Rye > Rye's Quotes

“Niceness is all about what we do when other people are looking. Kindness, on the other hand, runs deep. Kindness is what happens when no one’s looking.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“It’s not always enough to go looking for the place we belong. Sometimes we need to make that place.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“It’s a leap of faith to love people and let yourself be loved. It’s closing your eyes, stepping off a ledge into nothing, and trusting that you’ll fly rather than fall. I can’t step off the ledge for you. It’s something only you can do.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“Mika looked away. “I’m afraid I’ll never leave a mark on anybody.”
It was quiet for so long that Mika wished she could take the too-reckless, too-honest words back, but then she heard him, rough and uneven and so quiet she almost missed it:
“It’s a little late for that, I’m afraid.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“Mika has been so deeply hurt that she has taught herself to run before she can lay down roots, but the thing you have to remember, Jamie, is that when someone leaves, all you can do is leave a window open for them so that one day, if they choose, they can come back.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“But it was more than that. It was peace, the kind Mika was beginning to see she had never known. She hadn’t understood how exhausting and heartbreaking it had been to hide such a big part of herself all these years, to reshape and contort herself into something more acceptable. She hadn’t realised just how heavy her mask had been until she’d discovered what it was to live without it.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“I’m afraid.” “Of what?” “Of the heartbreak when I fail,” she said simply. “Of rejection. Of wanting too much. Of discovering again and again that I’m unlovable. All those nannies came and went, and not one of them loved me. And, thanks to Primrose, not one of them remembers me, either. People are usually like the sea, a constant, unerasable part of something bigger, but I’m more like a single wave that washes over the shore, ebbs away, and doesn’t leave a trace behind.” He swallowed, his knuckles almost white on the wheel. Mika looked away. “I’m afraid I’ll never leave a mark on anybody.” It was quiet for so long that Mika wished she could take the too-reckless, too-honest words back, but then she heard him, rough and uneven and so quiet she almost missed it: “It’s a little late for that, I’m afraid.”
― Sangu Mandanna, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

“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

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

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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“The nicest thing you can ever do for another human being is see them, and really see them, at that. To be understood is one of most base desires we as people have,”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“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

“Because loving him is the same thing as tossing the keys to my heart to a valet without a driver’s license. He’ll drive me off a cliff.”
― Jessa Hastings, Magnolia Parks

“And I think to myself, wouldn't it be so lovely if we viewed ourselves through the same lens as the people who love us?”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will