Just Listen Quotes
"I’d had over three months to get ready to see Sophie. But when it happened, I still wasn’t ready."
"You could tell in the way she stared out at me and the world so confidently as she opened her mouth to speak again."
"Sophie, though, remained expressionless as she turned her back, hiking her bag over one shoulder and starting down to the courtyard."
"The glass between us didn’t muffle the sound or the reaction of the people passing by."
"Maybe something else had happened over the summer to replace our little drama."
"She was skinnier, if that was possible, and had done away with the thick eyeliner she’d taken to wearing the previous spring, replacing it with a more natural look, all bronzes and pinks."
"If anything, she just stepped up her efforts more, as if it didn’t matter what they were saying as long as they were talking to her, period."
"It didn’t seem fair or right, but I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe all of this, and where I found myself, wasn’t so accidental. Maybe it was just what I deserved."
"I liked it, almost envied it. I couldn’t say what I wanted, but I could always count on her to speak up."
"For all her bravado, though, I knew Sophie had her own problems."
"I knew she was really mad at me. I assumed, though, that we’d work it out. It was just one night—I’d made a mistake; she’d come around."
"Before Sophie, people knew who I was because of my sisters and my modeling, but it was only once we were friends that I was popular."
"If it can be pollution or art, why wouldn’t you choose art?"
"But most people don’t, so it’s not exactly surprising."
"Otherwise we’d all be hanging from nooses. Right?"
"There’s no right and wrong in music, you know? Just everything in between."
"It’s got to suck, you know? Keeping something like that in. Walking around every day having so much you want to say, but not doing it."
"In my experience, when people I’m close with have gotten upset with me, that’s it. It is forever. Everything changes."
"But you gotta get stuff out. Otherwise it just festers, and eventually, you just blow."
"The more accurate the exercise, the more effective it is."
"She was beautiful—even in jeans and a T-shirt, no makeup, she was breathtaking."
"I probably could have stopped right there. But for whatever reason, I continued."
"You can’t just sit and wait for the music to come to you. You have to go to the music."
"It's not about the wash, anyway. It's the experience."
"You know how it is. Family drama and all that."
"It's the car-wash phenomenon. You really don't know about it?"
"The weird thing was that all fall, at school, rehearsals, anytime we passed, Emily wouldn’t meet my eyes."
"The only way to fix it would be to explain openly and honestly why I’d left, and I just could not do that. Even for him."
"It’s a funny feeling, being suddenly airborne. Just as you realize it, it’s over, and you’re sinking."
"All I’d ever wanted was to forget. But even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below."
"If you don’t pay attention to the past, you’ll never understand the future. It’s all linked together."
"Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been that bad. All you had to do was be honest. Tell me what really happened."
"There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you’d better learn to know the sound of it. Otherwise you’ll never understand what it’s saying."
"Don’t think or judge," I said. "Just listen."
"All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you’re lucky, there’s someone close enough by to shoulder the rest."
"That something in me had changed that fall, because of Owen, even if I only now could really see it."
"What mattered most, though, was that I’d gotten through it, finally—beginning, middle, and end. Which did not, of course, mean it was over."
"The music spoke for itself and for me, and after so long being watched and studied, I was finding I liked that. A lot."
"It wasn’t like it had been, but then neither of us would have wanted that anyway. As it was, we were just happy to be hanging out. Everything else, we took day by day."
"Just as the chorus began, I heard the door open and, a moment later, felt a hand on my shoulder."
"So I moved closer to Owen, leaning my head on his shoulder to listen, as we settled into the sunlight coming through the window beside us. It was bright and warm, catching the ring on my thumb as Owen reached for it, spinning it slowly, slowly, as the song played on."