The Getaway List Quotes

“This is going to sound so cheesy," says Tom. "But that makes me so happy. The idea that we know all the same stars. That we'll always have that in common even when we're far away."
It doesn't sound cheesy. It sounds heartbreaking. Fuck stars I want to tell him. Every single one of them. I'd rather have you.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“You don’t need stars, Riley. You are one. You have your own gravity and I cannot fucking wait to see what you do with it.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“The longer I'm in New York, the more I get the impression that it isn't the shiny new universe I expected it to be. It's just the home of 100,000 little universes... that all exist rubbing up against each other, sometimes never touching.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“I know exactly what you mean. It’s like when all your decisions get made for you like that, you’re just sort of—set up to fail, trying to get out from under it. Like you’re either going to disappoint them or yourself.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“There isn’t a single shooting star in the sky tonight, and I’m glad for it. I don’t need to ask for wishes now; I have choices all my own. Ones that will always be built on love, on hope, and on infinite, daunting, beautiful realms of possibility.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“It’s right here next to Tom, in the warmth of his hand in mine. It’s anywhere I want it to be. It’s in the family I know, and the ones that I found, and ones I don’t even know yet. It’s in the power to choose, one that I love testing the boundaries of every day.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“The longer we sit in that feeling the more I recognize it. The unknown becoming known. A strange place becoming home.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“I’m learning that’s a lot of what love is—stepping aside for the sake of each other’s futures.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“Maybe I'm lonely, but I'm not alone in this. In feeling like there are things that you want to say to the people you love, but aren't ready to say them, or don't fully know how.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“I love you," I say. "And I'm not telling you that so you'll change your mind. I'm telling you that so you never doubt it no matter how far you go. I'm telling you that because you are someone so easy to love that it kills me to think you've ever been made to think you're not. And I'm telling you that because I'm too selfish to keep it to myself.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“We haven’t even touched yet and I feel electric, that same current we’ve had since we were eight that’s taken on new rhythms with time. One we’ll always know the shape of as uniquely ours no matter how it changes over the years.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“The longer I’m in New York the more I get the impression that it isn’t the shiny new universe I expected it to be—it’s just the home of a hundred thousand little universes like this one that all exist rubbing up against each other, sometimes never touching, sometimes spilling to make something new.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“I came to New York for a lot of reasons—to start over. To make my own choices. To figure out what kind of person I wanted to be. But every one of those reasons was buoyed by the idea of coming here to find my old self before I could be someone new. A self I could only find in Tom, who knew me as I was then, who still held that version of me in his heart like she never left.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“The words have a soul-deep warmth to them, the kind that settles over me like a blanket after coming in from the cold. There’s that same flutter just under my ribs that I’ve been feeling all summer, the one I tried so desperately to ignore, and for the first time I let myself feel it. Let it spread through my body, a quiet, rippling, certain thing.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“I couldn’t understand it. I think I do now, but back then it broke my heart, too. Because I loved you even then, I think. Before I knew what it meant, I knew what it was going to be.” He pulls in a breath so steady that it feels like I’m breathing it with him, then says, “If we’re going to lay it all out tonight, you should know, Riley. I’ve been in love with you for a long time. Since before I left for New York.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“I love you,” I say. “And I’m not telling you that so you’ll change your mind. I’m telling you that so you never doubt it no matter how far you go. I’m telling you that because you are someone so easy to love that it kills me to think you’ve ever been made to think you’re not. And I’m telling you that because I’m too selfish to keep it to myself.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“It should be a familiar feeling by now, watching Tom leave me behind, but it isn’t. This is the first time Tom’s ever left by choice. This is the first time it feels like he’s taking a piece of me with him.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“Tom made friends wherever he went and he didn’t seem too picky about them. I held myself as perhaps the highest example of this. After two years I was still confused about what made him care enough to wait me out so long in the first place.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“We pull apart and we’re both breathless, both flushed and disbelieving but somehow not surprised at all. For once we’re not reading the story—we are the story. Like this was written in the pages all along, and was”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“In the end it isn’t me who leans in, but both of us. It’s different from last time, when it felt like we had something to prove. From the moment our lips touch, the noise of the whole summer goes to static—this is something that is immediately and unmistakably ours. It’s in the hitch of surprise in my throat at the honey-warm taste of him, the way I’m shaking with the satisfaction of it before it’s even fully begun. The way we’re reaching, stunned with the impact of each other, pulling each other in with rushed, needy hands and arms that only have one objective, which is to somehow, impossibly, be even closer than we already are.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“There are a thousand reasons not to lean in and cross the distance between us right now, but one reason is louder than all of them: I want to kiss him. I want it so badly that it feels in this moment like the only thing I’ve ever wanted, like it’s such a natural impulse that it would go against the laws of nature not to.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“I’m not sure what’s more concerning, the words coming out of Tom’s mouth or the casual way he says them. Like he’s come to terms with them in such a permanent way that they don’t have nearly the effect they should.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“It’s there, standing over the shelves of all these published books that used to be nothing more but ideas floating around in authors’ heads, that I know how I want to use the notebook I was sent. I’ve been so hesitant to write in it, worried I wouldn’t be doing justice to the pages that felt so much more permanent than a Google Docs tab. It feels almost like stage fright, as if the notebook itself would be watching me, making sure I was writing something worthy of it.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“The faint stars are fully blotted out by clouds by the time I finally shut my eyes, but I like the idea of wishing on planes better. Knowing that half the ones overhead might be leaving this city, but they’ll eventually come back again.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“This is going to sound so cheesy,” says Tom. “But that makes me so happy. The idea that we know all the same stars. That we’ll always have that in common even when we’re far away.” It doesn’t sound cheesy. It sounds heartbreaking. Fuck stars, I want to tell him. Every single one of them. I’d rather have you.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“This is going to sound so cheesy,” says Tom. “But that makes me so happy. The idea that we know all the same stars. That we’ll always have that in common even when we’re far away.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“Our lights have been dimming all these years we spent caught in other people’s forces.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“You know what the real issue is?” Tom tells me. “You have too much potential. You’re curious about everything and have a knack for a lot of it. It’s why you survived all those ridiculous clubs your mom put you in and why you’re confused about what comes next. But I’m not worried. No matter where you are, your energy is infectious. Not a single person can feel it and not want to be a part of it. The problem isn’t what you’re going to do in this life, because it’s going to be amazing. There’s just the challenge of you deciding what’s going to make you happiest, because you’ve got way too much to choose from.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“There’s a deeper comfort in it all that I can’t fully process until I’ve stepped back out of the subway and back into the crowded, warm city night, the current of people swallowing me up with the same ease as ever. That for all my hurt over Tom, for all the heartbreak I know is just on the horizon, I feel more certain than ever that this is where I belong.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List

“I let myself cry a few tears on the subway platform. A woman hands me a tissue without breaking her stride. It’s all very New York, I think, this feeling of being lonelier and less known than ever but being in a city teeming with people who have all felt shades of the same thing. The subway train feels like a strange safe haven from my thoughts, lulling me into a calm with its newly familiar rocking and whining, with these strangers who shoot me sympathetic glances that all seem to say, Been there, publicly cried about that.”
― Emma Lord, The Getaway List