Love Story Quotes

“I love you.”

I stared stupidly at him. Was he joking again, reciting another line from my story? I didn’t remember writing this.

He leaned in and kissed me. I didn’t respond for a few seconds. My mind lagged behind what my body was feeling.

“Say it,” he whispered against my lips. “I know this is hard for you. Tell me.”

“I love you.” Hearing my own words, I gasped at the rush of emotion.

He put his hands on either side of my jaw and took my mouth with his.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“You’ve gone far away to a place with no horses and very little grass, and you’re studying how to write a story with a happy ending. If you can write that ending for yourself, maybe you can come back.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“And it's time you learnd there's a big difference between your writing and your life. To do it right, your witing takes an incredible amount of work. Your life takes more.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“You love your music."
"I did when I was trying to shut everything out. Now I'm trying to let everything in.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“My mistake was assuming that when I got to college, people would not be such assholes.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“Most people did not think dirty thoughts at a time like this. Only me.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“Shut up. I'm drunk and I'm trying to confess, so just let me do it, okay?”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“Hit him."

"Don't make her do that," Hunter told Tommy. "She'll break her hand.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“I saw myself exactly as he saw me.

And that made me angry.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“He managed to find his way into my heart again and sabotage it from the inside.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“Then he spooned hot against me, draping his arm over my waist.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“But Hunter did sneeze, and what I'd thought was his concern for me had actually been a presneeze expression.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“He fumbled with something in his breeches. She had thought the past few minutes the most intense of her life, but they were nothing compared with the alarm and ashamed delight now rushing through her veins - until she realized he was only bringing out his pocket watch.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“I saw why Hunter had looked so horrified at the idea of me staying in his house. The walls were covered in glossy posters of fast cars and movie starlets wearing thongs.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“Your love for me was a symptom that your brain hadn’t developed.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“He loves her so much that he can’t even see her.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“We’re not talking about your life. We’re talking about your writing. Your imagination. Your creativity. And it’s time you learned there’s a big difference between your writing and your life. To do it right, your writing takes an incredible amount of work. Your life takes more.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“When I'd first brought it home from the thrift store, I'd planned to keep it in the closet I shared with Summer, But Jordis asked me to hang it in full view of the room because she liked the glitter.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“Yes, I was good at reading people. I studied them so I could put them in my novels.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“But, Erin. If you are trying to make a writing career for yourself, you will get rejected again and again and again. You must keep going. You must learn not to take no for an answer.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“Hunter deepened it.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“I wish you would, because I’m not sure how long I can put up with this.”
“I’ll bet you can put up with it a little longer,” I said brightly, desperate to get out from under the heavy subject. “How much do you love college in New York?”
He grinned. “I love college in New York. I love just being in the city. I love my classes. I love the hospital. I wish I weren’t there at two in the morning because I also love sleep, but I do love the hospital. I love Manohar and Brian. In a manly love kind of way, of course.”
“Of course,” I said, the corners of my mouth stretched tight, trying not to laugh. “You get along great with everybody. Because that’s what you do.”
“Because that’s what I do,” he agreed. “Do you love college in New York?”
I sighed, a big puff of white air. “I do love college in New York. Lately I’ve been so busy with work and homework that I might as well be in Iowa, but I remember loving college in New York a month ago. I’m afraid it may be coming to a close, though.”
He leaned nearer. “Seriously.”
“If I got that internship,” I said, “I could hold on. Otherwise I’m in trouble. I wanted so badly to start my publishing career in the publishing mecca. But maybe that’s not possible for me now. I can write anywhere, I guess.” I laughed.
He didn’t laugh. “What will you do, then?”
“I might try California,” I said. “It’s almost as expensive as New York, though. And it’s tainted in my mind because my mother tried it with the worst of luck.”
Hunter’s movement toward me was so sudden that I instinctively shrank back. Then I realized he was reaching for my hand. He took it in his warm hand again, rubbing my palm with his calloused thumb. His voice was smooth like a song as he said, “I would not love college in New York if you weren’t there.”
Suddenly I was flushing hot in the freezing night. “You wouldn’t?” I whispered.
“No. When I said I love it, I listed all these things I love about it. I left you out.” He let my hand go and touched his finger to my lips. “I love you.”
I started stupidly at him. Was he joking again, reciting another line from my story? I didn’t remember writing this.
He leaned in and kissed me. I didn’t respond for a few seconds. My mind lagged behind what my body was feeling.
“Say it,” he whispered against my lips. “I know this is hard for you. Tell me.”
“I love you.” Hearing my own words, I gasped at the rush of emotion.
He put his hands on either side of my jaw and took my mouth with his.
My mind still chattered that something was wrong with this picture. My body stopped caring. I grabbed fistfuls of his sweater and pulled him closer.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“Hunter filled the opening in the privacy curtains. He wore green scrubs like the doctors and nurses who had scraped me off the pavement. For a split second I mistook him for an adorable doctor who looked a lot like Hunter. I knew it was Hunter when he gaped at me with a mixture of outrage and horror, his face pale, and demanded, “What did you do?”
“Crossed the street,” I said. “Badly.” Wincing, I eased up from the gurney, putting my weight on my hand and my good hip. Only a few minutes had passed since they had brought me in, ascertained I wasn’t dying, and dumped me here. I still felt very shaky from the shock of being hit. But I didn’t want to face Hunter lying down.
In two steps he bent over me and wrapped his arms around me. He was careful not to press on my hospital gown low against my back where the road rash was, but his touch on my shoulders radiated pain to the raw parts. I winced again.
“Oh, God. I’m sorry.” He let me go but hovered over me, placing his big hands on my shoulder blades. He was so close that the air felt hot between us. “What did you hurt?”
“This is just where I skidded across the road.” I gestured behind my back and then flinched at the sting in my skin as I moved my arm.
“How far down does it go?” My back felt cold as he lifted on flap of my paper gown and looked.
I kept my head down, my red cheeks hidden. He was peering at my back where my skin was missing. What could be sexier? Even if the circumstances had been happier, I was wearing no makeup and I was sure my hair was matted from my scarf. There was no reason for my blood to heat as if we were on a date instead of a gurney.
But my body did not listen to logic when it came to Hunter. He was no examining my wound. He was captivated by the sight of my lovely and unblemished bottom. I was a novelist. I could dream, couldn’t I?
Lightly I asked, “Are you asking whether I have gravel embedded in my ass? By the grace of God, no.”
Hunter let my gown go and stood up “The doc said the car hit your hip,” he insisted. “Is it broken?”
I rolled on my side to face him. “It really hurts,” I said. “If it were broken, I think it would hurt worse.”
He nodded. “When I broke my ribs, I couldn’t breathe.”
“That’s because your ribs punctured your lung.”
He pointed at me. “True.” Then he cocked his head to one side, blond hair falling into his eyes. “I’m surprised you remember that.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“He moved his lips to my cheek, to my ear, back to my mouth. I had never been kissed like this in my life. Each time I thought I should protest because there were so many unsettled matters between us, Hunter kissed me harder, forcing those concerns out of my mind. The cold air heated up around us.
He unsnapped the top of my jacket and slipped his hand inside. His warm palm cupped my breast beneath my shirt.
Then he straightened, blinking at me, and pulled his hand away.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Okay,” he panted. “I’m going to kick myself for this in the morning, but I don’t want to do this while I’m drunk. And I don’t want to do it behind the stable. I want everything to be perfect between you and me.” He stroked my hair away from my face. “Are you mad?”
“Mad?” I squeaked. “No. Horny? Yes. Frustrated?”
“Yes.” He set his forehead against mine.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Mad? No.”
He watched me with serious eyes. His gaze fell to my chest. He fastened the snaps he’d unfastened a few moments before, then put his hands on my shoulders. “I’m just so thankful we’re finally together.”
“Me, too,” I whispered. I felt uncomfortable saying this. I wished I had a cell phone so I could call Summer for verification that I was not making a terrible mistake. But she would yell at me and tell me to stop being stupid. I did not need her permission to fall in love.
He kissed me on the forehead, then stood, holding out his hand to me. “I’ll walk you home.”
I took his hand and swung it as we rounded the stable again, back the way we’d come. “I’ll walk you home,” I said.
With his other hand he gestured toward the top of my grandmother’s mansion, just visible over the rise. “I’m not leaving you wandering around in the night with all these drunk people and, my God, Whitfield Farrell and his fucking bowl.”
I giggled. It made me insanely happy that he was jealous of Whitfield Farrell. “You’re drunk, though. You might stumble into the road and get hit by a car.”
“They will be sorry,” he said. “I will dent their car. I am strong like an ox.”
I burst into laughter, and he laughed with me. He was so handsome in the gentle starlight, and he looked so happy. I couldn’t remember ever being this happy myself. I was still nearly broke and my grandmother hated me and I had a history paper due Monday that I hadn’t started writing, but I could handle all of this with Hunter laughing beside me. I squeezed his warm hand.
“I’ll cross back through the pasture if it makes you feel better.” Dropping my hand, he draped his arm around me and pulled me close for another kiss on the forehead. He walked me all the way down to his house, backed me against the front door, and thoroughly kissed me good night.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“We were already in school by then. Your friends had made fun of me. I was twelve. My higher brain functions weren’t fully developed. I was so in love with you.”
