Hello Stranger Quotes
"I was the one who had to live it, after all."
"The truth was, I’d defied all my dad’s instructions eight years before, dropping out of premed and switching my college major to Fine Arts."
"My goal was always not to share things with my father."
"It’s possible my dad wanted me to be a doctor because he was a doctor. And it’s possible my dad didn’t want me to be an artist because my mom had been an artist."
"You’re on your own. If you choose this path for yourself, then you have to walk it."
"I still remember the determination I felt as I watched him leave. It seems almost quaint now."
"We were done here. Without a goodbye. As usual."
"I’d embarked on many endless years of … not showing him."
"I didn’t actively make things up. I just worked devotedly to obscure the truth."
"I was always 'doing great.' Or 'crazy busy.' Or 'thriving so much.'"
"And then I’d driven triumphantly out of the university parking lot in my banged-up Toyota that my friend Sue and I had painted hot pink with flames for the Art Car Parade."
"It’s a disorienting thing to know there’s something wrong with you."
"You’re not just your face, is what I mean."
"I don’t think we need to get into that."
"This is the one. The one she’d been painting a portrait for—of me, by the way—when she died."
"That was the most essential thing about my mom. She couldn’t always fix things for me, but she was always there."
"It’s like I’m not here. It’s like I disappeared."
"You’re about to win ten thousand dollars. You can afford one bottle of wine."
"Her tone was a little bit incredulous as she brought me up to speed, like how I could’ve chosen the crosswalk of a busy street, of all places, to have that nonconvulsive seizure was beyond her."
"Because if that’s how the world has always been for you, then that’s how it’s always been. Nothing about that would seem odd."
"One woman wanted to know the point of even talking about it when there were 'people with actual problems' out there."
"When people talked to her in the grocery store as if they knew her, she pretended she knew them right back, and asked them question after question until she could solve the mystery for herself."
"She learned a lot about people that way, she said—but more than that, it meant that almost every interaction she had with other people was infused with warmth and affection. In a way, there were no strangers."
"I mean, I just genuinely couldn’t imagine walking out into a world where everyone looked like bowler-hat figures in a Magritte painting and feeling… awash in a gentle sea of human kindness."
"The fact that a central tool for relating to the rest of humanity—one I’d relied on constantly, every day, my entire life—was suddenly just… gone?"
"My experience of all this so far was the opposite of living in a world with no strangers. For me, right now, everyone felt like a stranger."
"I shut down my Etsy shop. I put a note on the page and on my Instagram that read: 'AT CAPACITY! Thanks for all your orders! This shop is taking an eight-week hiatus. Not accepting new commissions.'"
"But now, of course, things were different. Maybe I knew her face so well, I didn’t have to see it to paint it?"
"I closed my eyes and tried to see this moment in my life as a gift. Yeah. No."
"An hour ago, I’d have said no—but now I wasn’t so sure."
"Even now, the thought of it makes me want to let out a low whistle."
"I mean, that chest might even have been better than a face."
"If I didn’t know better, I’d have called it jealousy."
"That roof is super filthy. Birds poop on it all the time. Not to mention acid rain, nuclear waste."
"I pictured him raking leaves shirtless."
"It’s nice to have a reason to do something nice."
"Maybe life was full of surprises. Maybe disappointments could turn out to be blessings."
"This is the best I can do with myself right now, okay?"
"Trust me on this. That girl is bad news."
"I tried to revise the memory into a simple act of altruism."
"If Dr. Oliver Addison, DVM, didn’t want me offering pity kisses to hipster neighbors ambushed by their ex-wives, he should have found a way to make it to our date."
"I could feel the confusion in her expression. 'Huh?'"
"Like a horror movie. I gasped out loud at the sight."
"The girl with the bob and the girl with the ponytail were the same person."
These portraits are an insult to the art world. Banal, trite, and cheesy to the max, this is "art" I can’t unsee. Seriously. My eyes are burning.
"I mean, ArtWeenie911 clearly had some issues."
"But it was time to level with him a little. 'I’m sorry,' I said then, 'I’m having a very weird month.'"
"My whole life, my brain was always just so … reliable. But now, not as much."
"It was artistically erotic, too. Is that a weird thing to say?"
"The electric softness of his mouth. The comfort of being pressed against him. The relief of giving in to all that longing."
"He was a real person with an empty apartment and a wounded heart."
"I’d earned my right to be there. I didn’t, of course, want to be humiliated. But it was looking like I couldn’t have one without the other."
"It’s one thing for dreams to shift slowly—for you to evolve and long for different things. It’s another thing to abandon your dream out of spite."
"She had loved us without reservation. She adored us wildly."
It’s not my fault your mother died," Parker said then. "It’s not my fault your dad married my mom.
"That try as he might, he couldn’t help but blame you."
"I’m not okay, Joe. That’s the truth. I’m absolutely, astonishingly… not okay right now."
"You can’t see when you’re not looking, I guess."
"It takes a certain kind of courage to be brave in love."