“Even the constellations can see us now: we are seventeen and shattered and still dancing. We have messy, throbbing hearts, and we are stronger than anyone could ever know.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“My dark days made me strong. Or maybe I already was strong, and they made me prove it.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“I keep wondering if it'll ever hurt less. This...this hole in our lives." "Oh, I imagine it'll hurt less eventually. I think there will always be a hole, though. But lace is one of the most beautiful fabrics, you know. All those holes and gaps, but it's still complete somehow- still lovely.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“That's the thing they never tell you about love stories: just because one ends, that doesn't mean it failed. A cherry pie isn't a failure just because you eat it all. It's perfect for what it is, and then it's gone. And exchanging the truest parts of yourself--all the things you are--with someone? What a slice of life. One I'll carry with me into every single someday.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“No matter what heaven you believe in, your time on this earth will end. What I’m saying is that you should listen—really listen—to the slosh of the waves and the distant call of Pacific birds. You should feel a boy’s pulse against your cheek; you should fill your lungs with ocean air. While you can, I mean. You should do these things while you still can.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“But the point is that trying to make things better sometimes makes us better, too. The point is I'm trying to create good things in the midst of the bad. Grief or no grief. And in my case, it's still somewhere in between.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“I know this feeling of being a ghost in your own life - no one sees you, no one feels you, so you stay still as if you could actually disappear at any moment.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“Maybe we were dying planets, Jonah, being drawn into the darkness.” I hold my right palm against his cheek, and I wish I could touch him with both my hands. “When we collided, we bounced each other back into orbit. And now we have to do that—we have to return to our own paths because that’s what we gave each other.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“I drink coffee for the taste, of course, since caffeine is the last thing I need. Most of the things I do in life are for flavor, not necessity”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“That's the thing about love stories: Just because one ends, that doesn't mean it failed. A cherry pie isn't a failure just because you eat it all. It's perfect for what it is, and then it's gone. And exchanging the truest parts of yourself - all the things you are - with someone? What a slice of life. One I'll carry with me into every single someday.
I lie down in the cool grass beside him as planets collide above us and we stay like this for a long time, down to every last crumb. My cheeks are wet, but oh, my heart - it is so full.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“Maybe in my next life, I'll be a wave in the ocean, and you'll be a mountain, and we'll spend years and years brushing up against each other. You'll shift so painfully slowly, and some days I'll crash right into you and other days I'll approach gently, licking your sides. That sounds like us, doesn't it?”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“Viv, I just made you wild-caught Alaskan salmon baked with mango chutney, on a bed of garlic red potatoes and arugula. While talking about an Audrey Hepburn movie. I think you are maybe falling in love with me.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“I'm looking for somekind of permanence, so my mark will linger on the world once I'm gone, in the places where I found joy.." -Page 81”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“I almost try to explain another untranslatable word--sunyata--to Jonas. The idea has Buddhist roots and several meanings, depending on context. I think emptiness is the closest word, but, in English, we infer emptiness as a void, a lack. Sunyata is open with possibility, a meditative space.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“You can ache for where you come from, and it's homesickness. A relationship, and it's heartbreak. But is there a word for missing your friends like that?”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“I've never felt stronger than when I was packing up my room at Richard's place. [...] I've also never felt sadder. Sad but strong. You can be both. And I am.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“Later in my room, I lift up my dress and twist to see the rainbow splotch of lotus on my side. And it occurs to me, what if I stopped hating it? What if the tattoo and the scar and this summer's freckles are my patina? Wabi-Sabi says rust and faded paint hold beauty. So what if I let these marks be passport stamps from where I've been - one's that don't determine a damn thing about where I'm going next?”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“My cheeks are wet, but oh, my heart—it is so full.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“Tglhe heart is such a strange little beast - a lump of thick muscles with pipes sticking out. Sometimes I think my heart is made of rubber, and the world Stretches it and twists it so that it writhes in my chest and aches. This is why I have spent most of my time on this this planet here but hurting. Sometimes I think a heart of porcelain would be easier. Let it drop out of my rib cage and break on the floor, no heartbeat, the end. Instead, I get a bouncy heart That bleeds when the world claws at it but keeps beating through the pain.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“Every girl wants to be Dorothy Gale or maybe Glinda. I never wanted to be the tornado.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“Here is something I never expected to feel: love at first sight for an entire family. But life suprises you. It tells you to close your eyes and blow out the candles, and then sometimes smashes your face into the cake before you can even make a wish. But! Sometimes, every once in a while, you get your wish in. You wish for a boy to spend the summer with, and instead life gives you his whole beauiful family.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“Yeah, you get a gift basket," Ellie says. "Because depression fucking sucks.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“I think there will always be a hole, though. But lace is one of the most beautiful fabrics, you know. All those holes and gaps, but it's still complete somehow--still lovely.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“I'm going to spend my whole summer changing the expressions on Jonah Daniels's face.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“I don't appreciate how often people hide their scars and doubts. Really, it's not fair to people who are struggling, to go on believing that everyone else just has it totally together and never has one bad thought in their lives. Like, I know you people sometimes lie awake at night torturing yourself over the atrocities in this world and morality and meaning. I know you're not just dreaming about riding a pink pony to your job as a cupcake taster.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“I wanted him for myself, but I want adventure for him, too—and for me.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“No matter what heaven you believe in, your time on this Earth will end. What I'm saying is that you should listen--really listen--to the slosh of the waves and the distant call of Pacific birds. You should feel a boy's pulse against your cheek; you should fill your lungs with ocean air. While you can, I mean. You should do these things while you still can.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“The glow of my birthday candles and the fairy lights would have been more than enough. But Jonah Daniels? He lit up my whole world.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“I've always fixated on the things I want in my life--paint palettes and sumptuous fabrics and star-flecked skies and dancing on my tiptoes and the smell of jasmine. But I usually imagine myself alone or falling in love with all kinds of different people. These days, I've started to daydream of the permanent relationships I want to have. Friends who stay in my life forever. People who I trust to love me even if I'm wobbling--the way I trust Jonah. And if that's what I want, then I have scorched Earth to till and replant. I have a Japanese maple seedling, and I have seen how beautiful a rooted life can be. But I have miles to go before I decide where to plant us.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
“Sometimes I think everyone should be handed a manual for this stuff when they turn fourteen. That seems like a good age. Starting high school. Staring at the business end of your childhood, when you have to start growing up. So maybe the school should distribute a book called The Field Guide for Broken People. Between Vivi and me alone, we could write a bunch of chapters. Dead Dad. No Dad. Despondent Mom. Flaky Mom. But each broken person is different, and there is no right way for everyone. Just a lot of wrong ways.”
― Emery Lord, quote from When We Collided
Emery Lord
Born place: The United States
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“If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable. If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly's wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon-- you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The more you watch, the more mysterious the natural world becomes, and the more you realize how little you know. Along with its beauty, you may also come to experience its fecundity, its wastefulness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, parasitism, and its violence. These qualities are not well-conveyed in textbooks.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Micro
“And why was Erik fishing around in my head while we were making out, anyway? I didn’t reach into his head. Sure, I opened myself up to his feelings, but that was a lot different than rummaging around in his head to find out how I compared with every girl that he’d done whatever it is he does with them.”
― Sophie Davis, quote from Talented
“This is my life, TK; my woman, my baby, my life! Nothing comes before that!”
― Pepper Pace, quote from Beast: An Estill County Mountain Man Romance #1
“I was struck, as always, that a heathen poet from long ago should know so much of the human heart, and how little that heart changes, though great cities fall and new dispensations sweep away the old and pagan creeds.”
― Geraldine Brooks, quote from Caleb's Crossing
“But what did Grandpa’s ranch hand say about boys? They have two moods, hungry and horny. So if you see a boy without an erection, you should go make him a sandwich. That made Grandpa laugh, and Grandma say, Keatyn, don’t you dare listen to them. You tell them to make their own damn sandwiches.”
― Jillian Dodd, quote from Kiss Me
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