82 Quotes by Bill Konigsberg

Why can’t I just be bad?” I asked, figuring my mom would have no idea what I was talking about.“Well, that’s easy, sweetie. You can be anything you want, but when you go against who you are inside, it doesn’t feel good.

Perhaps the best answer is not to tolerate differences, not even to accept them. But to celebrate them.

It needs to be said that sometimes my mom forgets important details when she talks. Like the time she told us she was considering leather (couches, it turns out), or when I was little and she said, "Here's a napkin to put your balls in" (the Atomic Fireballs that I was eating, she meant).

I tried to imagine myself part of a pack of guys who picked up local public school girls on weekends. It was hard to envision, but I was definitely willing to try. Not the pickup part. Just the being in a posse part.

He's a good looking guy, no question. All bluster and confidence while I'm whatever the opposite of that is. Apologies and embarrassment. Awkwardness and sorrow. First dead in a zombie apocalypse

Guilt, she’d explained, was useful because a person could learn from it and do the right thing next time. Shame, on the other hand, was useless,

The world will make you vulnerable. If you're acting like you're not, that's what you're doing. Acting

We drive, and I'm thinking about users and abusers, like my mom says. The time my dad swung me around by my feet and I got hurt, and how he told me to man up. Who came up with that? Who came up with all those rules and ideas about how a guy's gotta be?

That was the thing about Ben. He could get away with saying shit like that. I totally couldn’t. I wasn’t big or masculine enough. In my mind, anyway. But Ben could get all agape on your ass, and you’d just sit there like, huh. Agape. Interesting.