jaz ♡ > jaz ♡'s Quotes

“But sometimes remembering isn’t for yourself, sometimes you do it just to make someone else smile.”
― Holly Jackson, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

“That night, before bed, he goes first to Willem's side of the closet, which he has still not emptied. Here are Willem's shirts on their hangers, and his sweaters on their shelves, and his shoes lined up beneath. He takes down the shirt he needs, a burgundy plaid woven through with threads of yellow, which Willem used to wear around the house in the springtime, and shrugs it on over his head. But instead of putting his arms through its sleeves, he ties the sleeves in front of him, which makes the shirt look like a straitjacket, but which he can pretend—if he concentrates—are Willem's arms in an embrace around him. He climbs into bed. This ritual embarrasses and shames him, but he only does it when he really needs it, and tonight he really needs it.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“But mostly, I missed watching you two together; I missed watching you watch him, and him watch you; I missed how thoughtful you were with each other, missed how thoughtlessly, sincerely affectionate you were with him; missed watching you listen to each other, the way you both did so intently.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Are you happy? he once asked Jude (they must have been drunk).

I don't think happiness is for me, Jude had said at last, as if Willem had been offering him a dish he didn't want to eat.

But it's for you, Willem.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“He will be someone who is defined, first and always, by what he is missing.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“We are so old, we have become young again.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“It's a good story,' he said. He even grinned at me. 'I'll tell you.'

'Please,' I said.

And then he did.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“My phone rang, and although it wasn't a sinister time of night, and although nothing had happened that I would later see as foreshadowing, I knew, I knew.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“The question is which one of us is the frog and which is the toad,' Willem had said after they'd first seen the show, in JB's studio, and read the kindhearted books to each other late that night, laughing helplessly as they did.

He'd smiled; they had been lying in bed. 'Obviously, I'm the toad,' he said.

'No,' Willem said, 'I think you're the frog; your eyes are the same color as his skin.'

Willem sounded so serious that he grinned. 'That's your evidence?' he asked. 'And so what do you have in common with the toad?'

'I think I actually have a jacket like the one he has,' Willem said, and they began laughing again.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I feel most bad most often for JB, deprived of you all, left to live the
beginnings of old age by himself, with new friends, certainly, but without
most of his friends who had known him since he was a child.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life