Perfect (Book Quotes)

Title: Perfect

Author: Cecelia Ahern

Type: Novel (Sequel of Flawed)

Published: 2017

Chapters: 84 (in three parts)

Characters: Celestine North, Carrick Vane, Lennox, Fergus, Lorcan, Leonard, Mona, Adam, Kelly, Kate, Rogan, Juniper.

 

If you haven’t read the book Perfect by Cecelia Ahern yet, this may be a spoiler for you.

 

So,

Here are the quotes and dialogues I liked most from the novel,

 

Quotes:

 

“There’s the person you think you should be and there’s the person you really are. I’m not sure who I should be, but I now know who I am. And that, I say, is the perfect place to start again.”

 

“Perfect: ideal, model, faultless, consummate, quintessential, exemplary, best, ultimate; (of a person) having all the required or desirable elements, qualities, or characteristics; as good as it is possible to be.”

 

“A weed is just a flower growing in the wrong place.”

 

“Things that are unconventional and out of place are more beautiful than anything else.”

 

“It’s not that he’s afraid of progress- in fact he is the first person to fight for change-but he likes authenticity, everything in its truest form.”

 

“There’s the person I think I should be, though I can’t even dream about it properly without reality’s interruptions, and there’s the person I really am now.”

 

“I close my eyes and think hard. I have too many wishes and feel that none of them are within my reach. But I also believe that the moment we’re beyond making wishes is either the moment we’re truly happy, or the moment to give up. Well, I’m not happy. But I’m not about to give up.”

 

“I don’t believe in magic, yet I see making wishes as a nod to hope, an acknowledgment of the power of will, the recognition of a goal. Maybe saying what you want to yourself makes it real, gives you a target to aim for, can help you make it happen. Channel your positive thoughts: Think it, wish it, then make it happen.”

 

“[it] fills me with so much anger and hatred for them that any thoughts I had of turning myself in, of giving up on my freedom, dissolve immediately. I will not give up; I can’t let them win.”

 

“Rule number one: Don’t trust anybody.”

 

“When it’s yourself, you can take it; when it’s happening to the people you love, it can break you.”

 

“Let’s not get into a discussion about any ‘causes’… the only cause we should be discussing is the cause for celebration yesterday that we only learned about today.”

 

“People I love have surprised me by hurting me, and it’s been the people I’ve least expected who have redeemed and restored my faith. It never ceases to both break my heart and amaze me.”

 

“Don’t let people push you out front and hide behind you for their beliefs.”

 

“Think, think, think. Use what you have. Use what you have. There’s a problem, find the solution.”

 

“Polya advised, if you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can solve: you just have to find it.”

 

“But as angry as I feel, I just can’t suddenly hate the person I once cared for so much. I can’t switch it off that quickly. I’m not a robot; I want to try to understand.”

 

“We have become so lost in the fear of making mistakes that nobody is acting on gut instinct.”

 

“There’s the person who you think you should be and there’s the person who you really are. I’ve lost sense of both.”

 

“Unconventionality is my way of thinking, of being. That is my strength. I had to toughen up and fight. What makes you different can be the worst thing in the world. You realize that it’s your weapon, your armor, your strength. Your gift. For me it is thinking in a nonlinear way, which means doing the very thing you think you must not do.”

 

“It’s weird how other people’s lives move on, how they have to move on, while mine stand still.”

 

“It is impossible to know who to trust anymore. Instead of thinking of the uncertainties. I need to deal with the facts.

I know who I can’t trust.”

 

“Maybe the moon wasn’t perfectly full, maybe I just thought it was, because I can see now that I thought a lot of things that weren’t true. I think back to who I was then and see how naïve I was, thinking I knew it all, thinking I could plan it all, thinking that I could have every solution to every problem. Thinking I could trust people.”

 

“I want to run at him and punch him, kick him, I want to scream so loudly at him, vent all the most disgusting words I can think of, but I know it will have no effect. He is impenetrable. Any emotion or affection he had for me died a long time ago. Now I think he sits for hours thinking of ways he can simply destroy me.”

