Julie Johnson > Julie's Quotes

“No amount of soul searching would fix my past. There was no magical Band-Aid I could stick on my heart, no special glue I could use to make myself whole again. I had shattered to pieces like a fragile vase on concrete; some fragments could be roughly cobbled back together, but many of my vital parts had simply turned to dust, pulverized and scattered by the first gust of wind.”
― Julie Johnson, Like Gravity

“Grief is a kick in the chest. It steals your breath, hits you so hard you think you’ll never stand back up again. And it’s not just because you’re grieving death or heartbreak or loss – you’re grieving change. You’re grieving the life that might have been, if it hadn’t all gotten fucked up along the way.”
― Julie Johnson, Like Gravity

“Being near you, Brooklyn…it’s like breathing. I don’t have a choice about it; I just have to do it or I know I won’t survive very long.”
― Julie Johnson, Like Gravity

“Maybe there aren’t any happily ever afters, or white knights who ride in on valiant steeds to save the day. Maybe, in real life, Prince Charming isn’t always perfect – he’s just as flawed as everyone else in the tale. And that princess, alone in her tower? She’s not perfect either. Birds don’t braid her hair every morning, she can’t serenade wild forest creatures into servitude, and she doesn’t even own a ball gown. But she’s also smart enough to know not to accept poisoned apples from strangers, or prick her finger on deadly spindles.

She doesn’t wait around for a prince to charge in and slay the dragon. Maybe she saves herself and in the end, rides off into her own goddamned sunset.”
― Julie Johnson, Like Gravity

“Maybe instead, I wanted the kind of love that devastates you. The kind that rips your insides open and leaves you gutted, out in the cold. Maybe I wanted that great, epic, once-in-a-lifetime love, that consumes with the brightest of flames. And maybe, even though I knew the hottest fires often burn out the fastest, even though it couldn’t last… it was worth it.
People say love isn’t supposed to be painful. But maybe the best things in life are the ones that hurt the most after they’re gone.”
― Julie Johnson, Say the Word

“And we were a box of fireworks. A sixty-gallon drum of gasoline. An unstable container of napalm.
One spark, one look, was all it took.
We went up in flames.”
― Julie Johnson, Say the Word

“People say love isn’t supposed to be painful. But maybe the best things in life are the ones that hurt the most after they’re gone.”
― Julie Johnson, Say the Word

“We were doomed from the start. A lost cause. A losing battle. And yet, in that narrow instant, I didn't give a single fuck.”
― Julie Johnson, Erasing Faith

“Did you ever stop to think that even if I am a monster, I might be your soulmate anyway?”
― Julie Johnson, Erasing Faith

“You're right. You're not a princess -- you're Little Red. and I'm the Big Bad Wolf.”
― Julie Johnson, Erasing Faith

“Being heartbroken doesn’t mean you stop feeling. Just the opposite — it means you feel it all more.
With your heart in fragments, every sensation is sharper, every emotion more acute. Your feelings are enhanced, like a blind man with an impeccable sense of smell, or a deaf woman whose eyes can perceive things a normal person would never recognize.
The brokenhearted are the best empaths of all.”
― Julie Johnson, Erasing Faith

“I’d known then, at eighteen, that my case of heartbreak was terminal, incurable. It wasn’t “puppy love” or “first love” or any of the loves that supposedly fade with time and large quantities of ice cream.  Because when you walk away from your soul mate – when you take real, true love and throw it in the fire and watch as it burns down to ashes – you know you’ll never be the same again. The heart isn’t like the liver; it doesn’t regenerate, no matter how much time passes. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.”
― Julie Johnson, Say the Word

“There’s a nonsensical dichotomy that exists within you after you break up with someone — especially if it’s someone you loved deeply. A large part of you hopes they’ll move on, be happy, follow their dreams to the fullest.
That’s the side you show the world.
But a smaller part of you, whether you admit its existence or not, secretly and selfishly yearns for a reality in which that person would never move on. Never forget your love, or replace you with someone else; never be fully complete again, without you by their side.
That’s the side we hide away, the innermost part of ourselves that we push down below the socially-acceptable responses to heartbreak.”
― Julie Johnson, Say the Word

“He’s a sculpture. Painstakingly chiseled into perfection over the course of years, until arias could be written about his eyebrows, his cheekbones, the freaking shape of his nostrils. And me? Well, I’m probably a finger-painting. Done by a three-year-old. Without supervision.”
― Julie Johnson, Not You It's Me

“You’re my karma, sunshine. And I’m pretty sure you were made for me.”
― Julie Johnson, Not You It's Me

“The way I see it, everyone’s been telling the story wrong. I mean, take Cinderella, for example. She never asked for a Prince, let alone waited around for one. Hell, all she ever wanted was a night off from work and a fancy dress to twirl in for a few hours. It’s never made sense to me that I’m supposed to sit around pining for some mythical Prince Charming to get off his ass and rescue me. If that’s the grand game plan, I could end up waiting forever. Because, I mean, if he’s anything like the rest of the male population, the prince is probably stuck in traffic somewhere, or got lost along the way and is too damn stubborn to ask for directions.”
― Julie Johnson, Not You It's Me

“When you start to fall, don't try to talk yourself out of it. The right man will be there at the bottom, to catch you.”
― Julie Johnson, Not You It's Me

“Take a risk on messy. Live Fearlessly. Love recklessly. Most of all, just love.”
― Julie Johnson, Not You It's Me

“Of all the people in the world who could've won the seat next to mine at that playoff game... it was you, Gemma. You. The one person on the planet who might just understand me.”
― Julie Johnson, Not You It's Me

“It might've started as a lie, Faith, but it sure as hell didn't end as one. I might not have been real to you, and that's fine. But you have to know... you were real to me." His voice dropped so low I could barely hear him. "It was real to me. It's still real. The realest fucking thing I've ever felt.”
― Julie Johnson, Erasing Faith

“I was alone, for twenty-five years. And I didn't give a shit, because I didn't know what I was missing.

Then, this stubborn, beautiful fucking brunette came barreling into my life and shoved her way through all the shadows.”
― Julie Johnson, Erasing Faith

“Maybe you're right, Red. Maybe I am hateful. Maybe I ruined your life. Maybe I'm the devil, and the worst thing that ever happened to you, and a million other awful things... But did you ever stop to think that even if I am a monster... I might be your soulmate, anyway?”
― Julie Johnson, Erasing Faith

“But…” I’m really grasping at straws, now. “You don’t date,” I remind him, desperate to believe my own words. “You don’t do more.” “That’s true.” Despite myself, I feel my heart deflate like a week-old balloon. “Maybe that’s because I wasn’t doing it with you.”
― Julie Johnson, Not You It's Me

“Nate and me... we aren't built for truces, for good times, for light jokes and giggles. We're meant for the shadows. For the dirty, ugly, secret parts of our souls, the parts we can't hide because we know each other too well.”
― Julie Johnson, Cross the Line

“Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything.
They make you feel so alive that you'd follow them straight into hell, just to keep getting your fix.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”
― Emily Jane Brontë , Wuthering Heights

“I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.”
― Emily Brontë

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar