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One's character is set at an early age. The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life. I hate to see you swim out so far you can't swim back.

Wendelin Van Draanen

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Wendelin Van Draanen
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: January 6
Author
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Rest
Choices
Age
Hate
Character
Back
Affect
Make
Swim
Life
Early

More quotes by Wendelin Van Draanen

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If the mind's not strong, the body acts weak, even if it's not. If the mind says it's too cold or too rainy or too windy to run, the body will be more than happy to agree. If the mind says it would be better to rest or recover or cut practice, the body will be glad to oblige.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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There's nothing like a headstrong woman to make you happy to be alive.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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It was beyond embarrassing or humiliating or even mortifying. It was ego-slaying!
Wendelin Van Draanen
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It's experiences in life that give us something to write about, and since good fiction is applied tension, you'll have an arsenal of good material if life hasn't been peachy (and not a whole lot if it has).
Wendelin Van Draanen
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You want me to be a man,older than you, who goes by the name of Roullard.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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What he did to my heart was sheer, inexplicable, magic.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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Sometimes the things we really want are right in front of us. We just don't see them.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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All of a sudden I didn't fit in anywhere. Not at school, not at home...and every time I turned around, another person I'd known forever felt like a stranger to me. Even I felt like a stranger to me.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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It's funny how you can think you know someone pretty well, and then something happens or they do something that makes you understand that you didn't really know them at all.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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There's no winning arguments with your parents
Wendelin Van Draanen
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There was other stuff, too, like how something can be so much more than the parts it took to make it, and why people need things around them that lift them above their lives and make them feel the miracle of living.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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I fell asleep that night thinking about the kiss that might have been. What did a kiss feel like, anyway? Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be like the one I got from Mom or Dad at bedtime. The same species, maybe, but a radically different beast, to be sure. Like a wolf and a whippet – only science would put them on the same tree.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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Sometimes I get so caught up in my own problems that I forget how amazing the world is.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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As I run, I wonder how many of these people helped buy my leg. I wonder about the deep, wide abyss between good intentions and concrete action, and how many of them leapt across it.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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Now, I know from experience that the trouble with one lie is that it usually takes more lies to cover it up. And if you don't watch out, you wind up telling lies to cover up the lies that are covering up the original lie.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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What I'm expecting is for you to behave like the gentleman I always thought you were.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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My grandfather stood beside me and looked across the street, too. No, Bryce, he said softly. She's the same as she's always been you're the one who's changed. He clapped his hand on my shoulder and whispered, And son, from here on out, you'll never be the same again.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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Sometimes a little discomfort in the beginning can save a whole lot of pain down the road.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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You can't dwell on what might have been...and it's not fair to condemn him for something he hasn't done.
Wendelin Van Draanen
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I'd scale that monster sycamore if I could. Right to the top. And I'd yell her name across the rooftops for the whole world to hear. -Bryce
Wendelin Van Draanen