 

“I’m so conflicted. I hate them and I pity them. I’m relieved they’ve been punished, and feel guilty at the same time.”

 

“I wanted to blame somebody for all this. Someone other than my stupid self… I’m not used to being by myself; it’s easier when it’s somebody else’s fault.”

 

“You’re brave to have tried.”

 

“In brief… everybody, every single one of us, has a ‘chief feature’, which is a negative trait. It takes control at times, resulting in a grotesque character flaw. We must learn to identify it so that we can handle it and improve our personal growth.”

 

“Instead of running from something forever, the only way to deal with it is to face it head-on.”

 

“I walk, the tears spilling from my eyes, down my cheeks. Head straight, focused on the path before me. Our tears are pointless and worthless-they can do no good. No one but ourselves can wipe them.”

 

“There is a space that people hold for you, within themselves. Every person has a space for every person they meet-sometimes the capacity is deep, sometimes it is shallow. The capacity these people hold for us is enormous, in each of them. People who are loved can eventually be hated in equal amounts. If the space is there for us, all we have to do is alter the feelings. If they hate us this much, they could love us equally.”

 

“And there are the very special people in our lives who have the endless capacity to love us for all of our flaws.”

 

“Mistakes are nothing to be ashamed of. Mistakes teach us to take responsibility. They teach us what works and what doesn’t. We learn what we would do differently the next time, how we will be different, better and wiser in the future. We are not just walking mistakes, we are human.”

 

“To err is human. You learn from your mistakes.”

 

“I blink, thinking my eyes are deceiving me. Showing me what I want instead of reality. But the vision doesn’t change.”

 

“We’re back to where we started, only it’s not good enough now.”

 

“I love mathematics because a problem always has a solution. Follow the theorem and you can always find the answer. Lately, I’m confused, there are no theorems, just people playing games with one another, changing the rules as they go along. But just because they change the rules doesn’t mean that I have to.”

 

“I am being selfish. I have grown to love my Flawed world. I love the friends I’ve made. I know who I am. I feel like one of them. For that to be taken away would be to go through it all again, being ripped away from a world and people I know. I feel at home being Flawed, maybe more comfortable than ever; I feel at peace in my scarred skin. I don’t want my brands removed. I don’t want to go back to who I was, to the life that I had. I would never feel at home being perfect. It doesn’t exist; it’s all fake.”

 

“I’m not seeking perfection; I’m not seeking justice. I’m seeking balance.”

 

“If everyone thinks you are something, why not become it? Isn’t that what you did?...You didn’t want to fight it anymore, you wanted to see what it was like. You didn’t have anything else to lose.”

 

“But I don’t want them to take my brands away. These brands have given me more strength than I’ve ever had, and I can’t pretend none of this happened. But there need to be a balance. “

 

“I’ve learned a great deal throughout this experience, and one of the most important things you’ve taught me is about trust. Who to trust and who not to trust. Before the branding I don’t think I’d ever been hurt by anyone, not in a real way. But since the branding, people have surprised me.

It wasn’t me who changed. You put a letter on my sleeve and these scars on my body, and suddenly the whole world shifted.”

 

“I’ve been forced to figure out who I am, more than ever. Punishment helps people become more self-aware. I think of myself more, and think more of myself; but mostly I’m aware of my instincts more than ever. They’ve become my guide.”

 

“I miss her. I want my mom. I want to touch her, smell her, feel her. I want her to make everything okay just as she always has done for me, or at least make me feel like everything is going to be okay. Help me with that extra armor for the world. I know I am old enough, but I need her.”

 

“The Whistleblowers are now the hunted; the Flawed and unflawed are together, the hunters.

 

“My eyelids are heavy, like life has given me a rest. Over the past three weeks I have felt that if I didn’t keep moving, then I’d never move again, and yet life has stopped me dead in my tracks as if to say, No more, Celestine, no more. I don’t even feel like moving now. I wouldn’t know where to go if I did move. Here is the only place I need to be.”

 

“Our scars and imperfections all have stories. My scars give me strength, remind me how I can overcome the toughest times in my life; his wound will remind him that he protected me, that he did good, that he came to aid of a Flawed. He redeemed himself and in so doing defended me in more ways than he could realize. He defended my actions, too.”

 

“For someone to win, somebody else must lose. For that person to have won they must have lost something in the first place. The irony of the justice is that the feelings that precede it and those which fruit from it are never fair and balanced. Not even justice itself is perfect.”

 

“We all used to sit around crying with laughter as he entertained us, but I guess we never put it all together. He always sang about something that didn’t fit in, someone who was left out, someone who was losing or missing something. [He] has been living with his own demons.”

 

“I am free, but even better than that, I feel free. I was free before, but I never knew it, now I feel it.”

 

“Everybody wants to be seen to be doing something, but there are no solutions and no punishments as of yet.”

 

“Even though our bond has dissolved, it doesn’t mean it has disappeared, it is still there somewhere, probably for the rest of our lives, just not visible to the human eye, not in the same form as it was.”

 

“For once, I won’t plan, I won’t have any expectations. I will take things step by step, save the leaps for the times of necessity. I will enjoy the sun on my skin, the wind on my face, the sound of my family’s voices, and the effects of their love, and value the loyalty of my new friends. The simple things, some say, but that depends on where you live and what laws control you, because there was nothing simple about any of us achieving this.”

 

Dialogues:

 

“Maybe the strongest fighters are the nurturers because they’re connected to something deep in their core, they’ve got something to fight for, they’ve got something worth saving.”

 

“I’m a weed. I’m a survivor. I’m Flawed.”

 

“…I was given a clear message: Society didn’t want me. They tore me from my terra firma, dangled me by my roots, shook me around, and tossed me aside.”

 

“But who called these weeds?... Not nature. It’s people who did that. Nature allows them to grow. Nature gives them their place. It is people who brand them and toss them aside.”

 

“I see… her eye on it all, always in the corner, analyzing everything with a content, quiet smile, always watching and understanding everything better than anyone else.”

 

“It’s not how it’s supposed to be, not how it ever was, which was perfect, but I can’t even summon up those old feelings in my daydreams anymore. That time of my life feels so far away from now. I left perfection behind a long time ago.”

 

“Each time [they] come so close to my hiding place I can barely breathe. I hear their footsteps, sometimes their breaths, as I’m crammed, jammed, into spaces, above and below, sometimes in places so obvious they don’t even look, sometimes so dangerous they wouldn’t dare to look.”

 

“I’ve also learned that reporting people as Flawed to the Guild is a weapon that people use against one another. They wipe out the competition, leaving a space for themselves to step into, or they use it as a form of revenge. People abuse the system. The Guild is one gaping loophole for opportunists and hunters.”

 

“One of the strengths of the Guild is that they feed the media. They work alongside each other, feeding each other, and the media feeds the people.”

 

“We are told that the judges are right, the branded are wrong. The story is obscured, never fully heard, the voice of reason lost through the foghorn of a Whistleblower siren.”

 

“That’s a personal message, and it was done in anger, without practice and without anesthetic. It’s a raw, shocking scar.”

 

“Never mind digging my own grave: I prepared the coffin, too.”

 

“It’s subtle, and it’s jolly in tone, but the undertones are threatening.”

 

“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I close my eyes, try to return to…the person I should be, not the person I am. I try to go far away, but I can’t disappear. I’m here and now.”

 

“My heart thumps wildly, I feel the throbbing in my neck and head. It’s as though I’m moving in slow motion, like this is a nightmare that I can only hope to wake from. But it’s not. It’s happening for real.”

 

“Hiding behind the tree, huddled on the ground, hugging my legs, shivering from the damp forest, I can’t say that I feel empowered. This feels like a defeat.”

 

“She is looking right through me, as though she can’t see me at all. Has it come to this? Have I been hiding so long that I’m no longer visible? I actually look down at my hands to make sure I can see myself.”

