Love and Other Words Quotes

“I like your kind of quiet. Your heart isn’t quiet.”

“It isn’t accurate to say that my heart stops, because really I feel it’s existence intensely, a phantom limb.”

“I never got to fall out of love. I just had to move on.”

“Treat your body carefully. Take care of it. Don’t let anyone abuse it, and don’t abuse it yourself. Every inch of your skin I made diligently; months I slaved over you. You are my masterpiece.

“I think of her everywhere. She is my everywhere, in every moment, and also she’s in no one moment. She misses every single one of my moments and I’m not sure who that is harder for: me surviving here without her, or her without me, existing wherever she is.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to come home for eleven years. I’ll go anywhere you go.”

“There’s no other word like it. The state of being infatuated with another person.”

“His arms become a set of parentheses bracketing the sweetest secret phrase.”

“I gave myself three more seconds to look at him, and it’s like another punch to the gut. He’s my person. He’s always been my person. My best friend, my confidant, probably the love of my life. And I’ve spent the last eleven years being angry and self-righteous. But at the end of the day, he tore a hole in us, and fate ripped it wide open.”

“I’m sorry I was so quiet tonight,” he said, haltingly. I met his eyes in the mirror.

“It’s a perfect description. I never got to fall out of love. I just had to move on.”

“Countries were established, went to war, and split into smaller countries in the time it took for Elliot to answer.”

“It isn’t accurate to say that my heart stops, because really I feel it’s existence intensely, a phantom limb.”

“It never occurred to me that love could be anything other than all-consuming. Even as a child, I knew I never wanted anything less.”

“This truth reverberated around the room, and I knew my admission irrevocably changed something between us. The simple things I was no longer: his new neighbor, a girl, potentially interesting, also potentially uninteresting. Now I was a girl who had been permanently damaged by life. I was someone to be handled carefully.”

“For a long time after we returned to our slow, inefficient method of unpacking the books, I could feel him looking up and watching me, tiny flashes of stolen glances.”

“Reaching in, he grabbed another book and dragged a finger across the cover. “This one’s good, too.” His large eyes blinked up at me. “You have good taste.”

“Don’t spoil her with toys; spoil her with books.”

“I give myself three more seconds to look at him and it’s like another punch to the gut. He’s my person. He’s always been my person. My best friend, my confidant, probably the love of my life.”

“It’s hard for me sometimes that we aren’t together. I never know where the lines are. I want to cross them all the time. ”

“Tell her you love her. Girls need the words.”

“Admissions make feelings intensify simply because they are given space to breathe. Admissions lead to love, and admitting love is like tying yourself to a train track.”

“I hadn’t had easy in three years. I had friends who stopped knowing how to talk to me, or got tired of me being mopey, or we’re so focused on boys that we no longer had anything in common.”

“I still don’t know what to do.” He fell quiet. I never knew how to reel a conversation back after the Dead Mother topic.”

“Treat your body carefully. Take care of it. Don’t let anyone abuse it, and don’t abuse it yourself. Every inch of your skin I made diligently; months I slaved over you. You are my masterpiece.”

“Even at my age I saw what this did to Dad’s posture. He was an easygoing metro guy, but Mr. Nick’s casual familiarity with the property immediately pushed some macho rigidity into his spine.”

I shook my head, chewing my lip. Without realizing it, I had really enjoyed talking to someone who didn’t know that I was motherless, hadn’t seen me broken and raw after I lost her.

“Wine: it’s what’s for dinner,” Elliot said with a laugh.”

“Relief and anguish pulse heavily in my blood. I’ve wanted to see him every day. But also, I never wanted to see him again.”

“And girls do want boys who are interesting. Girls want the shy geeks who know everything and have big hands and good teeth and say sweet things.”

“He tilted his head and watched me, unspeaking. He didn’t need to point out that both times I’d visited this town, I’d come without a mother.”

“I’m not a complete idiot, you know. You don’t have to look so surprised that I know some big words.”