Junie

I just think you deserve more than a pretty view, Delilah June. You deserve to take all the beauty of this world and hold it in your hands. You deserve to bite it like a peach and let the juice drip ’til your fingers get sticky.

I’ll never forget what she said. She told me that when you first lose somebody, the grief feels like the strongest tea you’ve ever tasted, so bitter and sharp you don’t think you’ll ever be able to swallow. But that every day, another drop of water falls into that cup, and it gets a little easier to taste. That bitterness, that pain, it don’t ever go away or get smaller. But it does fade.

But love in any form demands equality.

See, in this life, we’re all just floating down the river. You might have somewhere you wanna be, but like it or not, that river’s taking you where it wants to go. Fighting the current don’t hurt the river, it just wears you out.

Well, ruthless. Stealing people’s lives from ’em and making ’em work to make ’em money. The old folks back on the island used to say that’s why they were white; they lost all their color when they lost their souls. You gotta be a certain type of soulless to believe you can own somebody the way they do.

You ain’t the only one with hurt, Junie. This world is full of it, and going through it thinking you’re the only one carrying something is an easy way to lose the bit of love you might have.

She doesn't know how to keep her world afloat when it is set on drowning.

His gaze is the kind that could last for centuries; even if the trees withered to stumps and the land eroded into the river, Caleb would still be there, looking at her.

The realization hits her. Wordsworth never spent days preparing food. Keats never cleaned a chamber pot. Coleridge didn’t have to sneak around to read a book. Those who sought the sublime were white men with lives of leisure. They sought an unattainable beauty because they’d already attained everything else.

Reading and writing are pleasures worth any punishment, something they can never understand.

Big minds ask big questions and I will not apologize for it,” Violet says, pointing to her head.

You're wrong, " Junie says, "There's a life in this. There's a life in everything, even if you have to squeeze in to find it. And even if it's on the edges...it's room for love. We just gotta carve it out ourselves.

Spring is her favorite time in the woods, when the forest renews itself.

There is beauty in the persistence of her heartbeat

Blaming yourself feels better than admitting you ain’t got no control.

I don’t think you get a choice in how grief finds you,

You’re my middle C.” “Middle C?” “The key between the lows and the highs, the balance of it all, the true center of the music. But it don’t matter, that’s the thing.

If the mistress loves England so much, she ought to be the one to dress up like its people instead.

I just think you deserve more than a pretty view

Grief will make you want to waste every breath on prayers that don’t get answered. Use that breath on the people you still got.

See, I think the things left behind by people we love got bits of their soul left in ’em,

But you can’t just decide nobody else matters because you’re in love. Besides, if your whole world is just the person you love, what happens when they’re gone?

There ain’t no other way to fill your heart than to do the things that scare you. And maybe it’s too much to say, Junie, and maybe I’ll scare you right out of this tree and away from me forever, but when I said back then that this was my first taste of family since I was a boy, I meant it. And I intend to go with you wherever

She told me that when you first lose somebody, the grief feels like the strongest tea you’ve ever tasted, so bitter and sharp you don’t think you’ll ever be able to swallow. But that every day, another drop of water falls into that cup, and it gets a little easier to taste. That bitterness, that pain, it don’t ever go away or get smaller. But it does fade.

said. She told me that when you first lose somebody, the grief feels like the strongest tea you’ve ever tasted, so bitter and sharp you don’t think you’ll ever be able to swallow. But that every day, another drop of water falls into that cup, and it gets a little easier to taste. That bitterness, that pain, it don’t ever go away or get smaller. But it does fade.

Looking for comfort in the past is like looking for a needle in a haystack. You can search forever and see a whole bunch of things that almost look like that needle you're missing. But the truth is: you're never going to find it, and you'll drive yourself mad trying. Best leave the old needle and get on with the ones you got.

Baby, everything in this life ends. Most times in a bad way. We got as much say in that as we got in the color of the sky.