Quotes from This Is How You Lose Her

“And that's when I know it's over. As soon as you start thinking about the beginning, it's the end.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“The half-life of love is forever.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“You ask everybody you know: How long does it usually take to get over it?

There are many formulas. One year for every year you dated. Two years for every year you dated. It's just a matter of will power: The day you decide it's over, it's over. You never get over it.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“You're the only person I've ever met who can stand a bookstore as long as I can.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“She's sensitive, too. Takes to hurt the way water takes to paper.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“Our relationship wasn't the sun, the moon, the stars, but it wasn't bullshit, either.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“...sometimes a start is all we ever get.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“I'm like everybody else: weak, full of mistakes, but basically good.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You drive her to work. You quote Neruda. You compose a mass e-mail disowning all your sucias. You block their e-mails. You change your phone number. You stop drinking. You stop smoking. You claim you’re a sex addict and start attending meetings. You blame your father. You blame your mother. You blame the patriarchy. You blame Santo Domingo. You find a therapist. You cancel your Facebook. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. You start taking salsa classes like you always swore you would so that the two of you could dance together. You claim that you were sick, you claim that you were weak—It was the book! It was the pressure!—and every hour like clockwork you say that you’re so so sorry. You try it all, but one day she will simply sit up in bed and say, No more, and, Ya, and you will have to move from the Harlem apartment that you two have shared. You consider not going. You consider a squat protest. In fact, you say won’t go. But in the end you do.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“Ana Iris once asked me if I loved him and I told her about the lights in my old home in the capital, how they flickered and you never knew if they would go out or not. You put down your things and you waited and couldn't do anything really until the lights decided. This, I told her, is how I feel.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“You don't want to let go, but don't want to be hurt, either. It's not a great place to be but what can I tell you?”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“This is what I know: people's hopes go on forever.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“but back then, in those first days, I was so alone that every day was like eating my own heart.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“I guess it's true what they say: if you wait long enough everything changes.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel.

This is how you lose her.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“And because love, real love, is not so easily shed.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“Out of nowhere you said, I love you. For whatever it's worth.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“You keep waiting for the heaviness to leave you. You keep waiting for the moment you never think about the ex again. It doesn't come.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“You whispered my full name and we fell asleep in each other's arms and I remember how the next morning you were gone, completely gone, and nothing in my bed or the house could have proven otherwise.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“It's just a matter of willpower. The day you decide it's over, it's over. You never get over it.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“The truth is there ain’t no relationship in the world that doesn’t hit turbulence.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“You eventually erase her contact info from your phone but not the pictures you took of her in bed while she was naked and asleep, never those.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“That was the summer when everything we would become was hovering just over our heads.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“Sadness at being caught, at the incontrovertibe knowledge that she will never forgive you.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“You said i could call you when i wanted but that you wouldn’t call me. you have to decide where and when, you said. if you leave it up to me i’ll want to see you every day.

At least you were honest, which is more than i can say for me.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“I just want some space to myself every now and then. Every time I’m with you I have this sense that you want something from me.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“I can see myself watching him shave every morning. And at other time I see us in that house and see how one bright day (or a day like this, so cold your mind shifts every time the wind does) he will wake up and decide it's all wrong. I'm sorry, he'll say. I have to leave now.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“You try every trick in the book to keep her. You write her letters. You quote Neruda. You cancel your Facebook. You give her the passwords to all your e-mail accounts. Because you know in your lying cheater’s heart that sometimes a start is all we ever get.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

“In another universe I probably came out OK, ended up with mad novias and jobs and a sea of love in which to swim, but in this world I had a brother who was dying of cancer and a long dark patch of life like a mile of black ice waiting for me up ahead.”
― Junot Díaz, quote from This Is How You Lose Her

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the change-ready company or the change-ready employee?”
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“All that talk about my being just a girl, it being unsafe—imagine, you truly meant it!” “What, did you think I was just being severe?” “Yes, of course,” she replied with a shrug. “For the first year I knew you, perhaps two—I thought you were put on this earth simply to vex me.” His eyebrows lifted. “And after two years?” “Oh, then I figured out the truth,” she said as they walked out of the room. “I was put on this earth to vex you.”
― Tessa Dare, quote from Goddess of the Hunt

“And if you worry that not finishing the food on your plate is a slap in the face of all the hungry people everywhere, you are not living in reality. The truth is that you either throw the food out or you throw it in, but either way it turns to waste. World hunger will not be solved by finishing the garlic mashed potatoes on your plate.”
― Geneen Roth, quote from Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

“We spread the Gospel by the proclamation of the Word of God (see Rom. 10:17). But God has told us that we should restrain evil by the power of the sword and by the power of civil government (as in the teaching of Romans 13:1–6, quoted above, p. 37). If the power of government (such as a policeman) is not present in an emergency, when great harm is being done to another person, then my love for the victim should lead me to use physical force to prevent any further harm from occurring. If I found a criminal attacking my wife or children, I would use all my physical strength and all the physical force at my disposal against him, not to persuade him to trust in Christ as his Savior, but to immediately stop him from harming my wife and children! I would follow the command of Nehemiah, who told the men of Israel, “Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes” (Neh. 4:14; see also Genesis 14:14–16, where Abraham rescued his kinsman Lot who had been taken captive by a raiding army). Boyd has wrongly taken one of the ways that God restrains evil in this world (changing hearts through the Gospel of Christ) and decided that it is the only way that God restrains evil (thus neglecting the valuable role of civil government). Both means are from God, both are good, and both should be used by Christians. This is why Boyd misunderstands Jesus’ statement, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matt. 5:39). When this verse is rightly understood (see below, p. 82), we see that Jesus is telling individuals not to take revenge for a personal insult or a humiliating slap on the cheek.51 But this command for individual kindness is not the same as the instructions that the Bible gives to governments, who are to “bear the sword” and be a “terror” to bad conduct and are to carry out “God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:3–4). The verses must be understood rightly in their own contexts. One is talking about individual conduct and personal revenge. The other is talking about the responsibilities of government. We should not confuse the two passages.”
― Wayne A. Grudem, quote from Politics - According to the Bible: A Comprehensive Resource for Understanding Modern Political Issues in Light of Scripture

“Think about it: Why should we care whether what makes us happy is just an electrical impulse in our brain or something funny that we see some fool do on TV? Does it matter what makes you smile? Wouldn't you rather be happy for no reason than unhappy for good reasons?”
― Terry Trueman, quote from Stuck in Neutral

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