—school and everything else—continuing on without me. But I could not picture my funeral. Not at all. Mostly because I couldn’t imagine who would attend or what they would say.

You might get only one shot. So shoot. You know who said that?" The rifle clatters to the bloody floor. "Hanna FUCKING Donnelly. That's who.

Because it may seem like a small role now, but it matters. In the end, everything matters.

Is that love, do you think?" he asks, sounding genuinely curious. "Being crazy about someone no matter how much they hurt you?

Sometimes weakness is a weapon. If you're smart enough to use it.

And after I dropped him off, I took the longest possible route home... I explored alleys and hidden roads I never knew existed. I discovered neighborhoods entirely new to me. And finally... I discovered I was sick of this town and everything in it.

Dying is easy. Anyone can throw themselves onto the pyre and rest a happy martyr. Enduring the suffering that comes with sacrifice is the real test.

You'll be a rumor. A whisper. The thought that wakes the bastards of this world sweating in the nevernight. The last thing you will ever be, girl, is someone's hero.

I love you. I want to do everything with you. I want to marry you and have kids with you and get old with you. And then I want to die the day before you do, so I never have to live without you.

A week went by and nothing. But eventually, as they always will, the rumors reached me. And everyone knows you can't disprove a rumor.

If Vengeance has a mother, her name is Patience.

He loved her. Jay Heaton, her best friend since childhood was in love with her. He didn't say it but she knew that it was true. And the part that really freaked her out, the part that caught her completely off guard, is that he wasn't alone. Because even though she'd been denying it for a long, long time, it had always been there... waiting beneath the surface of their friendship. And now that it was out there was no going back. And it was so weird to even be thinking it but...... she was in love with him too.

You have me Shaw, any way you need me, any way you want me, you have me.

Maybe if I forgot things once in a while, we'd all be a little bit happier.

Sometimes I think the difference between what we want and what we're afraid of is about the width of an eyelash.

It may seem that every time someone offers you a hand up, they just let go and you slip further down.

Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true—that aren’t really how we feel—but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about. If you could hear other people’s thoughts, you’d overhear things that are true as well as things that are completely random. And you wouldn’t know one from the other. It’d drive you insane. What’s true? What’s not? A million ideas, but what do they mean?

I think it’s genetically impossible not to be kind of in love with him when you come equipped with a vagina. It’s just something about all that angsty, moody swagger he has that makes you want to cuddle him up and make him feel better.

She'd grown up inside books. No matter how dark life became, shutting out the hurt was as easy as opening a cover. A child of murdered parents and a failed rebellion, she'd still walked in the boots of scholars and warriors, queens and conquerors. The heavens grant us only one life, but through books, we live a thousand.

We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. {Letter from the commissioners, John Adams & Thomas Jefferson, to John Jay, 28 March 1786}

With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, "Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?

Real love has little to do with falling. It's a climb up the rocky face of a mountain, hard work, and most people are too selfish or too scared to bother. Very few reach the critical point in their relationship that summons the attention of the light and the dark, that place where they will make a commitment to love no matter what obstacles-or temptations- appear in their path.

since i will not send this, i also feel it is my duty to inform you that almost six months on I think I still love you and that makes me sad becaue love shouldn’t feel this way. is like getting kicked in the stomach every time i think of you and it makes me want to roll my face across this keyboardbiu;///ubEWdcfhugiov’byhi;.//////-=‘-0i9juh8ygtfdcsaazs34defg7uefg7u8hi9o0p8hi9o0p-[[09ju8dcsaazs34d9o0p-[[09.

What are you doing here?" she asked as she slowed from a jog to a walk and placed her hands on her hips. It would take her a few minutes to get her breathing back to normal. Longer if he kept smiling at her like that. He shrugged. "I couldn't sleep. What about you?" She opted for the obvious and filled her voice with as much sarcasm as she could. "I live here, actually

Cock is just another word for 'fool.' But you call someone a cunt, well..." The girl smiled. "You're implying a sense of malice there. An intent. Malevolent and self-aware. Don't think I name Consul Scaeva a cunt to gift him insult. Cunts have brains, Don Tric. Cunts have teeth. Someone calls you a cunt, you take it as a compliment. As a sign that folks believe you're not to be lightly fucked with.

Here’s my heart Shaw. You have it in your hands and I promise you’re the first and last person to ever touch it. You need to be careful with it because it’s far more fragile than I ever thought and if you try and give it back I’m not taking it. I don’t know enough about love to know for sure that’s what this between us is, but I know that for me it’s you and only you from here on out and I can only promise to be careful and not push you away again. Life without you in it is doable, but if I have a choice I want to do it with you by my side and I’m telling you I’m not running away from the work it takes to make that happen. Shaw I’m not scared of us anymore.

Suicide. It's something I've been thinking about. Not too seriously, but I have been thinking about it.” That's the note. Word for word. And I know it's word for word because I wrote it dozens of times before delivering it. I'd write it, throw it away, write it, crumple it up, throw it away. But why was I writing it to begin with? I asked myself that question every time I printed the words onto a new sheet of paper. Why was I writing this note? It was a lie. I hadn't been thinking about it. Not really. Not in detail. The thought would come into my head and I'd push it away. But I pushed it away a lot.

If you're angry, you don't have to write a poem dealing with the cause of your anger. But it needs to be an angry poem. So go ahead... write one. I know you're at least a little bit angry with me. And when you're done with your poem, decipher it as if you'd just found it printed in a textbook and know absolutely nothing about its author. The results can be amazing...and scary. But it's always cheaper than a therapist.

Women without children are also the best of mothers,often, with the patience,interest, and saving grace that the constant relationship with children cannot always sustain. I come to crave our talk and our daughters gain precious aunts. Women who are not mothering their own children have the clarity and focus to see deeply into the character of children webbed by family. A child is fortuante who feels witnessed as a peron,outside relationships with parents by another adult.

To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air. Marie-Laure can sit in an attic high above the street and hear lilies rustling in marshes two miles away. She hears Americans scurry across farm fields, directing their huge cannons at the smoke of Saint-Malo; she hears families sniffling around hurricane lamps in cellars, crows hopping from pile to pile, flies landing on corpses in ditches; she hears the tamarinds shiver and the jays shriek and the dune grass burn; she feels the great granite fist, sunk deep into the earth’s crust, on which Saint-Malo sits, and the ocean teething at it from all four sides, and the outer islands holding steady against the swirling tides; she hears cows drink from stone troughs and dolphins rise through the green water of the Channel; she hears the bones of dead whales stir five leagues below, their marrow offering a century of food for cities of creatures who will live their whole lives and never once see a photon sent from the sun. She hears her snails in the grotto drag their bodies over the rocks.