Lia Louis > Quotes

“Maybe home isn’t a place. It’s a feeling. Of being cared for and understood. Of being loved.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“Do you know why I like storms? They're a little reminder that we're not at all in charge, but Mother Nature is. And while the world might not look exactly how we'd prefer it to, it is enough, if we just stop and look. The whole sky lit up. The smell of the rain. Safe inside. What more could you need?”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“I know, deep down, I am made of strong stuff. Rebuilt with it, at least, the way we all are over the years, with age and experience. Skin thickening, heart softening, patched up double in the places prone to breaking. A sum of all the things that have hurt us, scared us, sheltered, and delighted us.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“What is it about someone asking if you're okay? Even if you think you're holding it together, all it takes is someone asking is if you're alright to completely melt away your resolve and bring that lump bobbing straight into your throat.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“The only sort of negative emotion I feel is slightly sad, but it isn’t a jealous sort of sad, it’s that end of era feeling; the sort of feeling you have when you’re leaving a job and you know so much that it’s for the best, but you’ll miss it. The familiarity. The routine of it.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“The dream, surely,’ I said. ‘Someone loving you despite and because of all the flaws and shit in your life.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“I’m thirty years old, and it’s safe to say that at this precise moment I definitely do not know where I am going.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“I look down at my wet jeans, the old, squelching sandals, the towel around me, and bring a knuckle to my eye, crusted with dry-again mascara. "God. Look at me," I say, voice cracking. "Just look at me."
Eliot stares at me. And softly, into the silence of the car, he says, "I am.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“Big things, I hope, might happen someday, but it’s the little things that are important, isn’t it? They keep us grounded. The little things are the things we miss the most when normality is turned on its head.”
― Lia Louis, Eight Perfect Hours

“Because everyone is settled at thirty, aren’t they? You’re an adult at thirty – fully fledged – and everyone knows who they are. Or at least everyone knows exactly where they are going, even if they haven’t quite made it there yet.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“chance, meant-to-bes – they cannot be rushed or planned.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“Feeling things is what we’re supposed to do, as a human, but not everyone is always going to sit with something you feel and be comfortable with it. And it’s not up to you to take that discomfort from them, especially not if it means trading in your own truth for it.”
― Lia Louis, Better Left Unsent

“Because the truth always matters the most. Even when it’s hard or painful. Especially when it’s painful.”
― Lia Louis, Better Left Unsent

“OK?’ Eliot simply asks. ‘Fine.’ ‘Good. Only thing for it,’ he says, ‘hold on and hope for the best.’ ‘And that’s dancing, is it?’ ‘Well, yeah,’ says Eliot, then he leans in and says into my ear, breath tickling my neck, ‘And everything else, too, Emmie Blue.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“It actually feels a bit scary to me, all this world. Pressure to . . . make something of it all. And yet, we’re all sort of stuck. In systems, in routines, in what’s expected of us, all of which ensure we aren’t making something of it all.”
― Lia Louis, Better Left Unsent

“It’s all just – life, isn’t it? Disordered and chaotic and out-of-nowhere, and we have to plan and navigate our way around it as best we can.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“I'm made of strong stuff," I say, and Lucas says, "Always have been.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“My life has started. I’m in it. It’s not something I’m waiting for any more. I’m here. And whatever I wanted for my life, was it this?’ Was it this?”
― Lia Louis, Eight Perfect Hours

“Happiness," she says. "What is that, to Emmie Blue?"
"Wow," I say with a smile, "that's a... big question."
[...] "I suppose when I was younger, a few years ago, I would have said... a family. A normal, safe family life."
[...]
"You know," I say, "a home, with flowers in the window, a relationship with my mum where maybe she pops in for lunch now and then. Children, one day, maybe. Someone..." I swallow, words becoming increasingly difficult to say. "Someone to love. Someone to love me."
"Love," says Louise. "So you think love is happiness?"
I hesitate, laugh, nerves turning it into a high-pitched giggle. "I—don't know. Yes. Yes, I suppose it is. For me.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“Sorry. I know this is probably really boring for you."
"Boring?"
"Yes. Me, harping on about things that don't really matter, people you don't really know."
And Louise had looked at me every time, her wrinkled brow furrowing, and said, "That is called a conversation, is it not, Emmie? How relationships are made, slowly sharing pieces of yourself, in turn?”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“Bit shit growing up and being an adult, sometimes, isn’t it?”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“I'm wide-awake," I say, and I look up at him, run a finger down his stubbly cheek and onto his soft lips. He kisses the tip of my finger. "You're really here," I whisper. "In front of me."
"I am, Emmie Blue," he says. "And I always have been.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“It’s not selfish to want something, Natalie,” says Shauna. “But what I often forget is that we can’t really expect other people to know what we want without saying it out loud. People are barely tuned in to what they want for themselves, let alone what other people want. You know?”
― Lia Louis, The Key to My Heart

“I spend my life holding myself to everyone else’s standards. Comparing myself to everyone else, what they’re doing, what they’re posting online, what they’re saying at brunches or announcing on Facebook. But what I’m comparing myself to a lot of the time isn’t even real, anyway.” Jack nods thoughtfully. “You never get the full story,” he says.”
― Lia Louis, Better Left Unsent

“I’ll get to it soon. One step at a time. Because that’s what I’m doing now. One small step forward at a time, until I gather enough distance, that when I look over my shoulder, I can barely see those things in the past that held me back for so long.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“It is the idea of him that I'm sure I'm in love with and I'm ready to let that idea go.”
― Lia Louis

“An invisible red thread connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place and circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle. But it will never break.”
― Lia Louis, Eight Perfect Hours

“I know, deep down, I am made of strong stuff. Rebuilt with it, at least, the way we all are, over the years, with age and experience, skin thickening, heart softening, patched up double in the places prone to breakage. A sum of all the things that have hurt us, scared us, sheltered and delighted us.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“A nice three-bed semi, a family, and someone to love you. You have all three now, if you just stop and look.”
― Lia Louis, Dear Emmie Blue

“Living is being bruised. Living is feeling everything the heart can. The pain, the ache, the good and bad. You can’t have one without the contrast of the other.”
― Lia Louis, Better Left Unsent