Battleborn Quotes

“A promise unkept will take a man's mind.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“Like all our memories, we like to take it out once in a while and lay it flat on the kitchen table, the way my wife does with her sewing patterns, where we line up the shape of our lives against that which we thought it would be by now.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“His cigarettes helped mark the passage of time, especially on days that seemed all sun and sky...The dependable dwindling of his cigarette supply reassured him that he hadn't been left out here, that eventually he would have to ride into town and things would still be there, that the world hadn't stopped whirling.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“You don't love people," he said. "You love what they do to you.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“Sometimes love is a wound that opens and closes, opens and closes, all our lives.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“The sooner that Layla understands that we are nothing but the sum of that which we endure, the better.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“He loved her as though it had never occurred to him that he could feel otherwise. She wanted to be someone who deserved a love like that.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“I love you," he said, and though she knew it was true she kept her eyes closed and said, "Don't say that." She did not want to allow that love could be so fearful and meager and misshapen. He left, and she did not try to stop him. She was through trying to stop him. She had been trying to stop him since the day they met.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“Everything I can say about what it means to lose, what it means to do without, the inadequate weight of the past, you already know.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“P.S. On second thought, perhaps sometimes these things are best left by the side of the road, as it were. Sometimes a person wants a part of you that's no good. Sometimes love is a wound that opens and closes, opens and closes, all our lives.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“Jules liked that I was a local. I made her feel authentic, which is especially important to Californians.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“She was brave from wine and unseasonable sunshine and the newfound closeness of home.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“The mind is a mine. So often we revisit its winding, unsound caverns when we ought to stay out.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“They'd drink like men, like their fathers and uncles, like George fucking Washington...”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“The dog wants so bad it doesn’t know what it wants,”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn: Stories

“Like all our memories, we like to take it out once in a while and lay it flat on the kitchen table, the way my wife does with her sewing patterns, where we line up the shape of our life against that which we thought it would be by now.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn: Stories

“My God, he says, kindly. What a nightmare you must be.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“Who can say why we offer the parts of ourselves we do, and when. (“Rondine al Nido”)”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“In California gold was what God was in the rest of the country: everything, everywhere.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn

“A promise unkept will take a man’s mind. It does not matter whether the promise is made by a woman or a territory or a future foretold.”
― Claire Vaye Watkins, Battleborn: Stories