Icarus > Icarus's Quotes

“Straight people, he thinks, probably don't spend this much time convincing themselves that they're straight.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“So, imagine we’re all born with a set of feelings. Some are broader or deeper than others, but for everyone, there’s that ground floor, a bottom crust of the pie. That’s the maximum depth of feeling you’ve ever experienced. And then, the worst thing happens to you. The very worst thing that could have happened. The thing you had nightmares about as a child, and you thought, it’s all right because that thing will happen to me when I’m older and wiser, and I’ll have felt so many feelings by then that this one worst feeling, the worst possible feeling, won’t seem so terrible.

“But it happens to you when you’re young. It happens when your brain isn’t even fully done cooking—when you’ve barely experienced anything, really. The worst thing is one of the first big things that ever happens to you in your life. It happens to you, and it goes all the way down to the bottom of what you know how to feel, and it rips it open and carves out this chasm down below to make room. And because you were so young, and because it was one of the first big things to happen in your life, you’ll always carry it inside you. Every time something terrible happens to you from then on, it doesn’t just stop at the bottom —it goes all the way down.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“He wants to set himself on fire, but he can’t afford for anyone to see him burn.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“I'll tell you a thousand stories, my love. We'll write the new endings, one by one.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Rule of Wolves

“No woman should be made to fear that she was not enough.”
― Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“You are", he says, "the absolute worst idea I've ever had.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Habibi. Hayati. Roohi.
My love, my life, my soul, the words meant, but their meanings went deeper than that.
Habibi was for friends and love that was real enough.
Hayati was when love became an all-encompassing thing. Deeper and deeper, until one became the others life.
Roohi was when a soul twined with its match and loved with the force of a thousand suns. When it slipped beneath the heart and tangled in the very fibres of an existence.”
― Hafsah Faizal, We Free the Stars

“I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.
And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you.
And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it?
Sometimes, even now, I still can't.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Never tell me the odds.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Love isn't some scarce resource to battle over. Love can be infinite, as much as your heart can open.”
― Xiran Jay Zhao, Iron Widow

“I'm conscious this could be rather burdensome to hear, but you remain the thing I have most chosen for myself. The thing that's most exclusively mine. The one thing that brings me the deepest joy.”
― Alexis Hall, Boyfriend Material

“But he thinks about Henry, and, oh. He thinks about Henry, and something twists in his chest, like a stretch he’s been avoiding for too long.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“But know this - even though I have lived a life as full of thin, small regrets as a cherry blossom is full of petals in the spring, this will be my largest: that I could not be with you, right then, to share the space between never and always while waiting for the sun to rise.”
― Jenn Lyons, The House of Always

“It turned out choices could linger like a wound, reminding a person every waking second of their consequences. Choices were ghosts; they haunted.”
― Jenn Lyons, The House of Always

“These days Juliette,” he said, low and warily, “the most dangerous people are the powerful white men who feel as if they have been slighted.”
― Chloe Gong, These Violent Delights

“And I need you to know that if you send me away, I'll go, and I'll be fine. I'll be sad, but I'll be fine. I'll live and I'll write and I'll miss you and think about you, and, truthfully, I'll probably wank over you, and I'll be depressed sometimes and mad sometimes, but you won't have to worry because I'll be fine. I never used to believe it, but I know it now.”
― Alexis Hall, Glitterland

“Not that I hate my body. There are just parts of it that aren't what they should be.”
― Ray Stoeve, Between Perfect and Real

“But you know... If you want to see if a kiss would cure me, I wouldn't stop you.”
― Annabeth Albert, Conventionally Yours

“Don't insult me by suggesting that the only way I'd be welcome in your bed is by removing all rivals.”
― Jenn Lyons, The Ruin of Kings

“Sometimes it was hard for Kathleen to remember that she was still her own person, not just shards of a mirror, reflecting back a thousand different personalities most fitting for the situation.”
― Chloe Gong, These Violent Delights

“A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Come home and shout at me. Come home and fight with me. Come home and break my heart, if you must.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“When everyone knows you’re a monster, you needn’t waste time doing every monstrous thing.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“She'd laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“I can hear the change in Kaz's breathing when he looks at you."
"You... you can?"
"It catches every time, like he's never seen you before.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Saints, Kaz, you actually look happy."
"Don't be ridiculous," he snapped. But there was no mistaking it. Kaz Brekker was grinning like an idiot.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Who’d deny a poor cripple his cane?”
“If the cripple is you, then any man with sense.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“If only you could talk to girls in equations.”
There was a long silence, and then, eyes trained on the notch they’d created in the link, Wylan said, “Just girls?”
Jesper restrained a grin. “No. Not just girls.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Brick by brick, I will destroy you.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“You’re stupid about a lot of things, Wylan, but you are not stupid. And if I ever hear you call yourself a moron again, I’m going to tell Matthias you tried to kiss Nina. With tongue.”
Wylan wiped his nose on his sleeve. “He’ll never believe it.”
“Then I’ll tell Nina you tried to kiss Matthias. With tongue.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom