A Little Life Quotes

“The joint went round and round, and although he didn't take a puff - he never did; he was too worried about what he might do or say if he lost control over himself - he could feel the smoke filling his eyes, pressing upon his eyelids like a shaggy warm beast. He had been careful, as he always was when one of the others paid for food, to eat as little as possible, and although he was still hungry (there were two slices left over, and he stared at them, fixedly, before catching himself and turning away resolutely), he was also deeply content. I could fall asleep, he thought, and stretched out on the couch, pulling Malcolm's blanket over him as he did. He was pleasantly exhausted, but then he was always exhausted those days: it was as if the daily effort it took to appear normal was so great that it left energy for little else.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Sing me something that tells me something about you”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“You were the one who got furthest with him. But I know you blamed yourself. I blamed myself, too. Because I did something worse than accepting it: I tolerated it.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“He loved knowing that in those moments, he was making Jude happy, loved knowing that Jude wanted affection and that he was the person who was allowed to provide it.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“...maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“You see, Jude, in life, sometimes nice things happen to good people. You don’t need to worry—they don’t happen as often as they should. But when they do, it’s up to the good people to just say ‘thank you’ and move on, and maybe consider that the person who’s doing the nice thing gets a bang out of it as well, and really isn’t in the mood to hear all the reasons that the person for whom he’s done the nice thing doesn’t think he deserves it or isn’t worthy of it.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“The first group fails because their logic is their own; the second fails because logic is all they own.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Dear Jude,” Harold wrote, “thank you for your beautiful (if unnecessary) note. I appreciate everything in it. You’re right; that mug means a lot to me. But you mean more. So please stop torturing yourself.

If I were a different kind of person, I might say that this whole incident is a metaphor for life in general: things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.

Actually—maybe I am that kind of person after all.

Love, Harold.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“[...] and then he had been relieved yet again: that the fiction could continue, that their equilibrium would remain unchanged, that he wouldn't have to have a conversation that he didn't know how to begin, much less lead.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“He knows how selfish, how unreasonable, how self-absorbed he is being, and he is miserable but unable to stop himself [...]”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“he would have kept living his little life;”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Though, of course - if you were here, wouldn't he still be as well?”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Before he wakes, he dreams of a man standing in a field. He can't see the man's features, but he is tall and thin, and he's helping another, older man hitch the hulk of a tractor carapace to the back of a truck. He knows he's in Montana from the whitened, curved-bowl vastness of the sky, and from the particular kind of cold there, which is completely without moisture and which feels somehow purer than cold he's felt anywhere else.
He still can't see the man's features, but he thinks he knows who he is, recognizes his long strides and his way of crossing his arms in front of him as he listens to the other man. 'Cody,' he calls out in his dream, and the man turns, but he's too far away, and so he can't quite tell if, under the brim of the man's baseball cap, they share the same face.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“You let things slide that your instincts told you not to, you scooted around the edges of your suspicions. You understood that proof of your friendship lay in keeping your distance, in accepting what was told you, in turning and walking away when the door was shut in your face instead of trying to force it open again.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“They are quiet for a long time. 'Do you remember the time you told me you were afraid that you were a series of nasty surprises for me?' he asks him, and Jude nods, slightly. 'You aren’t,' he tells him. 'You aren’t. ‘Being with you is like being in this fantastic landscape,’ he continues, slowly. ‘You think it’s one thing, a forest, and then suddenly it changes and it’s a meadow, or a jungle, or cliffs of ice. And they’re all beautiful, but they’re strange as well, and you don’t have a map, and you don’t understand how you got from one terrain to the next so abruptly, and you don’t know when the next transition will arrive, and you don’t have any of the equipment you need. And so you keep walking through, and trying to adjust as you go, but you don’t really know what you’re doing, and often you make mistakes, bad mistakes. That’s sometimes what it feels like.’
They’re silent. ‘So basically,’ Jude says at last, ‘basically, you’re saying I’m New Zealand.’
It takes him a second to realize Jude is joking, and when he does he begins to laugh, unhingedly, with relief and sorrow, and he turns Jude toward him and kisses him. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, you’re New Zealand.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“[He] cries for the shame and joy of finally getting to be a child, with all of a child's whims and wants and insecurities, for the privilege of behaving badly and being forgiven [...].”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“The thing I remember most vividly from that weekend is a small thing. We were walking, you and he and Julia and I, down that little path lined with birches that led to the lookout. (Back then it was a narrow throughway, do you remember that? It was only later that it became dense with trees.) I was with him, and you and Julia were behind us. You were talking about, oh, I don’t know—insects? Wildflowers? You two always found something to discuss, you both loved being outdoors, both loved animals: I loved this about both of you, even though I couldn’t understand it. And then you touched his shoulder and moved in front of him and knelt and retied one of his shoelaces that had come undone, and then fell back in step with Julia. It was so fluid, a little gesture: a step forward, a fold onto bended knee, a retreat back toward her side. It was nothing to you, you didn’t even think about it; you never even paused in your conversation. You were always watching him (but you all were), you took care of him in a dozen small ways, I saw all of this over those few days—but I doubt you would remember this particular incident.

But while you were doing it, he looked at me, and the look on his face—I still cannot describe it, other than in that moment, I felt something crumble inside me, like a tower of damp sand built too high: for him, and for you, and for me as well. And in his face, I knew my own would be echoed. The impossibility of finding someone to do such a thing for another person, so unthinkingly, so gracefully! When I looked at him, I understood, for the first time since Jacob died, what people meant when they said someone was heartbreaking, that something could break your heart. I had always thought it mawkish, but in that moment I realized that it might have been mawkish, but it was also true.

And that, I suppose, was when I knew.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“He was so exhausted of trying, when being awake and alive demanded such energy that he had to lie in bed thinking of reasons to get up and try again.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“They made me, and make me, into someone better than I really am... You won't understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are-not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving-and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad-or good-it may be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“As you get older, you realized that really, there were very few people you truly wanted to be around for more than a few days at a time, and yet here you were with someone you wanted to be around for years, even when he was at his most opaque and confusing...He was, he knew, a simple person, the simplest of people, and yet he had ended up with the most complicated of people.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Relationships never provide you with everything. They provide you with some things...If you keep trying to find everything, you'll wind up with nothing.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Wasn't friendship its own miracle, the finding of another person who made the entire lonely world seem somehow less lonely.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I would rather have him suffering and alive -than dead.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“A sad thing, when you had to sponge off of your boyfriend in publishing because he made more than you.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I'm Willem Ragnarsson," he says. "And I will never let you go.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“and so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life