Jessa Hastings > Quotes

“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

“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

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

“Painful things can still be beautiful things, in case you didn’t know.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“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

“I think I understand for a fleeting moment why everything that’s bad and painful and sad is worth it if you love someone, because I’ll remember how he’s looking at me now forever.”
― Jessa Hastings, Daisy Haites

“Everything wonderful, everything magical, everything painful, everything beautiful and spectacular and wretched and defining that has happened to me happened with him. And I hate him for that.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

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

“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

“I know that some love is beautiful, and some is freeing, some unravels you, some love poisons you, some blinds you, some betters you, and some loves break you in invisible ways that no one else knows about until you have to stand up and the weight of your love crushes your bones.”
― 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

“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

“How's the weather over there Parks ?”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“The feel of him is my favourite feeling in the world, for all of history and all of time, write it down, ring the town bell and tell the scribes—I’ll wear it on my heart’s sleeve forever that I love him.”
― Jessa Hastings, Daisy Haites

“Loving you was a good reason not to love anyone else.”
― Jessa Hastings, Daisy Haites

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

“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

“You're Central Park at midnight.”
― Jessa Hastings, Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing

“If this is what being loved by him on accident feels like, I can't imagine what it'd feel like to be loved on purpose.”
― Jessa Hastings, Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing

“I remember it, like a physical punch in the gut, how much I loved him. Really loved him. To the bone, I loved him. Cut me and I'd bleed him. How much I needed him, still need him, would forever, always, never couldn't, even if I tried, needed him.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“She is the goddess in the Botticelli clam shell, her eyes are the waterlilies in Monet’s pond, she is the hand of God reaching down to mankind. Klimt’s kiss is a portrait of us and I’m gonna steal it. Take it, make it mine, make her mine too.”
― Jessa Hastings, Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing

“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

“Mum used to say to me—when you pick who you want to be with, you have to imagine every part of life, every scenario. Good, bad, happy, sad, painful, beautiful—not just the person you want to do road trips with, but the person you want to be stuck in gridlock traffic with. Not just the person you want to have babies with, but the person you want to grieve with, the person you want next to you on the worst day of your life, at the funeral of someone you love, who's next to you? You don't need a fair-weather lover, you need the person that's going to stand next to you in their wellies, staring down the barrel of the storm.”
― Jessa Hastings, Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing

“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

“He laughs from the back of his throat and I love it when he laughs at the things I say, I want to make him laugh forever but I can’t because he broke forever and still I fight the urge to kiss him anyway.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks