Hannah > Hannah's Quotes

“Nora, what’s the math?” June says, rounding on her, a slightly frantic look in her eyes. “I majored in nouns.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“It's not one of the posed shots- it's one he didn't even realize had been taken, one he definitely didn't think would be released. He should have given the photographer more credit. He managed to capture the moment right when Henry cracked a joke, a candid, genuine photo, completely caught up in each other, Henry's arm around him and his own hand reaching up to grasp for Henry's on his shoulder.

The way Henry's looking at him in the picture is so affectionate, so openly loving, that seeing it from a third person perspective almost makes Alex want to look away, like he's staring into the sun. He called Henry the North Star once. That wasn't bright enough.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“P.S. Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf—1927:
With me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Thinking about history makes me wonder how I’ll fit into it one day, I guess. And you too. I kinda wish people still wrote like that. History, huh? Bet we could make some.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“I didn't fall in love with you. I walked into love with you, with my eyes wide open, choosing to take every step along the way.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“When Alex was a kid, before anyone knew his name, he dreamed of love like it was a fairy tale, as if it would come sweeping into his life on the back of a dragon one day. When he got older, he learned about love as a strange thing that could fall apart no matter how badly you wanted it, a choice you make anyway. He never imagined it’d turn out he was right both times.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn’t your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Here, now, under a shower of sparks, he looks like just the person who would have missed me, the one who wouldn’t have left.

The truth is, I never stopped loving that person. I only stopped believing he existed.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Fuck off, Philip, I love him,” Henry says. “Oh, you love him, do you?” It’s so patronizing that Alex’s hand twitches into a fist under the table. “What exactly do you intend to do, then, Henry? Hmm? Marry him? Make him the Duchess of Cambridge? The First Son of the United bloody States, fourth in line to be Queen of England?” “I’ll fucking abdicate!” Henry says, voice rising. “I don’t care!” “You wouldn’t dare,” Philip spits back. “We have a great uncle who abdicated because he was a fucking Nazi, so it’d hardly be the worst reason anyone’s done it, would it?” Henry’s yelling now, and he’s out of his chair, hands shaking, towering over Philip, and Alex notices that he’s actually taller. “What are we even defending here, Philip? What kind of legacy? What kind of family, that says, we’ll take the murder, we’ll take the raping and pillaging and the colonizing, we’ll scrub it up nice and neat in a museum, but oh no, you’re a bloody poof? That’s beyond our sense of decorum! I’ve bloody well had it. I’ve sat about long enough letting you and Gran and the weight of the damned world keep me pinned, and I’m finished. I don’t care. You can take your legacy and your decorum and you can shove it up your fucking arse, Philip. I’m done.” He huffs out an almighty breath, turns on his heel, and stalks out of the kitchen. Alex, mouth hanging open, remains frozen in his seat for a few seconds. Across from him, Philip is looking red-faced and queasy. Alex clears his throat, stands, and buttons his jacket. “For what it’s worth,” he says to Philip, “that is the bravest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.” And he leaves too.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“If Alex's head is a storm, Henry is the place lightning hits ground.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Sometimes you have a fire under your ass for no good goddamn reason. You're gonna burn out like this.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Well, he gets told he's great a lot. He just doesn't often get told he's good enough.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Are they too drunk to communicate in English? He wonders distantly if Henry knows any Spanish.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“You’re thirty-nine.” “My liver is ninety-three.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“You need to understand this to be with Henry. He is the most loving, nurturing, selfless person you could hope to meet, but there is a sadness and a hurt in him that is tremendous, and you may very well never truly understand it, but you need to love it as much as you love the rest of him, because that’s him. That is him, part and parcel. And he is prepared to give it all to you, which is far more than I ever, in a thousand years, thought I would see him do.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“The turkeys are not going to Jurassic Park you,” he says. “You’re not the bloke from Seinfeld. You’re Jeff Goldblum. Go to sleep.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Some people dye their hair when they go through a breakup. I got a bus.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“I guess it’s kind of good that we broke up, so we could become these cool fucking people.”

Kit’s smile stays fixed, but something changes in his eyes.

“Yeah.”

Shit. We were doing such a good impression of old friends who’ve never seen each other naked, and now I’ve dumped our nudes on the cobblestones.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Living with Kit was like living in a pixie nest. Every night, I’d find my phone charger relocated to my nightstand and my water bottle beside it, refilled at the precise temperature I liked. Dates circled themselves on the calendar. Fresh flowers appeared whenever the old ones wilted. And no matter how carelessly I unloaded the dishwasher, when I checked the back of the utensil drawer, the measuring spoons were always there.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“As far as I know, there are two ways to get over someone: Surrender to the anger that’s already there, or invent something to get angry about. Sometimes it was always wrong, and the only thing to do is stop believing it was ever good to love them. But sometimes they were good to you. Sometimes you go looking for kindling and find that green leaves won’t burn, that the garden was watered too well. Sometimes you have to rearrange the truth into something you won’t miss.

And sometimes, when enough time goes by, it gets hard to remember which one you did.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“She says you’re lovely, but she doesn’t settle for second place.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Kit!”

Theo charges out into the street, hair wild and amber in the windy dusk.

Her boots pound against the stones, and my first thought is, good. Theo should always walk with heavy footsteps. She should leave deep tracks wherever she goes so that everyone can know she was there, like a historical event. Archaeologists should put tape around her footprints and study them with brushes.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“I look on quietly as a breeze stirs her dress around her, surrounded by cosmos and zinnias, dahlias and roses. She sees me and smiles, waving with a gloved hand.

She really does remind me of my mother.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“This is what I get for assuming all women in safari hats can be trusted.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“If Lee Junhee does die, Yoonhae thinks at least someone should know about the parts of her that were kind.”
― Sam Kyung Yoo, Small Gods of Calamity

“He was loved. He understood that. But it was in the way that a precious, delicate object was loved.”
― Sam Kyung Yoo, Small Gods of Calamity

“Kim Iseul was only thirty-three years old when she died. In just six years, Yoonhae will be the same age, and after that, he’ll always be older than she ever got to be.”
― Sam Kyung Yoo, Small Gods of Calamity

“You’re making it very difficult for me to trust you to not get yourself killed,” she informs him.

“That seems unfair. In all the time you’ve known me, I have never died. I’ve got a great track record”
― Sam Kyung Yoo, Small Gods of Calamity

“Because while musical prodigies are always celebrated, early readers aren’t. And that’s because early readers are only good at something others will eventually be good at, too. So being first isn’t special - it’s just annoying.”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“No surprise. Idiots make it into every company. They tend to interview well.”
― Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry