cbrooksreadbooks’s Reviews > Atmosphere > Status Update

Look what humans had done. We had looked at the world around us—the dirt under our feet, the stars in the sky, the speed of a feather falling from the top of a building—and we had taught ourselves to fly.

“I would give you anything,” Vanessa said, “if it wasn’t going to cost us everything.”

“I would never ask it,” Joan said, shaking her head. Her tears began to fall, and she dried them.

“Which is how I know that you’d be worth giving it to,” Vanessa said.

In all her time spent watching others, she hadn’t picked up on this part of falling in love, that someone could look at you as if you were the very center of everything. And even though you knew better, you’d allow yourself a moment to believe you were worth of being revolved around, too.

“I do not believe there is any original sin in any of us and I cannot sit there and listen to someone say there is. I don’t want to believe in any being who would judge and punish like that. And I’ll pay the price if I’m wrong and God does exist. Because I will not submit to a God like that willingly.”

One of my favorite quotes so far!!

I want to take you everywhere. And do everything with you. And ask you every single question that’s been on my mind for months. And I want to know when you knew what was happening between us and I want to tell you when I knew. And I want to hold your hand in a quiet corner and I want to lie in bed and hear your heartbeat through your chest. I want to bring you coffee in bed.

“I feel like I could know you forever and still be curious about what you’re going to say next.”

“Of course we look for the gods there,” Vanessa said. “And if we make it up there, we’re going to have to fight against that sneaking suspicion that we might just be gods ourselves.”

“The steady hum of the wind drowned out almost everything except for the sound of her own voice inside her mind. Which was such a gift. She had always been her greatest friend, her greatest guide.”

“ ‘Bravery is being unafraid of something other people are afraid of. Courage is being afraid, but being strong enough to do it anyway… Neither of us are particularly brave right now,’ Vanessa said. ‘But both of us are going to be courageous.’ “

“So it came as a huge shock to the men in the department, many of whom fancied themselves secretly destined for victory, to see that the woman they’d overlooked was lapping then in a race they did not know had started.”