catelyn > catelyn's Quotes

“It’s not your job to make me happy, okay? You can’t make anyone happy. I’m happy just because you exist, and that’s as much of my happiness as you have control over.”
― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“Contentment is a lie invented by capitalism,”
― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“The corner of his mouth twitches into a smile. “You could have always looked,” he says in a low voice. “Just so you know.”
“Well, you could’ve too,” I say.
“Trust me,” he says. “I did.”
― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“I thought you didn’t like holding hands,” I say.
“And you said you did,” he says.
“So, what? I just get whatever I want now?” I tease.
His smile flickers back into place, calm and restrained. “Yes, Poppy,” he says. “You get whatever you want now. Is that a problem?”
“What if I want you to have what you want?”
He arches an eyebrow. “Are you just saying that because you know what I’m going to say, and you want to make fun of me for it?”
“No?” I say. “Why? What are you going to say?”
Our hands go still between us. “I have what I want, Poppy.”
― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“Tell me it had nothing to do with me. That Sarah didn't end things because of this—this thing between us. That since I've been out of your life, she hasn't been reconsidering everything. Just tell me that, if that's the truth, Alex. Tell me I'm not the reason you're not married with kids right now, and everything else you wanted."
He stares at me, face terse, eyes dark and cloudy.
"Tell me," I beg, and he just stares at me, the silence of the room adding to the buzz inside my skull.
Finally, he shakes his head. "Of course it's because of you.”
― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“That crush of happiness, that feeling that this is what life’s about: being somewhere beautiful, with someone you love.”
― Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“You can’t outrun yourself. Not your history, not your fears, not the parts of yourself you’re worried are wrong.”
― Emily Henry, You and Me on Vacation

“Maybe love shouldn’t be built on a foundation of compromises, but maybe it can’t exist without them either. Not the kind that forces two people into shapes they don’t fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow. Compromises that say, there will be a you-shaped space in my heart, and if your shape changes, I will adapt. No matter where we go, our love will stretch out to hold us, and that makes me feel like … like everything will be okay.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Is there anything better than iced coffee and a bookstore on a sunny day? I mean, aside from hot coffee and a bookstore on a rainy day.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Sometimes, even when you start with the last page and you think you know everything, a book finds a way to surprise you.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“That’s life. You’re always making decisions, taking paths that lead you away from the rest before you can see where they end. Maybe that’s why we as a species love stories so much. All those chances for do-overs, opportunities to live the lives we’ll never have.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“The last-page ache. The deep breath in after you’ve set the book aside.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“So if you’re the ‘wrong kind of woman,’ then I’m the wrong kind of man.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“If I had to pick one person to be in my corner, it’d be you. Every time.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“She wonders whether what comes next could ever live up to the expectations. She doesn’t know. You never can. She turns the page anyway.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“A good bookstore,” Charlie says, “is like an airport where you don’t have to take your shoes off.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Life in New York was like being in a giant bookstore: all these trillions of paths and possibilities drawing dreamers into the city's beating heart, saying, I make no promises but I offer many doors.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Until you got here,” he rasps, “all this place had ever been was a reminder of the ways I was a disappointment, and now you’re here, and—I don’t know. I feel like I’m okay. So if you’re the ‘wrong kind of woman,’ then I’m the wrong kind of man.”

I can see all of the shades of him at once. Quiet, unfocused boy. Precocious, resentful preteen. Broody high schooler desperate to get out. Sharp-edged man trying to fit himself back into a place he never belonged to begin with.

That’s the thing about being an adult standing beside your childhood race car bed. Time collapses, and instead of the version of you you’ve built from scratch, you’re all the hackneyed drafts that came before, all at once.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Those were the endings I found solace in. The ones that said, Yes, you have lost something, but maybe, someday, you’ll find something too.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“I read once that sunflowers always orient themselves to face the sun. That’s what being near Charlie Lastra is like for me. There could be a raging wildfire racing toward me from the west and I’d still be straining eastward toward his warmth.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“As he watches me, he murmurs, “I’ve just always wanted to see a shark attack up close. So much blood.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“I’ll take you home whenever you want,” he says. “But if you want to stay, and you wake up screaming, it’s okay. I’ll make sure you’re okay. And if you want to stay, and then change your mind, I don’t mind driving you back at four a.m.”

I read once that not everyone thinks in words. I was shocked, imagining these other people who don’t use language to make sense of everyone and everything, who don’t automatically organize the world into chapters, pages, sentences.

Looking into Charlie’s face, I understand it. The way a crush of feeling and feathery impressions can move through your body, bypassing your mind. How a person can know there’s something worth saying but have no concept of what exactly that is. I’m not thinking in words.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Nora Stephens,” he says, “I’ve racked my brain and this is the best I can come up with, so I really hope you like it.”
His gaze lifts, everything about it, about his face, about his posture, about him made up of sharp edges and jagged bits and shadows, all of it familiar, all of it perfect. Not for someone else, maybe, but for me.
“I move back to New York,” he says. “I get another editing job, or maybe take up agenting, or try writing again. You work your way up at Loggia, and we’re both busy all the time, and down in Sunshine Falls, Libby runs the local business she saved, and my parents spoil your nieces like the grandkids they so desperately want, and Brendan probably doesn’t get much better at fishing, but he gets to relax and even take paid vacations with your sister and their kids. And you and I—we go out to dinner.
“Wherever you want, whenever you want. We have a lot of fun being city people, and we’re happy. You let me love you as much as I know I can, for as long as I know I can, and you have it fucking all. That’s it. That’s the best I could come up with, and I really fucking hope you say—”
I kiss him then, like there isn’t someone reading one of the Bridgerton novels five feet away, like we’ve just found each other on a deserted island after months apart. My hands in his hair, my tongue catching on his teeth, his palms sliding around behind me and squeezing me to him in the most thoroughly public groping we’ve managed yet.
“I love you, Nora,” he says when we pull apart a few inches to breathe. “I think I love everything about you.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“Charlie threads his fingers through mine and lifts the back of my hand to his lips. “For what it’s worth,” he says, “I doubt I will ever like anyone else in the world as much as I like you.”

I slip my arms around his neck and climb into his lap, kissing his temples, his jaw, his mouth. Love, I think, a tremor in my hands as they move into his hair, as he kisses me.

The last-page ache.

The deep breath in after you’ve set the book aside.

When he walks me to the door sometime later, he takes my face in his hands and says, “You, Nora Stephens, will always be okay.”
― Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“... I hadn't understood that people you loved could do things you didn't love. And, still, you could keep loving them.”
― Jessica Anya Blau, Mary Jane

“In the Cone family, there was no such thing as containment. Feelings were splattered around the household with the intensity of a spraying fire house. I was terrified of what I might witness or hear tonight. But along with that terror, my fondness for the Cones only grew. To feel something was to feel alive. And to feel alive was starting to feel like love.”
― Jessica Anya Blau, Mary Jane

“It had never before occurred to me that sometimes dishes weren’t just dishes, that things could represent ideas in more powerful ways than the ideas themselves.”
― Jessica Anya Blau, Mary Jane

“Maybe a person’s standing in the community was an illusion. Like the witch in the Cone house. An imagined evil that created unnecessary rules.”
― Jessica Anya Blau, Mary Jane

“Maybe being famous like Sheba gave you so many advantages that you knew there was no point in wishing you were someone else. I spent a lot of time wondering what it would be like to be someone else.”
― Jessica Anya Blau, Mary Jane

“I think we did it right those couple of months, don't you? Great food, great music, and great fun. Don't ever let anyone tell you that fun isn't important because, damn, Mary Jane, if there's one thing I've learned in my strange life, it's that fun counts.”
― Jessica Anya Blau, Mary Jane