The cold had woven its way into the fabric of my jeans and settled like a coating of ice in the folds of my jacket. Now I warmed again, puzzling through Hunter’s words. I didn’t know whether to take him seriously. “Your love for me was a symptom that your brain hadn’t developed, or-“
“Shut up.” He turned to face me. “I am drunk and I am trying to confess, so just let me do it, okay? I had fallen in love with you over the summer. Then this horrible thing happened to you and you stopped talking t me. I thought you blamed me, or my dad. Which he deserved.”
“No,” I protested. “It was an acc-“
“I took it as a rejection.” He put his hand on my knee and looked me straight in the eyes. “It’s taken me all this time to figure that out. But I regretted it every day. And I’m truly sorry.” He sat back against the bench and faced the stars. The place where his hand had rested on my knee felt colder than ever.
“I’m sorry, too,” I said, “so we’re even. I didn’t visit you in the hospital when you got crushed by a horse. For much the same reasons regarding love and rejection and being young.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“That explains what I’m doing here.” He put his chin down on the edge of the gurney, watching me like a big friendly dog. “What are you doing here?”
He was so dreamily handsome, looking at me with concern in his eyes, and his tone was so gentle, that I almost answered him.
“You followed me,” he said.
I shifted on the gurney, trying in vain to find a more comfortable position. My hip sure did hurt.
“You wanted to know where I was going so late at night,” he said. “I’ve seen you watching me through your window.”
Note to self: when boys look back at you watching them in the darkness outside your well-lit window, but their expressions do not change, you relax, assuming they can’t really see you watching them, when they can totally see you.
There was no way around it now.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“If I'd been you and Manohar had said those things about my first story, I would have knocked his block off."
All of this was said with a jovial smile on his cherubic face.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“A few minutes passed wherein the truck hummed, country music twanged on the radio, and I read the same paragraph in my history book four times.
Then Tommy asked, “So, did you two hook up yet?”
“Tommy!” I squealed. “What a question!”
“What?” He half-turned toward me. “I’m just asking.”
“If we hadn’t hooked up,” I said, “that question would be awkward and embarrassing. And if we had hooked up, it would be-“
“-awkward and embarrassing,” Hunter said.
Tommy watched Hunter driving for a moment. Tommy’s expression was inscrutable, and I could see in the rearview mirror that Hunter’s was, too. “So you have hooked up,” Tommy concluded.
“Of course not,” I said. “Hunter met his girlfriend in the bathroom. He has a fortune-teller and a bar waitress on the side.”
“Never say I didn’t raise class.” Tommy turned all the way around to face me. “And how do you know this?”
“We live in the same dorm.”
Tommy grinned. “Uh-huh. You’re from the same town, the same farm even, you live in the same dorm, you know all about each other’s business, but you haven’t hooked up.”
When he put it that way, why hadn’t we? He made it sound as if the prerequisites or hooking up were familiarity, proximity…and he must sense the desire, at least on my end. He didn’t understand the complications, the humiliations, the hundred reasons why not that hummed underneath us like the never-ending sound of New York traffic, or the drone of the Kentucky interstate behind the autumn trees.
“It’s none of your business, Dad.” Maybe it was because I could hardly hear Hunter over the motor and the radio, but I was surprised by how embarrassed he sounded, and wistful.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“I’m not spending the whole weekend with you two sniping at each other,” Tommy said. “Erin, we’re going to solve this the way we settle things at the stable when your grandmother isn’t looking.” He nodded at Hunter. “Hit him.”
“Don’t make her do that,” Hunter told Tommy. “She’ll break her hand.”
“Ha! You think awfully well of your chiseled chin,” I said, but Tommy drowned me out, yelling, “Let her hit you or I will hit you myself.”
“This is excellent parenting.” Hunter emphasized his words with an okay sign of his thick fingers. His Rolex flashed in the sunlight before he put his hand down. “Here, Erin.” He closed his eyes and lifted his chin.
I edged toward him, balling my fist, feeling better already. “Open your eyes,” I said. “I want you to see it coming.”
“If I open my eyes, I’ll dodge you,” he said matter-of-factly, as if he was used to settling his differences this way with the other stable hands. He closed his eyes again.
I struck while I had the opportunity. Didn’t pause to think about technique or the proper position for my fist, thumb in or thumb out, just hauled back and hit him.
But in the split second before my hand connected with his face, I saw a flash of one of my family’s apartments in Los Angeles, an early one, because I glimpsed the ocean through the window across the room, and as the years went on we’d had less and less money and we’d move farther and farther from the sea. I saw my dad hitting my mom.
I redirected my fist, only grazing Hunter’s chin, and stumbled into the side of the truck. A strong arm hooked in mine and kept me from falling. Hunter drew me to him, chuckling. “Are you okay?”
I shoved him away from me, slid back into the truck, and slammed the door. He wasn’t even sorry and I couldn’t even get revenge. There was no good in this. With a final sniffle I opened my history book, wishing I hadn’t come.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story

“Everything okay?” Hunter called to me.
He sounded like a noncommittal friend asking after my health. I looked like a crazy person sitting at the table after everyone else had left, staring at “The Space Between.” I was going to sound like a crazy person no matter what I said to him next.
It had to be said. I stood with my book bag, swept up “The Space Between” without a single mark on it, and crumpled it in one fist. Rounding the table, I showed his story at his chest.
He took the wad of paper. “What’s the matter?” he asked innocently.
I thought of Sumer, Manohar, and Brian just outside the door, listening. I did not want them to hear this. But if I asked Hunter to step away from the door and close it so we could have a private conversation, I would be showing him how much I cared. I was through with that.
I moved even closer to him and met his gaze. “I’m below you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said evenly, looking me straight in the eye, obviously waiting at the door for exactly this altercation, which proved he did in fact know what I was talking about, and I had had enough.
“I’ll tell you what I’m talking about.” I touched the thumb of my opposite hand. “I wrote a story about how much I liked you. I never meant for you to read it.” I touched my pointer finger. “You wrote a story about how much you hated me.”
Hunter’s grin melted from his face. He took a breath to say something.
“No, you’re right,” I interrupted him. “Not one story. You wrote three stories like that.” I touched my third finger. “I wrote a story about my mother, hoping we could talk about it.” I touched my fourth finger. “In response, you wrote a story about looking down on me.” I touched my pinkie, really banged on it with my other finger, until I bent it backward and hurt it. “Don’t write any more stories about me, Hunter. And I won’t write any more stories about you. Deal?” I whirled toward the door.
“Wait,” he said.
Whatever. I’d reached the threshold. The light was brighter in the hallway, and Summer, talking to Manohar and Brian, looked up at me with concern in her eyes.
“Erin.” His hot hand was on my shoulder. He pulled me back into the room, against the door, out of their line of sight.
He leaned close. This must have been because he didn’t want the others to hear, but I could almost have pretend that he wanted to be near me as he growled against my cheek, “If that’s all you got from my story, that I hate you, you’re not a careful reader.”
Even though my heart raced with his closeness, I tilted my head and stared at him blankly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Two could play that game. I rolled away from him and stepped around the door frame.
He caught me and pulled me back again.
Pinned me against the door.
Crushed my lips beneath his.”
― Jennifer Echols, Love Story