Top 90 Jeff Zentner Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Be honest. Be humble. Listen more than you talk.”

— Jeff Zentner

2. “Grief is weird. It seems to come in these waves out of nowhere. One minute I’m standing in the ocean, fine. The next minute I’m drowning.”

— Jeff Zentner

3. “Our memories of our loved ones are the pearl we form around the grain of grief that causes us pain.”

— Jeff Zentner

4. “If you’re going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things.”

— Jeff Zentner

5. “I guess guilt doesn’t sleep, it only eats.”

— Jeff Zentner

6. “The universe – fate – is cruel and random. Things happen for many reasons. Things happen for no reason. To shoulder the burden of the universe’s caprice is too much for anyone. And it’s not fair to you.”

— Jeff Zentner

7. “I’ve made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery.”

— Jeff Zentner

8. “I sometimes look at my bookshelf now and think about how someday I’m going to die without ever reading a lot of the books there. And one might be life-changingly good and I’ll never know.”

— Jeff Zentner

9. “I’m tired of many things... I’m tired of watching the world grind up gentle people... I’ve made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery.”

— Jeff Zentner

10. “Nothing makes you feel more naked than someone identifying a desire you never knew you possessed.”

— Jeff Zentner

11. “Funny how people move through this world leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry.”

— Jeff Zentner

12. “Funny how people move through this world leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what’d happen if all those people put their puzzle pieces together.”

— Jeff Zentner

13. “You’re never safe from yourself. Your own blood will poison you.”

— Jeff Zentner

14. “For the most part, you don’t hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone.”

— Jeff Zentner

15. “The funny thing is that I never see the world any differently through new glasses. I only ever see things differently when I look in the mirror.”

— Jeff Zentner

16. “I want you to be careful in this world. My heart is wrapped up in you.”

— Jeff Zentner

17. “My mind twirls with mysteries. The eternities. Life. Death. I can’t stop it. It’s like staring in the mirror for too long or saying your name too many times and becoming disconnected from any sense of yourself. I begin to wonder if I’m even still alive; if I exist.”

— Jeff Zentner

18. “She laughs. A clean, bright, and silver sound, like wind chimes.”

— Jeff Zentner

19. “For a long time I shined my light for someone other than me. But not anymore. Now I shine bright for me. You can create light even when everyone’s left you behind because that’s what you do. It’s what I do.”

— Jeff Zentner

20. “When he was sad, he never used it as an occasion to make anyone else sad.”

— Jeff Zentner

21. “Sometimes, though, you want to remember every minute you spent with someone. You want to remember even the most mundane moments. You wish you had inhabited them more completely, and marked them with yourself more indelibly – not in spite of their ordinariness, but because of it. But you only discover this when it’s too late.”

— Jeff Zentner

22. “Because we should do things we’re afraid of. It makes it easier every time we do it.”

— Jeff Zentner

23. “The worst days spent with her were better than the best days spent without her.”

— Jeff Zentner

24. “I’m glad things end, though. It forces you to love them ferociously while you have them. There’s nothing worth having that doesn’t die.”

— Jeff Zentner

25. “I’m tired of watching children perish. I’m tired of watching the world grind up gentle people. I’m tired of outliving those I shouldn’t be outliving. I’ve made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery.”

— Jeff Zentner

26. “People live quiet lives and that’s okay. There’s dignity in that, no matter what you may think.”

— Jeff Zentner

27. “She’s it. She’s my everything. She’s the standard by which I’ll judge beauty for the rest of my life. I’ll measure every touch to her breath on my skin. Every voice to her voice. Every mind to her mind. My measure of perfection. The name carved into me. If I could, I would lie with her under these stars until my heart burst.”

— Jeff Zentner

28. “But the thing with a best friend is that you’re never talking about nothing. Even when you’re talking about nothing, it’s something. The times when you think you’re talking about nothing, you’re actually talking about how you have someone with whom you can talk about nothing, and it’s fine.”

— Jeff Zentner

29. “What you call pride, I call courage.”

— Jeff Zentner

30. “I wish it would rain. Torrents. So hard it would cleanse me of worry and trouble; so hard it would lift the stain of death from me and carry it to the rivers and out the sea.”

— Jeff Zentner

31. “You’re telling someone in a wheelchair ‘Walking is awesome. You should get up and walk.’ It’s not that easy.”

— Jeff Zentner

32. “Weird how we’re programmed to get pleasure from destroying ourselves.”

— Jeff Zentner

33. “That wouldn’t be a bad way to die... giving off light for millions of years after you’re gone.”

— Jeff Zentner

34. “I think lives are worth more than the sum of their parts,” Lydia said. “I don’t think it’s fair to measure them in accomplishments...”

— Jeff Zentner

35. “We are a fallen species, spitting on the gift of salvation. Humanity is irredeemable.”

— Jeff Zentner

36. “Well, I started Tae Kwon Do pretty early before moving into Muay Thai – ” “What’s that?” “Muay Thai? It’s this Thai kickboxing style where you use your whole body to put force into kicks and strikes.” “Oh, like the way I eat pizza.”

— Jeff Zentner

37. “Nothing stops when we’re gone,” Lydia said. “The seasons don’t stop. This river doesn’t stop. Vultures will keep flying in circles. The lives of the people we love won’t stop. Time keeps unspooling. Stories keep getting written.”

— Jeff Zentner

38. “There are books stacked high around them – the way opportunity and possibility are stacked around them.”

— Jeff Zentner

39. “I watch the tip of my tie sway to and fro and wonder how humans got to a place where we said, “Whoa. Hold on. Before I can take you seriously, you need to hang a brightly colored strip of narrow pointy cloth around your neck.”

— Jeff Zentner

40. “Her voice was soft, but not like a pillow. Like a pile of fine metal shavings or powdered glass.”

— Jeff Zentner

41. “His mother was quiet for a moment. “I get out of bed every day because I never know where I’ll meet with one of God’s small graces. Maybe I’ll be cleaning a room and find a dollar bill. Maybe I’ll be at the gas station on a slow night, and I’ll get to sit and be paid to watch the sun set. Or maybe I just won’t hurt much that day. What a miracle each day is. To see the spirit of God move across the face of our lives like he did the waters in the darkness of creation.”

— Jeff Zentner

42. “I should wait. I don’t want to come off as a weirdo. But also I’m now keenly aware of how important it is to tell people what you want them to know while you can.”

— Jeff Zentner

43. “A liquid rose-gold warmth – whatever color is on the opposite end of the spectrum from the color of aloneness – fils me briefly.”

— Jeff Zentner

44. “Finally, I say, “I’ve had boyfriends who liked to go to the bookstore, but mostly so they could pretend to be smarter than me and brag about all the Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Bukowski they’ve read.” “Who and who?” “You can’t imagine what a relief that question is.” “No guy who tries to make you feel dumb deserves you.”

— Jeff Zentner

45. “No one ever says on their deathbed they wish they’d loved fewer people.”

— Jeff Zentner

46. “Lydia shook her head. “This is my life. Getting yelled at in a Walmart parking lot on a Friday night by somebody doing a bad impression of PG-13 fart-joke-movie comedian.”

— Jeff Zentner

47. “No one knows how anybody lives through anything. People just do.”

— Jeff Zentner

48. “You’ll never regret a decision more than the one you make out of fear. Fear tells you to make your life small. Fear tells you to think small. Fear tells you to be small-hearted. Fear seeks to preserve itself, and the bigger you let your life and perspective and heart get, the less air you give fear to survive.”

— Jeff Zentner

49. “Wanting to believe something is powerful.”

— Jeff Zentner

50. “I’m tired of watching children perish. I’m tired of watching the world grind up gentle people. I’m tired of outliving those I shouldn’t be outliving. I’ve made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery. I needed to say that out loud to somebody other than my cats. Please take care of yourselves, my young friends.”

— Jeff Zentner