Querida > Querida's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“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

“I can love you and want you and still not want
that life.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“History, huh?”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“To every person in search of somewhere to belong who happened to pick up this book, I hope you found a place in here, even if just for a few pages. You are loved. I wrote this for you. Keep fighting, keep making history, keep looking after one another.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Take anything you want and know you deserve to have it.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“He called Henry the North Star once. That wasn’t bright enough.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“The moment you first called me a prick, my fate was sealed. O, fathers of my bloodline! O, ye kings of olde! Take this crown from me, bury me in my ancestral soil. If only you had known the mighty work of thine loins would be undone by a gay heir who likes it when American boys with chin dimples are mean to him.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Give yourself away sometimes, sweetheart, There's so much of you.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“What?" Henry shouts over the noise when he sees the look on Alex's face.
"My life is a cosmic joke and you're not a real person," Alex says, wheezing.
"What?" Henry yells again.
"I said, you look great, baby!”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“On the map of you, my fingers could always find the green hills, Wales. Cool waters and a shore of white chalk. The ancient part of you carved out of stone in a prayerful circle, sacrosanct. Your spine's a ridge I'd die climbing.

If I could spread it out on my desk, I'd find the corner of your mouth where it pinches with my fingers, and I'd smooth it away and you'd be marked with the names of saints like all the old maps. I get the nomenclature now- saints' names belong to miracles”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Someone else’s choice doesn’t change who you are.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Should I tell you that when we're apart, your body comes back to me in dreams? That when I sleep, I see you, the dip of your waist, the freckle above your hip, and when I wake up in the morning, it feels like I've just been with you, the phantom touch of your hand on the back of my neck fresh and not imagined? That I can feel your skin against mine, and it makes every bone in my body ache? That, for a few moments, I can hold my breath and be back there with you, in a dream, in a thousand rooms, nowhere at all?”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“I wasted all those yesterdays and am completely out of tomorrows.”
― Adam Silvera, They Both Die at the End

“Sometimes the truth is a secret you're keeping from yourself because living a lie is easier.”
― Adam Silvera, They Both Die at the End

“I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“I like revisiting, at certain times, spots where I was once happy; I like to shape the present in the image of the irretrievable past.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, White Nights

“Don't ignore half of me so you can fit me into a box. Don't do that.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“You do not know how fast you have been running, how hard you have been working, how truly exhausted you are, until somewhat stands behind you and says, “It’s OK, you can fall down now. I’ll catch you.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“You'll know if he loves you by how long he's willing to fight.”
― Michelle Moran, The Heretic Queen

“This is how memories are; what seems so clear and unforgettable at one moment vanishes like steam the next.”
― Michelle Moran, The Heretic Queen

“That's because I've learned how to use it [smile], Woserit said. I don't pass it out like an old woman giving free milk to the village cats. It's something that must be controlled, and for you especially. You use it on anyone. You must learn to be more judicious.”
― Michelle Moran, The Heretic Queen

“In Egypt, there is a saying: When good fortune looks down upon us, it does so in threes, one for each part of the Eye of Horus. His upper lid, his lower lid and the eye itself.”
― Michelle Moran, Nefertiti

“I have done it," she says. At first I do not understand. But then I see the tomb, and the marks she has made on the stone. A C H I L L E S, it reads. And beside it, P A T R O C L U S.
"Go," she says. "He waits for you."

In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“How were you supposed to change- in ways both big and small- when your family was always there to remind you of exactly the person you apparently signed an ironclad contract to be?”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, Malibu Rising

“There were many odd things about human beings. They thought insects were disgusting but felt lucky when a ladybird landed on their fingers. They detested rats but loved squirrels. While they found vultures repulsive, they thought eagles impressive. They despised mosquitoes and flies, but were fond of fire-flies. Even though copper and iron were medicinally important, it was gold that they worshipped instead. They took no notice of the stones under their feet but went mad for polished gems.”
― Elif Shafak, Honor

“I don’t like knowing people in the context of things. "Oh, that’s the person I work out with. That’s the person I’m in a book club with. That’s the person I did that show with." Because once the context ends, so does the friendship”
― Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died

“I yearn to know the people I love deeply and intimately—without context, without boxes—and I yearn for them to know me that way, too.”
― Jennette McCurdy, I'm Glad My Mom Died