Top 90 Jeff Zentner Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Writing is something that you can learn only by doing. To become a writer, you need an imagination, which you clearly have. You need to read books, which you clearly do. And you need to write, which you don’t yet do, but should.”

— Jeff Zentner

52. “I’d say the winner of this debate is the God of Death, who’s now several minutes closer to claiming all of us.”

— Jeff Zentner

53. “We’re a fallen species.”

— Jeff Zentner

54. “Most of all, I think it’s people who love to be reminded that sometimes you do your best and you come up short, but there’s still a place in the world for people like that.”

— Jeff Zentner

55. “Love deserves monuments, and this is the only kind I know how to build.”

— Jeff Zentner

56. “The day may come when it takes some discernment to tell when someone loves you for you and when someone wants to stand near your fire.”

— Jeff Zentner

57. “Have you noticed that if you switch the first letters of every country singer’s first and last name, you end up with an amazing Star Wars name?”

— Jeff Zentner

58. “We live in a series of moments and seasons and sense memories, strung end to end to form a sort of story.”

— Jeff Zentner

59. “They went to the column, where they stole a few more quiet minutes together, listening to the river wear its way deeper into the earth, the way people wear grooves into each other’s hearts.”

— Jeff Zentner

60. “Because for every way the world tries to kill us, it gives us a way to survive. You just gotta find it.”

— Jeff Zentner

61. “You can’t live with your heart locked up in a safe.”

— Jeff Zentner

62. “I think if what you’d do for your last day on Earth doesn’t look like a pretty normal day for you, you probably need to reexamine your life.”

— Jeff Zentner

63. “Now I’m standing here, writing the final chapter of my son’s portion of the history of my life. I never imagined that my history would include the full history of my son, start to finish. But it does now.”

— Jeff Zentner

64. “It’s comforting to know that you don’t have to be excellent to not be completely forgotten.”

— Jeff Zentner

65. “Do you guys not get it? You can’t hurt us anymore. You can’t do anything to us. You can’t take anything from us. You’re nothing now.”

— Jeff Zentner

66. “Whatever this is, I like it. However reckless, however unwise this is, I don’t care. I’d rather lose him this way than any other way.”

— Jeff Zentner

67. “Here’s where stories come in. They tell us the truth of other people’s lives. They shine a light on shared humanity. They make us understand that we are different, but not ‘different’. That our differences are something that makes the human tapestry richer and more colorful, and not a threat.”

— Jeff Zentner

68. “Irrationality loves company.”

— Jeff Zentner

69. “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

70. “Life has given me little reason to feel large, but I see no need to make myself feel smaller.”

— Jeff Zentner

71. “Life often won’t freely give you moments of joy. Sometimes you have to wrench them away and cup them in your hands to protect them from the wind and rain.”

— Jeff Zentner

72. “I wish our love was enough to keep whole the people we loved.”

— Jeff Zentner

73. “It’s one of those tranquil days when the river reflects the brisk blue of the December sky and the pale winter sun, and the wind ripples the face of the water like brushstrokes on a painting. You look at it all and you hope maybe there’ll come a day when no trouble seems very important anymore and this is all you see when your mind goes still.”

— Jeff Zentner

74. “Remember that Florida is a land of weirdos and bizarre happenings, and conduct yourselves accordingly.”

— Jeff Zentner

75. “Gray, desolate dread descends on me – a cloud of ash blocking the sun. A complete absence of light or warmth. A tangible, mold-scented obscurity. A revelation: I will never again experience happiness.”

— Jeff Zentner

76. “This world is knives and wolves but also swans and stars.”

— Jeff Zentner

77. “The human eye can discern more shades of green than of any other color. My friend Delaney told me that. She said it’s an adaption from when ancient humans lived in forests. Our eyes evolved that way as a survival mechanism to spot predators hiding in the vegetation.”

— Jeff Zentner

78. “Ask me to number the breaths I wish for you. One more. Ask me a thousand times. The answer will always be one more.”

— Jeff Zentner

79. “While I sleep, he passes into the night of nights, drawing his final breath with no more ceremony than a leaf falling. My heart howls. I don’t know how to live under the sun of a God whose harvest is everyone I love. I don’t know.”

— Jeff Zentner

80. “I tell him I believe we are stories of breath and blood and memory and that some things never finally end.”

— Jeff Zentner

81. “Being a poet takes bravery. Yes, the courage to bleed on a page. But also to bleed for the world we write poetry about.”

— Jeff Zentner

82. “You can feel when your mind’s building a palace for a memory. A place it lives, glowing and dancing in marble halls. A place you can visit when you need to feel less of the world’s gravity.”

— Jeff Zentner

83. “I hold every memory of him like a match I let burn down to the end, singeing my fingers until it hurts too much to hold.”

— Jeff Zentner

84. “Out of nowhere, I’m taken up in an unnameable ecstasy. The kind that comes from no specific wellspring and overflows before you even knew it was building in you. Everything is so beautiful, so good, you feel like you don’t even need to breathe air anymore.”

— Jeff Zentner

85. “I’ve always loved when the light finds the broken spots in the world and makes them beautiful.”

— Jeff Zentner

86. “I lower the visor against the sinking sun. A ray catches a crack in the windshield and illuminates it, a tiny comet. I’ve always loved when the light finds the broken spots in the world and makes them beautiful.”

— Jeff Zentner

87. “I wonder if the actions we take and the words we speak are like throwing pebbles into a pond; they send ripples that extend farther out from the center until finally they break on the bank or disappear.”

— Jeff Zentner

88. “I wonder if all my days will be spent pressing vainly against doors forever shut to me.”

— Jeff Zentner

89. “Not the same.” She cries for a long time, and when she’s done, she says quietly, “Someday, someone I try to save is going to let me.”

— Jeff Zentner

90. “There are secret fires you wall off because you fear what they’ll burn if you loose them. Because you choose caution over possibility. But at the first crack in the wall, you feel their warmth and decide you’ll gladly risk the burning.”

— Jeff Zentner

91. “He pauses once more, and with what remains of himself, says, “There was a last time I held you in my arms, and I didn’t even know it.”

— Jeff Zentner

92. “Stick to the key of C, dude. No sharps or flats. More forgiving.”

— Jeff Zentner

93. “I hear in my mind the swish of the boat cutting through the water, a whisper of a thing that returns to perfection the moment we leave it.”

— Jeff Zentner