The Center of Everything Quotes

“Shooting stars are not really stars at all but meteorites, burning their way through our atmosphere, sometimes landing in the oceans and in the middle of farms...you could make wishes on them if you like, but they are really just pieces of rock falling down from the sky, and they could land on your head and kill you just as you look up to make a wish. Really, they're just rocks. They don't care about your wishes at all.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“I know that sometimes when you are really worried about something, it ends up not being nearly as bad as you think it will be, and you get to be relieved that you were just being silly, worrying so much over nothing. But sometimes it is just the opposite. It can happen that whatever you are worried about will be even worse than you could have possibly imagined, and you find that you were right to be worried, and even that, maybe, you weren't worried enough.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“Someone needs to give the Pope thirteen babies. Just for a week or so. See how he likes no birth control then.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“This is how it is now. This is my life.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“It's like swimming, underwater, this whole year. I just close my eyes. hold my breath, and keep kicking.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“I know that this moment, what I am seeing before me, will become a picture in a photo album. Their child, the one on its way, will look at this picture years from now, showing friends, and say, This is a picture of my parents the day they got married, touching Travis’s and Deena’s stilled faces with his or her fingers, seeing only how beautiful they both look, Deena’s dress lifting in the breeze. They will think the picture is more important than it really is; they will think he or she exists because of the picture, instead of the other way around.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“Thanks, Mom. I’m trying hard.” I see the ends of my mother’s mouth twitch, almost a smile. She is hearing things like this more and more. Last week, Verranna Hinckle brought two other women from the university over with her, and they watched Samuel feed himself and point at what he wanted. They used the same word—“amazing”—as if he and my mother had performed a magic trick, pulled a rabbit out of an empty hat. I don’t think my mother knows what to do with these compliments when she gets them, especially from Eileen. She’s like a person without any hands getting flowers.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“Calm down, honey, he said. It’s just a game. But by then I couldn’t calm down because, more than anything, I like to win things, and it didn’t seem fair that I could beat everybody else and then still not win just because of one person. If you don’t win things, you lose them, and I think the way I feel when I lose must be the way it feels to be dead.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“with”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything

“Eileen says what they should really do, if they want to be fair about it, is offer a Bible study class for credit, and let us take that instead of sitting an extra hour in study hall, twiddling our so-called opposable thumbs.”
― Laura Moriarty, The Center of Everything