Kim

“You see, for me, memories are difficult. Very often, they hurt. A curious thing about grief is the way it takes your entire life, all those foundational years that made you who you are, and makes them so painful to look back upon because of the absence there, that suddenly they’re inaccessible. You must invent an entirely new system.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“It's like I never learned how to just be where I am. And where I am is here. With you. And I'm thinking maybe I should start trying to take it day by day. And just . . . feel what I feel.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“there's a corner of your mouth, and a place that it goes. pinched and worried like you're afraid you're forgetting something. i used to hate it. used to think it was your little tic of disapproval.

but i've kissed your mouth, that corner, that place it goes, so many times now. i've memorized it. topography on the map of you, a world i'm still charting. i know it. i added it to the key. here: inches to miles. i can multiply it out, read your latitude and longitude. recite your coordinates like la rosaria.

this thing, your mouth, its place. it's what you do when you're trying not to give yourself away. not in the way that you do all the time, those empty, greedy grabs for you. i mean the truth of you. the weird, perfect shape of your heart. the one on the outside of your chest.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“Alex forgets, momentarily, about the pancakes and everything else, not because he wants to do absolutely filthy things to Henry—maybe even with the apron still on—but because he loves him, and isn't that wild, to know that that's what makes the filthy things so good.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue