29 Quotes by Hilary Thayer Hamann

Lying is a full time occupation, even if you tell just one, because once you tell it, you're stuck with it. If you want to do it right, you have to visualize it, conjure the graphics, tone, and sequence of action, then relate it purposefully in the midst of seemingly spontaneous dialogue. The more actual the lie becomes to the listener, the more actual it becomes to the teller, which is scariest of all. Some people really get to believing their own lies.

When you lose your parents as a child, you are indoctrinated into a club, you re taken into life's severest confidence. You are undeceived.

I could never settle for anything less than a renegade and a runaway, a descendant of greatness capable of voluntary disinheritance.

Having to talk to people was the one thing, but soliciting conversation was something else. If I acted squirmy or didn't make eye contact, they would want to know what was wrong, and I would have to say, Nothing, since nothing really was wrong. Nothing is an easy thing to feel but a difficult thing to express

They were sorting, or classifying. It's easy-anyone dressed funny is the enemy, especially if they reject your supremacy or do not acknowledge school as entertainment. If the enemy tries to look like you and act like you, only in more affordable clothes, that person is still the enemy, only of a more contemptible, less terrifying variety-

...someone who knows she is beautiful, who is always told that she is beautiful, but who, deep down, does not feel very beautiful.

Since he knew things at the beginning, maybe at the end he knew things too. That we had gone as far as chance would take us. That nothing is more sacred than youth or more hopeful than turning yourself over to someone and saying ~ I have this time, it is not a long time, but it is my best time and my best gift, and I give it to you. When I revisit my youth, I re-visit you.

If friendship is like a cathedral, then forsaken friendship is like roofless ruins...

Optimism is when you’re not sure where life is going to take you, so naturally you anticipate the best possible outcome.