Top 40 Andrew Smith Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “People fear what they can not understand and what they can not control.”

— Andrew Smith

2. “Joey told me nothing ever goes back exactly the way it was, that things expand and contract- like breathing, but you could never fill your lungs up with the same air twice.”

— Andrew Smith

3. “There’s no prison worse than “I promise.”

— Andrew Smith

4. “It was like watching my house catch fire, but I couldn’t look away, because how many times do you ever get to see a house burn down?”

— Andrew Smith

5. “When I think about my life, I’m always thinking, ‘I hope I live long enough to do all the stories I know.’ And I know I’m not gonna, ’cos I got a list over there and it keeps getting a little bit longer.”

— Andrew Smith

6. “I don’t know exactly what the Xanax did to me. All I can remember is how relaxed and not-uptight I felt. I did not care about anything. Everything was nice, very nice.”

— Andrew Smith

7. “You need to get up, Finn. I’m not going to let you stay in here like this any longer. Cade’s waiting downstairs, and I exhausted all possible topics of conversation with him back when he was about twelve years old.”

— Andrew Smith

8. “I was thinking. What if the world was like one of those Russian nesting dolls? What if we only saw one surface of it, the outside, but there was all kinds of other stuff going on, too? All the time. Underneath. But we just don’t see it, even if we’re part of it? Even if we’re in it? And what if you had a chance to see a different layer, like flipping a channel or something? Would you want to look? Even if what you saw looked like hell? Or worse?”

— Andrew Smith

9. “And then I wondered, does cussing count in the general scheme of things if you only cuss in your head and not out loud?”

— Andrew Smith

10. “I always bring back books for the library. Books have everything in them. After the end of the world, you cannot learn a goddamned thing from a computer or a television screen.”

— Andrew Smith

11. “It was so pleasant, chaotic, emotionless, nameless-everything vibrating so beautifully in the universe without words.”

— Andrew Smith

12. “Sometimes books imitate life. And sometimes books imitate lives that imitate books.”

— Andrew Smith

13. “I realize that death and survival are both extremes of selfishness.”

— Andrew Smith

14. “Expired condoms are like nuclear waste: there’s nothing sensible you can do with it.”

— Andrew Smith

15. “I love how, whenever you tell me a story, you go backwards and forwards and tell me everything else that could possibly be happening in every direction, like an explosion. Like a flower blooming.”

— Andrew Smith

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

16. “I hold together pretty well, considering how much my atoms have been through.”

— Andrew Smith

17. “I began to consider the fact that maybe history is actually the great destroyer of free will.”

— Andrew Smith

18. “Worry and regret are both useless weights that provide no drag. They never did anything to slow down the planet for one goddamned second.”

— Andrew Smith

19. “And I’m pretty sure that everyone in the Pacific Northwest heard Ryan Dean West shout, “YOUSTEPPEDONMYFUCKINGNUTSYOUSONOFABITCH!”

— Andrew Smith

20. “I stomped to the door, which was dumb because nobody can hear teenagers stomping in space. What’s the point stopping if no one can hear you?”

— Andrew Smith

21. “When you think about it, the universe is nothing but this vast knackery of churning black holes and exploding stars, constantly free atoms that collect together and become something else, and something else again.”

— Andrew Smith

22. “There is something inside all boys that drives us to go away again and again and again.”

— Andrew Smith

23. “The television was on. Leslie Mitchell had been watching a program about how to cook lamb when Hungry Jack came in and started eating him.”

— Andrew Smith

24. “I suppose the things that transform your life don’t appear as you fancifully imagine they will.”

— Andrew Smith

25. “The end of the world was one week old and it was getting out of hand.”

— Andrew Smith

26. “Please do not shoot us in the balls, EJ Elgin. It is only me, Robby Brees, and my friend, Austin Szerba, who is your next-door neighbor, and we are not rat boys from Mars. We come in peace, and smoking cigarettes.” “Benson.”

— Andrew Smith

27. “I came unglued and went back together the wrong way and fell apart again.”

— Andrew Smith

28. “What kind of world did our fathers abandon us to?”

— Andrew Smith

29. “History chews up sexually uncertain boys, and spits us out as recycled, generic greeting cards for lonely old men.”

— Andrew Smith

30. “History shows that an examination of the personal collection of titles in any man’s library will provide something of a glimpse into his soul.”

— Andrew Smith

31. “I’m foolishly self-conscious.”

— Andrew Smith

32. “I was certain about this: In the best new language, there would be no words for me or you. Those words have caused all the trouble started by the old languages. In any new language, there should only be we.”

— Andrew Smith

33. “All roads lead past shooting ranges, liquor stores, and gay bars. Wanderlust is part of the American Spirit.”

— Andrew Smith

34. “The more time you wait before telling somebody the truth about a secret you’ve been keeping, the longer your path out of the woods gets.”

— Andrew Smith

35. “My natural talent, I think, is in being fine – no matter what is actually going on inside me. I am fine. Nobody ever thinks otherwise.”

— Andrew Smith

36. “People naturally believe things they see. Nobody argues with the irrefutable postings on YouTube.”

— Andrew Smith

37. “You must be crazy, after all, if a bird loves you.”

— Andrew Smith

38. “All good books are about everything, abbreviated.”

— Andrew Smith

39. “My brother Max nodded knowingly. “Head injuries can answer a lot of questions that genetics are just too afraid to ask.”

— Andrew Smith

40. “I do not know why, because that is not my job, but history shows that every time a teenage boy opens a permanent marker, he will first sniff it before deciding how to go about defacing the planet.”

— Andrew Smith

41. “I READ SOMEWHERE that human beings are genetically predisposed to record history. We believe it will prevent us from doing stupid things in the future.”

— Andrew Smith