“The present is our own. The right-this-second, the here-and-now, this moment before the next, is ours for the taking. It’s the only free gift the universe has to offer. The past doesn’t belong to us anymore, and the future is just a fantasy, never guaranteed. But the present is ours to own. The only way we can realize that fantasy is if we embrace the now.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“You can’t re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another. You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice. You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life. It doesn’t mean you can’t love another or move on; it just means that the one spontaneous moment, the split second that you took the leap, when your heart was racing and your mind was muddled with What ifs?—that moment—will never happen the same way again. It will never feel as intense as the first time. At least, that’s the way I remember it. That’s why my mother always said we memorialize our past. Everything seems better in a memory.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“And in that moment, you realize how little control you have over your own destiny. From the time you're born, you have no control; you can't choose your parents, and, unless you're suicidal, you can't choose your death. The only thing you can do is choose the person you love, be kind to others, and make your brutally short stint on earth as pleasant as possible.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Everything seems better in a memory.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“It was like the universe was teasing us; we saw each other just a second too late.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Once there was you and me
We were lovers
We were friends
Before life changed
Before we were strangers
Do you still think of me?”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Poetry is just evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Maybe that’s what growing up was really all about. Adults always say how complicated life gets as we age, but really, I think we just look for bigger challenges to overcome. Our biggest fears stretch from sleeping without our beloved teddy bear to finding out that we have no purpose in life. Did time, maturity, and overcoming obstacles offer the kind of contentment so evident in Orvin? Or did we just simply give up and surrender to the life we were already living?”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“We were victims of bad timing. But here we are again.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Weren’t we though? Timeless? Nothing could change what we’d had all those years before, even if the idea of what might’ve been lingered between us.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“You have to learn to fly before you can soar.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“You can’t re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another. You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice. You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“The present is our own. The right-this-second, the here-and-now, this moment before the next, is ours for the taking. It’s the only free gift the universe has to offer.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“I felt it for Grace before I even had a name for it. I might have said the word a million times, but it sounded different now that I meant it. When I thought about what we had, it didn’t matter that it was just friendship. I loved her.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Like nothing else in life, sex is perfectly selfless and selfish all at once. Hot and cold, yin and yang, black and white, and all of the shades in between.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“You were always with me, Grace. I never found a way to let you go.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“We memorialize our past. Everything seems better in a memory.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“From the time you’re born, you have no control; you can’t choose your parents, and, unless you’re suicidal, you can’t choose your death. The only thing you can do is choose the person you love, be kind to others, and make your brutally short stint on earth as pleasant as possible.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Isn’t there a word for friends that mess around?”
“Yeah, it’s called girlfriend and boyfriend.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“I was static, standing on the platform, watching train after train go by, wishing I knew which one to be on.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“And then his lips were on mine and we were in it, pulling away from the past and rushing fast into the future.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Life was passing me by at high speed as I sat back with my feet up, rejecting change, ignoring the world, shrugging off anything that threatened to have meaning of relevance.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Fifteen years is too long to be holding on to a few heart-pounding moments from college.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“That’s why my mother always said we memorialize our past. Everything seems better in a memory.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.’ ”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Thank you.” Isn’t that all we need to hear sometimes—that you’re a good mom or friend or daughter or wife?”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“I’m really into girls with big platelets.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
“Isn’t that all we need to hear sometimes—that you’re a good mom or friend or daughter or wife?”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Before We Were Strangers
Renee Carlino
Born date May 11, 2018
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“Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.”
― William James, quote from The Varieties of Religious Experience
“Marie-Neige was on the shore, near the light, a tin outline. She lifted the lamp above her head and called out his name and he said Yes and she turned. She could see the ribs on his body as he came into more and more light. She placed the lamp on the grass and picked up her cotton dress and began drying her hair, so it was no longer plastered around her face, then came nearer to him and rubbed his hair dry with the dress. So now they looked as they did in a room, or across a table, no longer appearing as strangers to each other. On his knees, behind her, he pulled her thighs back to him in a slow rocking, as if he wanted her now to search for him, the heat of her cave onto his coldness, missing each other, and she said his name again and he moved into her, her softness and the unknown warmth.
How many stories were read between them in which they had discovered the codes of eventual love and said nothing in their shyness. She’d barely been touched by him—his cupped hands once on her shoulders, his hard grip when she pulled the splinter out of his eye, his holding her small hands across a table. It was as if they had both known what all this would be like, these doorways and reflections of each other, this cautious modesty and the secrets of herself she had hidden from others. All that witnessed them was a lamp in the grass. She moved back onto his lap so she could control their movement, slow him into more intimacy, so his hands could hold the quiver in her stomach and there could be an equal pleasure. They heard nothing, not the sterile thunder or the mock of the bird or the million insects carelessly yelling. Just their breath, as if they were dying beside each other.”
― Michael Ondaatje, quote from Divisadero
“George Burns appeared again and said, "I'm always interested in the future. I plan to spend the rest of my life there.”
― Kathy Reichs, quote from Déjà Dead
“I don’t want to forget any of this. The way he’s looking at me at this very moment. How, when he kisses me, I still get shivers down my back, every time. I want to hold on to everything so tight.”
― Jenny Han, quote from Always and Forever, Lara Jean
“Now there you have a sample of man’s “reasoning powers,” as he calls them. He observes certain facts. For instance, that in all his life he never sees the day that he can satisfy one woman; also, that no woman ever sees the day that she can’t overwork, and defeat, and put out of commission any ten masculine plants that can be put to bed to her. He puts those strikingly suggestive and luminous facts together, and from them draws this astonishing conclusion: The Creator intended the woman to be restricted to one man.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Letters from the Earth: Uncensored Writings
Gone Girl
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Allegiant
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