Emily Byrnes > Quotes

“I wish
I coud be okay
with unrequited love,
but I am not
a wolf and you are
not the moon.”
― Emily Byrnes, A Strangely Wrapped Gift

“I swallow you like bitter melon
dipped in thick, syrupy honey
indulging in your sweetness
regretting the aftertaste.”
― Emily Byrnes, Swim

“I have a whole world tucked away in my closet; sepia colored memories of my parents in the eighties, ticket stubs from movies I don’t remember because I was too busy exploring the mouth of a boy I do, and crinkled petals from a golden sunflower that said you still love me. And though you haven’t come back yet, I know you will, because sunflowers never lie. Sunflowers Never Lie”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night

“Here’s to the kids
getting high off music
and drunk off books.
Sometimes,
these good drugs
are the only things
keeping them alive.”
― Emily Byrnes, A Strangely Wrapped Gift

“I don’t want someone to put me back together; I want someone to love my pieces, even the jagged ones.”
― Emily Byrnes, A Strangely Wrapped Gift

“His arms surround me like a nice, yellow house. A warm house, a safe house, probably in the suburbs with a white picket fence. But your arms; they were a home. A home with an old soul (maybe a lake house in the fall) with a wood stove and kitchenette and a murphy bed imprinted with bodies shaped like ours. Granted, there were a few leaks here and there, and the wind got in at night, but I don’t remember ever feeling cold. My head wants the house, but no matter how I try, my heart just wants to go home. The heart wants what it wants”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night

“You’re a little sad and that’s okay. You don’t have to be like the rest of them; dark stars shine too”
― Emily Byrnes, Swim

“I don’t believe in love at first sight
but I believe in not knowing
what you want until you see it
and people too beautiful to absorb
and the possibility of forever.”
― Emily Byrnes, A Strangely Wrapped Gift

“It is a strangely-wrapped gift; the wrong person saying goodbye at the right time.”
― Emily Byrnes, A Strangely Wrapped Gift

“Taking a serotonin pill does not make you weak. Neither does refusing it.”
― Emily Byrnes, A Strangely Wrapped Gift

“no torture is worse than being in love with a memory.”
― Emily Byrnes, A Strangely Wrapped Gift

“I do not want to give you up just because summer is coming to an end.”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night

“You’re a little sad and that’s okay. You don’t have to be like the rest of them; dark stars shine too --Dark star”
― Emily Byrnes, Swim

“karma isn’t magic, it’s the action of reaping what you sow.”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night

“I had a dream that I was real,
but woke up and
went back to not being sure. (On Depersonalization)”
― Emily Byrnes, A Strangely Wrapped Gift

“I grow wildflowers from my back like a fertile garden and you pick them one by one until I am all bare roots and broken stems. You pluck the petals- She loves me, she loves me not but that’s the problem, see; I’m kneeling at your feet, offering you the skin off my back and still you need an old wives’ tale to prove that it’s enough.”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night

“They say we’re trying so hard to be authentic, we have forgotten the meaning of the word. I say, we are just trying to find something -anything- that feels right. (Millennials I)”
― Emily Byrnes, A Strangely Wrapped Gift

“If you are looking for a sign to stay, here is your sign.”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night

“She’s just a friend you said so I invited her in and offered her my coffee, my friendship, and my couch but then she took you right out from under me and now she lives in the house I used to call home and sleeps with the man I used to call my own like a cuckoo who lays its eggs in another bird’s nest and watches as it single-handedly destroys a family and justifies it with instinct. Cuckoo Bird”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night

“They say it doesn’t matter whether it was real to them if it was real to you as if I’m a child with an imaginary friend and I’m supposed to feel good about creating a narrative no one else wanted a part in at twenty-three years old. More Unhelpful Help”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night

“she knows that good things take time.”
― Emily Byrnes, A Strangely Wrapped Gift

“This is how it was for us, before tech came along before, when we knew better where we belonged I belong to the forest,  I belong to the trees; I’m at home in the mud, in the grass, with the bees.”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night

“I want to lay in the freshly mowed grass and be young again. I want to take off my shoes and stain my clothes green and eat dinner without washing my hands. I want to go to bed with pollen in my hair and the windows open and the sound of rain. I want to wake up eight or ten or twelve again. But when I wake it’s not right. This isn’t my mother’s house, and nobody is here to clean up my messes. I miss you, I miss you. I miss the way the sky looked before I grew tall and the sound of my voice before it grew tired. Take me back, just take me back.”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night

“You have to understand that every day is a victory, and even if you do nothing but get out of bed -even if you don’t get out of bed- you are still worthy of the air in your lungs and the time this life is giving you. --Today is a victory”
― Emily Byrnes, Swim

“It is not your job to determine whether someone else is oppressed.”
― Emily Byrnes, Swim

“But always, I feel the ocean that is you within me.”
― Emily Byrnes, A Strangely Wrapped Gift

“I cannot tell who is to blame; the doctors, insurance companies, or the system. But somebody should be held accountable for everyone who tried to get help when their heads didn’t feel quite right and couldn’t get more than five minutes of a doctor’s time.”
― Emily Byrnes, Swim

“I am afraid of losing loved ones and being alone in the dark but mostly I am afraid of being merely tolerated when I want so badly to be loved.”
― Emily Byrnes, Swim

“Humbly, like the tides that shape the earth but do not announce their changing; that’s how we should live. Humility”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night

“You and I were sinew connected like muscle to bone.”
― Emily Byrnes, Things I Learned in the Night