Amy Engel > Quotes

“You’re easy to read, Ivy, but the whole book of you is complicated.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“He didn’t save me, though. He allowed me the freedom to save myself, which is the very best type of rescue.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“I want to be someone strong and brave enough to make hard choices. But I want to be fair and loving enough to make the right ones.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“He blows out a breath, takes a step toward me. The hallway is so narrow that I’m pinned between the wall and his body, heat rolling off him in waves. “Yeah,” he says, voice low. “I feel things.” His green eyes burn. It’s the most emotion I’ve seen from him so far, and I have trouble taking a full breath, my lungs compressed with tension. “That’s the whole point, Ivy. I want you to feel them, too.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“But I want to be better than the lessons they taught me. I want my love to be greater that my hate, my mercy to be stronger than my vengeance.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“That night we played truth or dare. You said that after a while you stopped trying to earn your mother's affection." I pause. "Why didn't you give up with me, too?"
"You know why," he says quietly. I close my eyes. I do know, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to hear it. But some part of me must be, because I wouldn't have asked the question otherwise, not of Bishop, the boy who never chooses to say something easy just because the truth is hard. Maybe I want to hear it so that i will know, once and for all, that there is no going back.
"Because I'm in love with you, Ivy," he whispers. "Giving up on you isn't an option." He lifts my hair away from the back of my neck and kisses the delicate skin there.
My breath shudders out of me. The silence spirals into the dark room, and maybe it was foolish to ask the question, but I'm not sorry. I uncurl his hand and kiss his palm, his skin cool and dry. I place his hand over my heart, cover it with my own.
We fall asleep that way. His lips on my neck. My heart in his hand.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“You can't outrun what's inside of you. You can only acknowledge it, work around it, try and turn it into something better. I may not know exactly where I'm headed, but this time I'm choosing my own destiny.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“Bishop stares at me. "What do you want me to say, Ivy?" he asks finally. "That I agree with what my father did? That I don't? What's the answer you're looking for?"
"I'm not looking for a specific answer," I tell him, although the part of me that's been coached to kill him hopes he agrees with his father. "I want to know what you think."
"I think," Bishop says, "that we can love our families without trusting everything they tell us. Without championing everything they stand for." He delivers the words matter-of-factly, but his eyes are locked on mine. "I think that sometimes things aren't as simple as our fathers want us to believe.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“He knows me better than anyone ever has. Than anyone ever will again. I would have stopped it if I could have. But I've learned the hard way, we can't choose who we love. Love chooses us. Love doesn't care about what's convenient or easy or planned. Love has its own agenda and all we can do is get out of its way.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“You don't stop loving someone just because they disappoint you.”
― Amy Engel, The Revolution of Ivy

“Often, when I am able to check out a book, I read it a dozen times before returning it, desperate to remain lost in the magic of someone else's story.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“I'm not sure how we got to this place, where a girl's only value is in what kind of marriage she has, how capable she is of keeping a man happy.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“Maybe I’ll be okay. Maybe I’ll make it to the ocean.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“Who do you want to turn into?" I mean the question to be mocking, but that's not how it comes out. I sound interested. I reach down and scratch my leg, trying to hid my embarrassment.
Bishop looks at me. "Someone honest. Someone who tries to do the right thing. Someone who follows his own heart, even if it disappoints people." He pauses. "Someone brave enough to be all those things."
A boy who doesn't want to lie, married to a girl who can't tell the truth. If there is a God, he has a sick sense of humor.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“Are you happy, Ivy?' he asks, surprising me.
In my whole life, I don't think anyone ever asked me that question.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“Even if most of the time we navigate so carefully we might as well be bombs trying not to explode, we are still always there, in each other’s paths. Just waiting for the moments we intersect.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“I don't trust most people. Except for you."
"Why me?"
"Because everyone needs someone to put their faith in.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“The scars are just something that happened to me. They aren't me. Not anymore.”
― Amy Engel, The Revolution of Ivy

“My father might not have held my hand or expressed his love openly, but he taught Callie and me that we had inherent values, that we were fully formed human beings without a boy by our side.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“How do you measure the life of one person against the greater good? Can it ever be the right thing to sacrifice an innocent person? And how do you know what the greater good really is?”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“We're all fucked up, Lane, one way or another. It's only a matter of degree.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“My mission is not to make him happy and bear his children and be his wife. My mission is to kill him.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“Is it still manipulation if you know it's happening, but it works anyway?”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“I love you,” he says quietly. I want to take his words, the truth of them I can see on his face, and cup them in my hands like a glowing coal from the fire. Keep them with me warm and bright, a talisman.”
― Amy Engel, The Revolution of Ivy

“Love isn’t something you can legislate. Love is more than charts and graphs and matching interests. Love is messy and complicated and it is a mistake to deny its random magic.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

“And I understand in a way I never have before that loving someone is always going to feel like flying - the unthinkable drop, the fear of falling, the heart-in-your-throat thrill. It is always going to be impossible until the moment that it's not and you're soaring on pure faith, your altitude completely dependant upon something you can't control.”
― Amy Engel, The Revolution of Ivy

“...sometimes you have to hurt people just to prove you're alive.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“I just want to be with you. Walk next to you, Ivy, wherever you're headed. That's all.”
― Amy Engel, The Revolution of Ivy

“No one had to explain to me the power our childhoods had over us, even when we fought like hell against them.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“Roanoke girls never last long around here. In the end, we either run or we die.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls