“Don’t you know? Don’t you know how crazy I am about you?” My hands fist in his shirt and I stare into his eyes, blinking slowly. I guess I did know, but I never imagined he might say it. He cradles my neck in his hand, thumb stroking my nape. “I—I love you so much.” He says it quietly, but it’s like a bomb going off.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Feel so much better when you’re around,” I tell him. “’S not fair you get to be with you all the time.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Like, you know that feeling," I try to explain, "where it's Sunday night and you have school or work the next morning but then it's a snow day and you don't have to go in? You feel like that."
"I feel like a natural disaster?" he teases, but his gaze is intent.
"No," I say, forcing myself to say what I mean. "A relief. You feel like a huge relief."
Rex's eyes go very soft. "You feel like a relief too, Daniel," he says.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Rex?” He freezes and when he looks at me I can see the uncertainty he’s trying to cover up with his motions. “I think you’re perfect. I mean, shit, that sounded sappy, but, I mean perfect in my opinion.” Ugh, how do I explain what I mean? That all those things that he is came together like the perfect recipe. “For you?” he says. “Hmm?” “Perfect for you, maybe?” He looks shy and pleased. All I can do is nod. He hoists me up onto the counter and kisses me silly.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“You like my forearms?
No, not yours in particular. I mean, they're fine. Just, it's a sexy body part.
I totally agree. I just didn't know girls liked them too.
Oh, yes, Daniel. All girls like forearms. Every single one. No really, I've asked all of us and we all agree. We don't even agree about whether or not the long arm of the law should be able to reach into our vaginas, but we agree about forearms.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Maybe the point of I love you is that it is a tether. A connection so you can find your way back to someone even when shit seems huge and unmanageable on your own. A promise to help just because you care about someone, a promise to help that doesn’t mean pulling away.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“The other night, you said that we mean different things when we say I love you. That you don’t know what it means to have someone love you. This is what it means. It means doing things together and learning what each other needs. I give you what you need. You give me what I need. And they’re not the same. And that’s fine. It’s not too good to be true. It’s just good.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Music social foul: no singing a song when another song is playing.
Double music social foul: don't ever fucking sing anything while Pink Floyd is playing. What's wrong with you?”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“E forse questo è il punto.
Forse il punto del TI AMO è che quella frase E' un legame.
Una connessione che ti consente di ritrovare la strada verso qualcuno anche quando le cose sembrano enormi e ingestibili da solo.
Una promessa di aiuto perché ti importa di qualcuno; una promessa di aiuto che non significa ritrarsi in se stessi.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Niente di tutto questo ha importanza
mentre sono qui al caldo e alticcio, nella terra della flanella e del legno.
All'improvviso, stare nel bel mezzo del nulla sembra la cosa migliore che potrei desiderare.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“And Rex seems interested. He doesn’t seem to think I’m a total geek or a pretentious asshole. Or maybe he just feels sorry for the idiotic city boy who got himself marooned in Northern Michigan, almost killed a dog, and is currently drunk in a stranger’s sweatpants in a cabin made of plaid and flannel.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Are you boiling bacon? “Um. Is that wrong?” I say. “Argh! I want to punch you!” Leo says.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Then she says something about the universe sending us pieces of our past selves to embrace so we can heal them and I must be drunker than I thought because I don’t follow her at all.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Do you want to watch a movie or something?” I ask, putting my plate in the sink. Rex shakes his head. “Do you want me to go so you can… do whatever?” Rex shakes his head again, a dangerous smile playing on his lips. He stands up and holds out a hand to me.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“the skin like velvet over steel,”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“It’s like the cartoon physics of awareness: we can’t hurt until we see that we’re supposed to.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Words that are meant to comfort but mean nothing.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“I was thinking, over Thanksgiving, that I don’t really know him. I don’t know what makes him tick—made him tick. Like, if he were the main character in the book I was reading, it’d only be chapter two. I’d know his name and who was in his daily life, but I’d be waiting to find out that thing that would make me care about his story. At least, that’s how I felt before. There was a whole book left. The promise that maybe if I kept reading I’d learn enough to make me like him—care about him. Only now, it’s like he was just a secondary character—a tertiary character. And the author hadn’t even thought about any more of a story for him. There just isn’t any more of him. And, I don’t know. That makes me fucking sad because I think probably he felt the same way about me. I know he cared about me, at least a little. I mean, I think so. And Colin and the guys, they knew him. And they’re fucking devastated he’s dead. And I’m jealous because….”
