“This is how we reveal ourselves: these tiny flashes of discomfort, the reactions we can’t hide.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Love fails for a million reasons - distance, infidelity, pride, religion, money, illness. Why is this story any more worthy?
It felt like it was. It felt important. Living in this town is suffocating in so many ways.
But if a tree falls in the woods, maybe it makes no sound.
And if a boy falls for the bishop's closeted son, maybe it makes no story.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“I don’t actually care if you break my heart, Sebastian. I went into this knowing it could happen and I gave it to you anyway. But I don’t want you to break your own. You have so much space in your heart for your church, but does it have space for you?”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“He pauses, and I know what’s coming before he even says it, and it’s like the sun chose this moment to press through the dense branches of the tree. “I’m totally gay.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“The things that I love about you aren't going to go away when you go on your book tour, and they're not going to go away when you go on your mission. I'll still be here, and I'll still be thinking about all those things. I'll still be working on being a better person, a better friend, a better son. I'll still be wondering what it would be like to be a better boyfriend for you. And you will be on your mission, thinking about how much you wish your weren't gay.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“He is never going to be here, I thought. He is never coming back.
Was I okay with it? No. But missing him every day for the rest of my life was still easier than the fight Sebastian had: to stuff himself inside a box every morning and tuck that box inside his heart and pray that his heart kept beating around the obstacle. Every day I could go to class as exactly the person I am, and meet new people, and come outside later for some fresh air and Frisbee. Every day I would be grateful that no one who matters to me questions whether I am too masculine, too feminine, too open, too closed.
Every day I would be grateful for what I have, and that I can be who I am without judgment.
So every day I would fight for Sebastian, and people in the same boat, who don’t have what I do, who struggle to find themselves in a world that tells them white and straight and narrow gets first pick in the schoolyard game of life.
My chest was congested with regret, and relief, and resolve. Give me more of those, I thought to whoever was listening—whether it was God, or Oz, or the three sisters of Fate. Give me those moments where I think he’s coming back. I can take the hurt. The reminder that he’s not coming back—and why—will keep me fighting.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“My brain is such a traitorous beast.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Our eyes snag, and hold. His are green and yellow, with these razor-sharp flecks of brown. I feel like I've taken a running leap off a cliff and have no idea how deep the water is.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“But this is your life, and it will stretch out before you, and you are the only person who can make it whatever you want it to be.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Light bursts behind my closed eyes, so intensely I nearly hear the popping sound. It's my brain melting, or my world ending, or maybe we've just been hit by a meteor and this is the rapture and I'm given one last perfect moment before I'm sent to purgatory and he;s sent somewhere much, much better.
It isn't his first kiss - I know that - but it's his first real one.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Maybe I'm crying because I'm terrified that he's come here to do more damage, to reactivate what I feel only to let me down easy again, missionary style.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“We don't rehash the question of my sexuality, but I feel its presence like a third person in the room, sitting in the dark corner, eavesdropping on our conversation.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Inside my chest, my lungs are wild animals, clawing at the cage.
"Oh, man," Autumn mumbles from beside me. "His smile makes me stupid."
Her words are a dim echo of my own thoughts: His smile ruins me. The feeling makes me uneasy, a dramatic lurch that tells me I need to have him or I won't be okay.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“He shakes his head, and I think this moment, right here, is when it really hits me that Sebastian's identity isn't queer. It's not gay. It's not even soccer player or boyfriend or son. It’s Mormon.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“His voice is both low and quiet, and it has this hypnotic rhythm to it. I wonder whether someday he'll give sermons with that voice, whether he'll throw down judgement with that voice.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“High school is such an incestuous little pool.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“We're only three class sessions in and I'm already behind? And to hear it from him? This buttoned-up Bible-thumper I can't get out of my head?”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“To her, not packing our lunches every day or joining the PTA is a feminist rallying cry.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“I am a monster beneath him, with arching hips, an octopus with hands everywhere at once. I don't think anything in the history of time has felt this good.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Oh my God, Tanner! Do you really care what kind of underwear he’s got on? Let’s talk about your goddamn outline!”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“You're so lucky and you don't even know it.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“It isn't his first kiss - I know that - but it's his first real one.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“He's not recruiting me to the oiled-up Gay Bliss Club of Northern Utah, but to the LDS Church.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“He shakes his head, and I think this moment, right here, is when it really hits me that Sebastian's identity is a queer. It's not gay. It's not even soccer player or boyfriend or son. It’s Mormon.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
Christina Lauren
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“I sucked on a blade of grass and watched the millwheel turn. I was lying on my stomach on the stream's opposite bank, my head propped in my hands. There was a tiny rainbow in the mist above the froth and boil at the foot of the waterfall, and an occasional droplet found its way to me. The steady splashing and the sound of the wheel drowned out all other noises in the wood. The mill was deserted today, and I contemplated it because I had not seen its like in ages. Watching the wheel and listening to the water were more than just relaxing. It was somewhat hypnotic. …
My head nodding with each creak of the wheel, I forced everything else from my mind and set about remembering the necessary texture of the sand, its coloration, the temperature, the winds, the touch of salt in the air, the clouds...
