“Memory can refuse to let you forget what you’d like to and run away with what you want to remember. It’s an unreliable bitch, or your best friend. Sometimes, it’s both at once.”
“But sometimes it's the sunshine that frightens us more than the big black shadows.”
“I know everything and nothing about him all at the same time.”
“But the problem with looking back when you should be walking ahead is that you usually end up walking into something that hurts.”
“There are many things I don't know, but quite a few I do. I know you can't be lost if you know where you are. I know that life is full of precious and fragile things, and not all of them are pretty. I know that the sun follows the moon and makes days, one after another. Time passes. The world turns, and we turn with it, and though we can never go back to the beginning, sometimes, we can start again.”
“Sometimes,” Joe said after a bit, “it’s just easier to keep being what everyone expects you to be. Even if that’s what you’re not, anymore.”
“The hardest lies to detect are the ones surrounded by truth.”
“Sometimes,” he said after a second that lasted a million years, “things get broken. And they can’t be fixed.”
“I waited for a long time and there was nothing but the pain of wanting something I couldn't seem to find.”
“Does madness bring creativity? Or does creativity cause madness? Can an artist create without the ups so high and the downs so low?”
“From the first time you laughed with me, all those months, and all those stories,” Joe said quietly. “They were all you, to me. All of them were you.”
“They’re like sharks. Circling. Cute, single guy, good job, nice car. It’s all they know about me.”
His tone was light but his expression serious.
Maybe that’s because it’s all you show them.”
Maybe it’s all they want to see.”
“If I'd known it was going to be the last time he'd ever hold me, I'd have paid better attention.”
“I've done my best to drive you away, Sadie," he said suddenly. "But you've never left me.”
“We labored under the pretense that nothing had changed when everything had, and I understood him, but i no longer knew him.”
“They were all you, to me. All of them were you.”
“I was trying to replace something I'd come to care about very much with something pretending to be as important.”
“We were broken, brittle and fragile. The question was, were we still precious to each other? Or, instead of everything falling into place, had it fallen into pieces?”
“There seemed to be so much to say, but no words adequate to say it.”
“He was quiet. I said nothing, hoping that maybe, for once, he'd stop pretending he was okay. Then I could, too. That we could both forget the roles that had so long bound us.”
“My head's filled up with all the reasons it won't work. And I keep running the figures, over and over, but I can't seem to come up with an answer.”
“Right and wrong, good and bad, the lines are blurred when it comes to matters of the heart. Anyone who has never felt that has no right to judge, and anyone who ever has won't have to.”
“I knew him, but I don't understand him.”
“A good sister is one who won't be embarrassed when you burst into tears in public. A better one will hand you tissues until you stop. The best is the one who will go get you another latte to go with the ginormous chocolate orgy she's already laid in front of you.”
“There's nothing that says you can't change." "Not even if it changes everything else?" I shook my head. "Not even then.”
“Te he visto una vez al mes durante dos años, y no era el único que contaba historias; lo único que pasa es que era el que usaba más palabras”
“Quien no ha sentido nunca algo así no tiene derecho a juzgar, y quien lo ha sentido no necesita hacerlo.”
“...tenía los Seis Síntomas Mortales de un Hombre Enamorado:
1. Incapacidad para pensar derecho.
2. Una alarmante propensión a sonreír en los momentos más extraños.
3. Pensamiento constante en el objeto de su deseo.
4. Absolutamente ningún interés en otros miembros del sexo opuesto.
5. Una sorprendente buena voluntad hacia el mundo en general.
6. Excitación sexual perpetúa.”
“I know I shouldn't feel guilty for being angry sometimes, or bitter" "Knowing something is beans.”
“Much is said about brilliance. Less attention is paid to those who live next to it. Spouses, children, assistants…if anyone thinks of us at all, it’s generally to remark upon how lucky we are to bask in the light of genius.”
“I have for some days held and controlled every avenue by which the people and garrison of Savannah can be supplied, and I am therefore justified in demanding the surrender of the city…I am prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison; but should I be forced to resort to assault, or the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army—burning to avenge the national wrong which they attach to Savannah and other large cities which have been so prominent in dragging our country into civil war.”
“Purity of execution will only add to the artistic aspects of the whole wretched mess.”
“God won’t protect you from what He can perfect you through.”
“Yes.” She sighed again, with even more drama, not that Gregory would have imagined it possible. “It is
all so romantic,” she added. “The bride, the groom…”
“Both are considered standard in the ceremony, I understand.”
His mother shot him a peevish look. “How could I have raised a son who is so unromantic?”
Gregory decided there could not possibly be an answer to that.”
“He loved three things alone:
White peacocks, evensong,
old maps of America.
He hated children crying,
and raspberry jam with his tea,
and womanish hysteria.
...And then he married me.
1911”
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