Top 50 Susan Beth Pfeffer Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Don’t stop believing in miracles.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

2. “The only way you can be the best at something is to be the best you can be.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

3. “Every day we’re one day closer to death. But there’s no reason to rush into it.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

4. “I have no privacy. But I feel so alone.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

5. “But today when I am 17 and warm and well fed, I’m keeping this journal for myself so I can always remember life as we knew it, life as we know it, for a time when I am no longer in the sunroom.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

6. “Life catches you by surprise. It always does. But there’s good mixed in with the bad. It’s there. You just have to recognize it.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

7. “Because if I let myself feel the pain and the anger, I think it might kill me. Or I might kill someone else. I know it’s wrong to feel that way about God and I know its’s wrong to not feel anything. I hate it. I don’t hate God. I hate not loving Him.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

8. “I never really thought about how when I look at the moon, it’s the same moon as Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

9. “But it’s our curse and our blessing to remember the past and to know there’s a future. – Charlie.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

10. “He taught me to trust in tomorrow.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

11. “We’re all alive. We’re all healthy. These are the good times.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

12. “One of the more gratifying things about guilt is that it makes us feel important.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

13. “I wonder if I’ll ever have to decide which is worse, life as we’re living or no life at all.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

14. “I hate the moon. I hate tides and earthquakes and volcanoes. I hate a world where things that have absolutely nothing to do with me can destroy my life and the lives of people I love.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

15. “Here’s the funny thing about the world coming to an end. Once it gets going, it doesn’t seem to stop.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

16. “We may not have a future, but you can’t deny we have a past.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

17. “Sometimes the rules don’t work. Sometimes the rules cause the anarchy.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

18. “I feel myself shriveling along with my world, getting smaller and harder. I’m turning into a rock, and in some ways that’s good, because rocks last forever. But if this is how I’m going to last forever, then I don’t want to.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

19. “But she’s wrong about hell. You don’t have to wait until you’re dead to get there.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

20. “Do people ever realize how precious life is? I know I never did before. There was always time. There was always a future.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

21. “I never really thought about how when I look at the moon it’s the same moon Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at. Not to mention all those zillions of people I’ve never heard of. All those Homo sapiens and Neanderthals looked at the very same moon as me. It waxed and waned in their sky, too.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

22. “I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald’s would still be open.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

23. “Their eyes were usually open, and they stared up at the moon that had killed them.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

24. “It wouldn’t be New Year’s without a resolution. I’ve resolved to take a moment every day for the rest of my life to appreciate what I have.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

25. “There’s a difference between charity and love,” I said. “What we’re offering is love. Love lasts forever.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

26. “The electricity came on for the second time today wile we were eating. This may be a fool’s paradise, but it’s a paradise nonetheless.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

27. “Back in the time when life was easy, the Internet would have told me what I needed to know. The great thing about the Internet was it didn’t care why you were asking.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

28. “If God wanted a world filled with saints, He never would have created adolescence.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

29. “Carlos was probably somewhere warm, eating three meals a day, and sleeping in a real bed. That was the life.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

30. “I wonder if I cry whether my tears would be gray.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

31. “But I don’t want to have to stop feeling. I really think I’d rather die than stop feeling.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

32. “About 10 minutes ago, we all woke up because of this strange roaring sound. We all raced toward the sound, which turned out to be the washing machine going back on. Who knew the rinse cycle could be so scary?”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

33. “All my life I’ve been well behaved,” she said. “It’s about time I got to push people around and not apologize.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

34. “When I’m in the water I feel as though nothing bad has happened. I think about the fish, how they don’t know what’s going on. Their world is unchanged. Actually it’s probably better now to be a tuna or a sardine or a salmon. Less chance of ending up as somebody’s lunch.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

35. “This life, this everyday existence, is the one gift we’re given. To throw it away, to want to be dead, to me that’s the sin.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

36. “So we baked and sweated together. I like punching the dough. I told myself it was the moon and punched it senseless.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

37. “Great, the worlds coming to an end and we’re fixing it with Band-Aids.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

38. “Knowledge was the enemy of fear.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

39. “Just in case the world ends tomorrow,” she said. “We might as well enjoy today.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

40. “Lisa’s baby was due about now. I’ve decided she had it and it was a girl. I’ve named her Rachel.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

41. “This morning the electricity came on for a few minutes, and when it did, Jonny said, “Hey, it’s a black-on.” This is what passes for humor around here.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

42. “We can’t accept that things will always be bad. If we do, we won’t fight to make things better.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

43. “The last living boy in America drops into my bedroom only he wants to be a monk. I think that pretty much sums up my life.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

44. “Nothing good happened to Romeo or Juliet.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

45. “That’s the function of big brothers... to help their little sisters when their worlds are collapsing.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

46. “I’m 16 years old. Let me get my learner’s permit first. then I’ll worry about lifetime commitments.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

47. “Librarians! Librarians always know how to find out things. That was their job even before the Internet.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

48. “Sometimes it’s safer to cry about people you don’t know than to think about people you really love.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

49. “Maybe we lost the things we loved then so we could survive losing every thing else.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer

50. “If God’s looking for sacrifices, all He has to do is look at Mom.”

— Susan Beth Pfeffer