 

“I don’t know who to believe. I’m cold; I’m scared; I can either jump up and yell “Save me!” and ruin everything I’ve done to get to this point, or I can sit tight. Sit tight. Sit tight.”

 

“It’s over, Celestine; it’s over. And even though I tell myself that, I’ll never give up.”

 

“I unfold myself from my cramped position. I stretch my arms and legs, and on one, two … I fire myself out of the hole, catapulting into the woods, startling whatever is living nearby, and sprint with stiff legs.”

 

“I need to keep moving. The flashlights suddenly go off and I’m running in pitch blackness. I stop still, my breathing all I can hear. I don’t know which way is forward or which is back the way I came; I am utterly disoriented in the dense forest. Panic descends again, then I take control. I close my eyes, allowing calm to encapsulate me. I can do this.”

 

“I think of all my clothes in my wardrobe at home, each item that meant so much to me, every one a part of me, a way of expressing who I was. I’m stripped of those now, realize I have nothing but my own words and actions to truly show who I am.”

 

“It’s like I know him so well, and yet we’re perfect strangers at the same time.”

 

“This is all in my name. [He] is playing a game with me. I will continue to punish the innocent until you come out of your place.”

 

“There are times when I’ve wanted to give up, for the sake of others, but… He tells me that I can do more for people over time and they will appreciate it then. it just takes patience.”

 

“I yearn for that feeling of not having to constantly look over my shoulder.”

 

“His eyes, a color I’ve never been able to work out, still look black… I study them: hard, intense, quick, always analyzing, looking for new angles.”

 

“Yes, us Flawed should always be grateful for every opportunity.”

 

“Our connection goes deeper than that. We shared something that will link us forever, something I’ll never have with anybody else. Though I don’t know if it’s a good thing, to look at him and always remember that he was the person there … during the toughest moment of my life. It causes me to remember it, over and over again. Maybe being away from him would help me to forget.”

 

“I learn the first rule of being Flawed. Never ask a Flawed person how they became Flawed.”

 

“So much of what happened between us during those weeks was all due to lack of communication. I think when things happen to you, it can … alienate you from people.”

 

“Everything shifted; everything changed, nothing for the better.”

 

“I know who she is…what she is…I think she was afraid to tell me, but I wouldn’t have cared, I always knew and never cared. I mean, of course I cared, but it didn’t stop me from loving her; if anything, it made me love her more.”

 

“He looks so earnest, so concerned, so nervous, that I almost believe him. I understand his words t mean: I tell nobody about him, he tells nobody about me.”

 

“The tribe believes that each human being comes into the world as good, that each person only desires safety, love, peace, and happiness. But sometimes in the pursuit of these things, people make mistakes. When a person makes a mistake, he or she is placed alone in the center of the village. All work stops and everyone gathers around the individual to take part in a beautiful ceremony where each person of the village shares all the good things that the individual ever did in his or her lifetime. Every positive story, their good deeds and strengths are recounted. At the end, a celebration takes place and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe.”

 

“I thought they trusted me. It just taught me that no matter how good a relationship I thought I’d built up with them, they didn’t trust me anyway.”

 

“Seems longer, doesn’t it? ... that’s the weird thing about this place- it’s as though time doesn’t exist. People come here and they never leave.”

 

“The theorems, equations- they always made sense to me. A problem that could easily be solved. If anything tested me, I’d stick with it until I got my solution. I feel the same way now. Something doesn’t feel right. There’s a problem. It’s lingering, like a ghost with unfinished business, waiting for somebody to figure it out.”

 

“For a record, my wanting to leave has nothing to do with how things are going with my family. It’s about me. I’m not settling for this life and neither should you.”

 

“I felt terrified then, broken, had lost all faith in people and my new life. But now, I’m completely relaxed, excited even. Despite the terrifying feeling I had.”

 

“But his dishonor to them only proves his loyalty to what’s good and right, and proper and honest.”

 

“What you did was the strongest, bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. You are my inspiration… every time I think I can’t get through this, that there’s no way out, I think of you. There’s no one like you. Courageous, so stubborn.”

 

“He’s always calm; even under these circumstances, his sentences are slow, as if he is able to process everything in proper time, unlike me, whose head is jumping around with images and thoughts, panic and fear.”

 

“We’ve gathered here, wild and angry with one another, nobody trusting anybody, to try to make some sense of this.”

 

“Family… you’re living in a cuckoo land.”

 

“I just told them to wait here with me. That it would be worth it.

This is my chance to prove myself to anybody who doesn’t believe in me.”

 

“They’re all looking at me, stunned. Unsure. In awe.

I like it.”

 

“After hunkering down in the corner of my cabin feeling like the world is too great for me, that everything is too large, overbearing and overwhelming for me, I refocus, wipe my eyes roughly and formulate my plan. I have people waiting for me.”

 

“I know lots of things that you don’t think I know. I also know lots of things that you don’t know.”

 

“I smile with surprise and punch the air, grateful for life’s wonderful coincidences.”

 

“I examine his profile, adoring his commitment, his strength, even his stubbornness, even if all those traits got him into trouble. He’s rather be right than safe.”

 

“I’m not a hero! I’m just a normal girl who did the right thing! There is nothing heroic about anything I did!”

 

“You’re the only Flawed person the public has ever really rooted for. You’re allowing them to see that we’re human, It’s because of you that they’re hearing our stories, and only through sharing our stories can we make changes.”

 

“You’re right. I am on my own. Everybody is in this for themselves, and I have to start thinking of me. I don’t need anybody. I don’t need you.”

 

“Please go. I can do this on my own.”

 

“I feign disappointment. I lay my head on the table, and it’s not difficult to make tears come; they were already close to the surface anyway.”

 

“You can’t brand everybody, Bosco.”

 

“You are a monster who’s out of control, who can’t be trusted with the power he’s been given.”

 

“He may owe me an apology, but he is the one who believed in me more than anyone, which has led me to this point right now, and I owe him this.”

 

“I believe it’s called empathy… we may have lost that as a society.”

 

“I owe you, now go save the world, baby sister.”

 

“And I get it. I finally get it. We’re in this together; it’s not all on me. Every person here is taking a massive risk, too.”

 

“It won’t be easy. When it comes to the Guild, nobody is untouchable.”

 

“I look around for someplace to hide, not that it matters much at the moment, as we’re on a relatively quiet backstreet and the sun is down. It is easier to hide under the cover of darkness, but harder after curfew, when checkpoints are raised, and curfew is not far off.”

 

“People are living in fear. Is what you consider a people changing actually people frozen by fear, afraid to make any decision, take any risk in case they are punished, cast out from society.”

 

“Well, around here we use the word when, not if.”

 

“I’m not aiding anybody in here, the way I see it is everybody here is aiding me.”

 

“Whenever I’m confused, I look at what I know: who is against me; who is on my side. Who can I trust; who can’t I trust, and how do I utilize them both. In a massive generalization: who is against me? Non-Flawed. Who is with me? Flawed.”

 

“It was on a bus that I lost my faith in humanity. It was on a bus that it was restored.”

 

“She has hurt so many, but it is because she is hurting.”

 

“I’m not scared. I think it means that I’m ready.”

 

“You need to choose whose side you’re on. That of the survivors, or the sinking ship.”

 

“The problem with people who are always gazing at the stars is that they often miss what’s going on around them.”\

 

“The minute they put us in this room together, we became friends. We are all on the same side in here. We are against them, not one another.”

 

“Smile, Chins up, let’s get through this with some dignity.”

 

“Despite all the eyes on [me], I feel invisible. Nobody can truly see me. It feels the more they have lumped us together, the less human we have become, no longer individuals.”

 

“More people join us. It doesn’t take long, but soon we all stand in rows in the courtyard hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder united. We are all silent. And yet I feel a power build inside me that I’ve never felt before, a sense of place stronger than anything.”

 

“He looks worried.

Good.

Because I’m just getting started.”