Mary Claire Butterworth > Mary Claire's Quotes

“For myself, I would like the book to offer a little solace in dark times—not by providing any straightforward consolation about where we’re headed, because I’m not sure that’s plausible at the moment, but by defending in some small way the possibility of love.”
― Sally Rooney

“Still, Connell went home that night and read over some notes he had been making for a new story, and he felt the old beat of pleasure in his body, like watching a perfect goal, like the rustling movement of light through leaves, a phrase of music from the window of a passing car. Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“To be happy like this maybe wasn’t so difficult after all. All I had to do was find the source of happiness in me and not rely on others to supply it the next time.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“But so much is covered over in time now, the way leaves fall and cover a piece of earth, and eventually mingle with the soil. Things that happened to her then are buried in the earth of her body.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“I was tired, it was late, I was sitting half-asleep in the back of a taxi, remembering strangely that wherever I go, you are with me, and so is he, and that as long as you both live the world will be beautiful to me.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“Was he my home, then, my homecoming? You are my homecoming. When I’m with you and we’re well together, there is nothing more I want. You make
me like who I am, who I become when you’re with me, Oliver. If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I’m with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.”
― Sally Rooney, Conversations with Friends

“because you don’t forget the first person to touch you with love after life’s taught you all touch is fear and pain.”
― Tess Sharpe

“I fell like I was a star and she was the end of the world. A cataclysmic crash of two people, never to be the same. Never getting back up.”
― Tess Sharpe

“Later that evening in my diary, I wrote: I was exagerrating when I said I thought you hated the piece. What I meant to say was: I thought you hated me. I was hoping you’d persuade me of the opposite—and you did, for a while. Why won’t I believe it tomorrow morning?”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I refocus, and try to forget the melted-ice-cream kind of love that is now gone. That sometimes feels like it never really existed.”
― Elissa Sussman, Funny You Should Ask

“What I've come to realize over the last year of my makeover is that change is a choice we make every day, a thousand times a day. We choose to do this one thing better. Then the next. And the next. And the one after that.”
― Elle Kennedy

“He's the best person I've known in my life, I said on the night when the tiny fishing boat on which he had sailed out with Anchise early that afternoon failed to return and we were scrambling to find his parents' telephone number in the States in case we had to break the terrible news.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Then let me say one more thing. It will clear the air. I may have come close, but I never had what you had. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business. But remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. Most of us can’t help but live as though we’ve got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there’s only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there’s sorrow. I don’t envy the pain. But I envy you the pain.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I wish I could be with you all,' I responded, getting all worked up myself over someone I had almost entirely stopped thinking about. Time makes us sentimental. Perhaps, in the end, it is because of time that we suffer.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Now, I have a question. When I get this wife, whom I can presume from the thrust of your remarks is not the same person as you - With mock indignation Eileen interrupted: Certainly she's not me. For one thing, I'm a lot better read than she is. He went on smiling to himself. Sure, he said. But once I find her, whoever she might be, will you and I still be friends? She sat back against the sofa cushions then, as if to consider the question. After a pause, she replied: No. I think when you find her, you'll have to give me up. It might even be that giving me up is the precondition for finding her in the first place.
As I suspected, he said. I'll never find her, then.
Eileen lifted her hands up in astonishment. Simon, she said. Be serious. This woman is your soulmate. God put her on earth for you.
If God wanted me to give you up, he wouldn't have made me who I am.
For a moment they looked at one another. She put her hand to her cheek then, her face was flushed. So you're not going to renounce our friendship, she said.
Not for anything.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“Walking around, even on a bad day, I would see things—I mean just the things that were in front of me. People’s faces, the weather, traffic. The smell of petrol from the garage, the feeling of being rained on, completely ordinary things. And in that way even the bad days were good, because I felt them and remembered feeling them. There was something delicate about living like that—like I was an instrument and the world touched me and reverberated inside me.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“And I think if I believed in God, I wouldn't want to prostrate myself before him and ask for forgiveness. I would just want to thank him every day, for everything.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“Sometimes when I get really sad and depressed, you know, I lie in bed and think about you. I don’t mean in a sexual way. I just think about the goodness of you as a person. And since you like me, or you love me, I must be okay.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“Good things don’t wait until you’re ready. Sometimes they come right before, when you’re almost there. And I figured when that happens, you can let them pass by like a bus not meant for you. Or you can get ready. So I got ready.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, One True Loves

“I was flirting. Me. Flirting.

It feels so good to flirt. No one ever talks about that. But in that moment, I felt like flirting was the very thing that made the world go around.

The excitement of wondering what the other person will say next. The thrill of knowing someone is looking at you, liking what they see. The rush of looking at someone and liking what you see in them. Flirting is probably just as much about falling in love with yourself as it is with someone else.

It’s about seeing yourself through someone’s eyes and realizing there is plenty to like about yourself, plenty of reasons someone might hang on your every word.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, One True Loves

“They say that when you remember something, you are really remembering the last time you remembered it. Each time you recollect a memory, you change it, ever so slightly, shading it with new information, new feelings.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, One True Loves

“You can’t re-create the first time you promise to love someone or the first time you feel loved by another. You cannot relive the sensation of fear, admiration, self-­consciousness, passion, and desire all mixed into one because it never happens twice. You chase it like the first high for the rest of your life. It doesn’t mean you can’t love another or move on; it just means that the one spontaneous moment, the split second that you took the leap, when your heart was racing and your mind was muddled with What ifs?—that moment—will never happen the same way again. It will never feel as intense as the first time. At least, that’s the way I remember it. That’s why my mother always said we memorialize our past. Everything seems better in a memory.”
― Renee Carlino, Before We Were Strangers

“I lied for fun. What else is there in life?”
― Renee Carlino, Before We Were Strangers

“We both cried together, surrendering to the reality that we had to accept. No one could change the past or give us back the time we had lost, and there were no words to make everything better. We just had to accept the present for what it was.”
― Renee Carlino, Before We Were Strangers

“But if you'd told me, I would have been around more. We could have seen each other more, I could have helped you so you wouldn't be so tired all of the time."
"Just knowing you were here was more than enough."
"But maybe you wouldn't have ended up in the hospital."
He reached for her hand. "Or maybe watching you enjoy a care-free summer while you fell in love was what kept me out of the hospital in the first place.”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Last Song

“I look at Will over her shoulder, and mouth 'wow'. He and Cam are laughing, and the Jolly Jumper is squeaking with each of Owen's leaps, and Whitney is saying, "I'm just so happy." It's loud and lovely and I think, 'This is what a good life sounds like.”
― Carley Fortune, Meet Me at the Lake

“Will tells me how lucky he is to have met his soulmate eleven years ago, and even luckier to have found me again. He tells me I'm his best friend. He tells me he never thought it was possible to be as happy as he is now, with me. He tells me I'm the bravest person he knows. He tells me he loves my loyalty and my playlists and my nose. He tells me he loves me best of all.”
― Carley Fortune, Meet Me at the Lake