I slept then and I dreamed, but not of the place that I sought.
I regarded a big roulette wheel, and we were all of us on it-my brothers, my sisters, myself, and others whom I knew or had known-rising and falling, each with his allotted section. We were all shouting for it to stop for us and wailing as we passed the top and headed down once more. The wheel had begun to slow and I was on the rise. A fair-haired youth hung upside down before me, shouting pleas and warnings that were drowned in the cacophony of voices. His face darkened, writhed, became a horrible thing to behold, and I slashed at the cord that bound his ankle and he fell from sight. The wheel slowed even more as I neared the top, and I saw Lorraine then. She was gesturing, beckoning frantically, and calling my name. I leaned toward her, seeing her clearly, wanting her, wanting to help her. But as the wheel continued its turning she passed from my sight. “Corwin!”
I tried to ignore her cry, for I was almost to the top. It came again, but I tensed myself and prepared to spring upward. If it did not stop for me, I was going to try gimmicking the damned thing, even though falling off would mean my total ruin. I readied myself for the leap. Another click... “Corwin!”
It receded, returned, faded, and I was looking toward the water wheel again with my name echoing in my ears and mingling, merging, fading into the sound of the stream.
…
It plunged for over a thousand feet: a mighty cataract that smote the gray river like an anvil. The currents were rapid and strong, bearing bubbles and flecks of foam a great distance before they finally dissolved. Across from us, perhaps half a mile distant, partly screened by rainbow and mist, like an island slapped by a Titan, a gigantic wheel slowly rotated, ponderous and gleaming. High overhead, enormous birds rode like drifting crucifixes the currents of the air.
We stood there for a fairly long while. Conversation was impossible, which was just as well. After a time, when she turned from it to look at me, narrow-eyed, speculative, I nodded and gestured with my eyes toward the wood. Turning then, we made our way back in the direction from which we had come.
Our return was the same process in reverse, and I managed it with greater ease. When conversation became possible once more, Dara still kept her silence, apparently realizing by then that I was a part of the process of change going on around us.
It was not until we stood beside our own stream once more, watching the small mill wheel in its turning, that she spoke.”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from The Great Book of Amber
“How did you learn all this?"
Vic sighed. "See, while you spend all your time making out with Balthazar, and Raquel stays holed up with her art projects, and Ranulf's off studying his Norse myths again, i do something else. Something crazy. Something strange. I call it 'talking to other people.' Through this miraculous process, I am sometimes able to learn facts about two or three other human beings in a single day. Scientists plan to study my method."
~Vic”
― Claudia Gray, quote from Stargazer
“Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me
("The Circus Animal's Desertion")”
― W.B. Yeats, quote from The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
“Listen to me. You have the fashion sense of a park bench and the interpersonal skills of a meat cleaver--"
"Is this supposed to be helping?"
"Let me finish--"
"What's next? The size of my cock?"
"Hey, even pencils can get the job done--I've heard the moaning from your room to prove it.”
― J.R. Ward, quote from Lover Unleashed
“The only reason I get out of bed at all on weekends is because eventually I can't stand the taste of my own breath any more.”
― Jeff Kinney, quote from Diary of a Wimpy Kid
Thousand Words
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