The Pairing Quotes

“Love took root in me before I learned its name, and I've sat in its shade for so long now without eating its fruit. This feels as if I've finally taken a piece into my hands and split it open. It's so sweet inside.

Sour too, slightly underripe — but so, so sweet.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“If I can give my whole heart to love without fearing the cost, I will regret nothing.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“As far as I know, there are two ways to get over someone: Surrender to the anger that’s already there, or invent something to get angry about. Sometimes it was always wrong, and the only thing to do is stop believing it was ever good to love them. But sometimes they were good to you. Sometimes you go looking for kindling and find that green leaves won’t burn, that the garden was watered too well. Sometimes you have to rearrange the truth into something you won’t miss.

And sometimes, when enough time goes by, it gets hard to remember which one you did.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“He was the first great thing I ever let myself want. This time, I’m keeping him.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Sometimes I think the only way to keep something forever is to lose it and let it haunt you.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Here, now, under a shower of sparks, he looks like just the person who would have missed me, the one who wouldn’t have left.

The truth is, I never stopped loving that person. I only stopped believing he existed.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“So crazy how two thousand years ago, they were feeling the same things we feel. They wanted to be loved, and eat good food, and make art, and fuck.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“A love that’s ended is the only kind I can have, because I can’t possibly lose it.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Sometimes, a perfect sandwich is not just about the sandwich itself, but about the setting. The experience of eating the sandwich. Context can elevate a great sandwich to a spiritual experience.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“To me, Theo is the eternal foreground. I put them at the center of every room. It's gratifying when the room agrees.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“This is what I get for assuming all women in safari hats can be trusted.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“The truth is, I never stopped loving that person. I only stopped believing he existed.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Kit!”

Theo charges out into the street, hair wild and amber in the windy dusk.

Her boots pound against the stones, and my first thought is, good. Theo should always walk with heavy footsteps. She should leave deep tracks wherever she goes so that everyone can know she was there, like a historical event. Archaeologists should put tape around her footprints and study them with brushes.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“I learned in Venice that most of Italy’s famous sweets originated in monastery kitchens, crafted by monks and nuns with no indulgences but sugar and flour.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“There’s something so admirable about his directness. I like you. Stay in my life. It’s perfectly simple, when he says it like that.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“It was not for me to protect her from my heart. It was only for me to let her see it and decide if she will keep it.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Living with Kit was like living in a pixie nest. Every night, I’d find my phone charger relocated to my nightstand and my water bottle beside it, refilled at the precise temperature I liked. Dates circled themselves on the calendar. Fresh flowers appeared whenever the old ones wilted. And no matter how carelessly I unloaded the dishwasher, when I checked the back of the utensil drawer, the measuring spoons were always there.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Is this too much mist?” Theo asks. “I feel like I’m at a Rainforest Cafe.” “No, it’s nice,” I say, watching a drop of water roll down the side of their neck. “Like being a cucumber in a grocery store.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“You know what’s funny?” she muses. “How sometimes you look at a man and it’s like, Oh, yeah, that. And then you look at a woman and it’s like, Ooh, yes, this.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“I’d had the gift of being loved to the center of my soul twice in my life, and even if both of those people were gone, the love had been there. It was still there, in the shape it had made me into.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“and I’ve swallowed so many words already. I’ve made meals of my heart.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“The fog of horny war has lifted, but I'm still in the trenches. I'm down here, dying. I've got trench foot of the heart.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“One day, the love of my life would say this explained everything about me. You can take the boy out of the fairy-tale hamlet, but you can never take the fairy-tale hamlet out of him.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Some people dye their hair when they go through a breakup. I got a bus.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Maman loved Theo like a fourth child, and Theo loved her like a second mother. Outside of Ollie and Cora, there’s nobody on earth who knows the exact shape and flavor and weight of losing her. That was one of the sharpest pains of losing Theo: losing this vestigial piece of my mother too, the deposit of her love in Theo’s heart. It’s been nice to talk about her without explaining anything.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Out here the sun hangs as wonderfully fat in the sky as it did in Florence, but it doesn’t scorch. It soaks into the hills like oil into thick, well-risen bread, and we spread ourselves across them like happy little figs.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“Those men are terminally straight."

"Nobody’s straight on a European vacation.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“I look on quietly as a breeze stirs her dress around her, surrounded by cosmos and zinnias, dahlias and roses. She sees me and smiles, waving with a gloved hand.

She really does remind me of my mother.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“She says you’re lovely, but she doesn’t settle for second place.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing

“I guess it’s kind of good that we broke up, so we could become these cool fucking people.”

Kit’s smile stays fixed, but something changes in his eyes.

“Yeah.”

Shit. We were doing such a good impression of old friends who’ve never seen each other naked, and now I’ve dumped our nudes on the cobblestones.”
― Casey McQuiston, The Pairing