“Because?” Ginger prods.
“Because they were a family and I wasn’t part of it,”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“They became convinced that I thought I was better than them when the truth was that I just knew they would never like me if they knew who I really was and what I really wanted. Love me. They would never love me.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“Oh, yes, Daniel. All girls like forearms. Every single one. No really, I’ve asked all of us and we all agree. We don’t even agree about whether or not the long arm of the law should be able to reach into our vaginas, but we agree about forearms.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
“When I paid close attention to Rex, it was like I escaped the present. Kind of like I do when I’m reading. It’s so fucked. I started reading and making up stories to escape how shitty things were. Then, that habit made it hard for me to be back in the real world—hard to connect with anyone. Which made me super self-conscious and want to escape. Jesus. Anyway, I’ve decided that if I’m going to escape, it’s better to escape into Rex than into a fantasy world where no one will ever find me.”
― Roan Parrish, quote from In the Middle of Somewhere
Roan Parrish
Born date March 1, 2018
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“We're going to die eventually" I protest. "I'd rather die from trying to live than not live at all.”
― Lisa Alfonso, quote from Believe (Rules, #1)
“… How can we say that we deeply revere the principles of our Declaration and our Constitution and yet refuse to recognize those principles when they are to be applied to the American Negro in a down-to-earth fashion? During election campaigns and in Fourth of July speeches, many speakers emphasize that these great principles apply to all Americans. But when you ask many of these same speakers to act or vote so that those great principles apply in fact to Negro-Americans, you may be accused of being unfair, idealistic or even pro-Communist. … A person has real moral courage when, being in a position to make decisions or determine policies, he decides that the qualified Negro will be admitted to a school of nursing [as had recently been done at St. Francis Hospital in Wilmington]; that the Negro, like the white, will receive a fair trial no matter what the public feeling may be; that every Catholic school, church and institution shall be open to all Catholics—not at some distant future time when public opinion happens to coincide with Catholic moral teaching—but now. Are these requests of our business, governmental and religious leaders too much to ask? I think not.”
― Richard Kluger, quote from Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality
“All morning I thought how strange our meeting was. I mean, we have to be in a universe, on a continent, in a country, in a state, in a county, on a river, in a small yellow boat.[...]Long odds. And we had to leave our homes at the right time, drive at such and such a pace, stop for lunch, or not, get gas, or not. A thousand coincidences that arranged themselves so that we could meet. And then of course, we have to be attracted to each other. When I was little, my girlfriends and I called it Yeti love. You never expect to see it, but you've heard it's out there and it might just be a legend. But you keep looking for it anyway.”
― Joseph Monninger, quote from Eternal on the Water
“I can be smart when it’s important,” she replies, “but most men don’t like it.”
― Bill O'Reilly, quote from Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot
“In that time while he was still aware, which was the worse, I wonder: the agony of his physical torture or the horror of their utter hatred, of their moral certainty that he was so beyond the bounds of what they could accept that he deserved not just a death but one of such brutality, such inhumanity, as would make the seraphs who burned Sodom bow their heads in cold respect? What is it like, I wonder, to learn the full capacity of hatred in a lesson hammered home with bone broken on wood and skin ripped on barbed wire?”
― Hal Duncan, quote from Vellum
The Forsyte Saga
The Bone People
The V Girl
The Maze of Bones
Written in Red
My Side of the Mount...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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