Riley > Riley's Quotes

“If it wasn’t him, it would be you,” I tell him, for better and for worse. He blows some more air out of his mouth and catches my eye. “In another life, yeah?” I nod and offer him a weak smile. “I’ll meet you there.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“What do I have to show for this life? Her. It’s her. Loving her. That’s all I’ve got, and he’s saying I’ve not even fucking done that well. Everyone has markers for their life. Ways they remember certain things and times. Stakes in the ground. She’s mine. My whole life, all dotted with and by things I remember about her. She’s how I frame the world.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“Will you walk me down the aisle?” I ask him. “At the wedding?” He looks down at me and smiles a bit. “Honour of a lifetime.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“You’re all here to bury the smartest girl, the sharpest shooter in the whole wide world. But I’m burying my guiding light.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“A love like ours—? Are you joking?” I give her the magic smile. “We’re what the poems are about”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“How many loves do you get in a lifetime? That’s a question I’ve wondered before … If you ask The Sun, I’ve had far too many, and in some ways that’s true, I have. But actually, I’ve only had two great ones.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“Wherever she is, it’s good. I know it is.” “How?” I ask. He shrugs like it’s easy. “Because she’s there.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“You want a metaphor for it? Alright, here goes. I come from a good family, everyone knows that. My parents were great, roof over my head. I never wanted for much, really, and still. She’s the only home I’ve ever been interested in having. Her body is the walls, heart’s the ceiling. I’ll live here forever.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“I feel that it's important for you to know that even if I didn't love you in the sort of stupid, embarrassing way that I do; if I did, hypothetically, have a choice - I would choose you anyway.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“He lets out my favourite laugh that feels like a cup of tea on a rainy day, and his face looks the kind of happy I always want it to with a smile that touches his eyes.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“It was always him. I knew that, even at the time, even when I tried to fill the gap he left in me with other people, it was and always will be him.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“Everyone moves around me these days like I’m made of glass. Like one wrong look and I’ll shatter. Little do they know that it’s too late . . . All of me already is all shattered. A mosaic of cracks and agony.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“See you soon?” I say to our reflection. She’d give me a small smile, and I think she’d be a bit sad because I know how much she loves me. “Not too soon, please,” she’d say, because that’s not what she’d want for me. “Not too soon,” I say, nodding. “But one day again.” And then I close my little mirror, lay it down next to her ashes and let her go.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“Not a day has gone by since I met you where I’ve not loved you.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“I’ve been without him before, it’s not a life I’m interested in having”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“The curves of his chest carved into my memory the same way you won’t ever forget your best day. He is my best day.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: Into the Dark

“How many loves do you get in a lifetime?

How many people do you get to call yours? There are all sorts of loves in this world, not all of them, but most of them are beautiful. Some are old, some noble, some brave. Others are dishonourable and weak and make you so by association. Some are a low whisper on a sombre night, some are maddening. Some you can’t ignore—they slow-burn inside of you, never quite going out completely but you’re too scared to dare try to fan that flame. Some loves you pretend you don’t feel, even when you can, even when you know you do, even if he’s the first thing you think of in the morning, even if he’s like a match in the darkened room of your heart—because loving something how you love him is a painful love that puts rocks in your pockets and melancholy in your eyeballs and if time has taught you anything it’s that it doesn’t matter. You’ll love him forever anyway.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“He laughs and for some reason it sounds like I'm ringing the doorbell of the home I grew up in.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home

“Can you die from a broken heart, do you know? And if I did and they cut me wide open, would I bleed loving him? When they lift my heart out of my chest cavity to weigh it, does it weigh the same as his top lip? Is his name carved into my third rib to the left? Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. He's killing me. Loving him is killing me too, and I'm afraid because how many loves really, do you get in a lifetime? How many chances do you give it before you let it go?”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“Our eyes hold like our hands won’t. I love you, he blinks. Prove it, I sigh.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“In another life I reckon I could have loved you,' I tell her. She gives me a little smile back. 'In another life I would have let you-' Never you mind that I already love her in this one.”
― Jessa Hastings, Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing

“Because she can only hate me how she hates me because she loves me how she loves me.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“how many loves do you get in a lifetime? I remember wondering that. How many people will look at me like he does, not just like I’m the sun but like I’m the whole god damn universe.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“and I love her in the dark. I mean, fuck it—I down and out love her in all spectrums of light, even the absence of it.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“He’s a time bomb for me, do you see now? That he’ll hurt me. He’ll always hurt me. I’ll never be safe with him, even if I’m always safe next to him.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“What a mind fuck it is to comfort the person who just blew your whole heart open with a rifle.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“I’ll wear it like a badge of honour forever that he loved me first, that he loved me at all.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home

“Daisy’s that feeling you get when you’re floating on your back in a pool and there’s so much fucking noise around you until you put your ears under and it all goes quiet. That’s how she feels to me.”
― Jessa Hastings, Daisy Haites

“How many loves do you get in a lifetime? For me it's just the one. I've had more but as I float away there's only one I'm thinking of. He is what I'm thinking of. Not how he hurt me, not what he did to me, not what we've done to each other. Just him.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home

“It's the great undoing of my heart as I know it.”
― Jessa Hastings, Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing