The Book of Broken Hearts Quotes

“Don't settle, okay? Not for anything. I mean it. You only get this one chance at life, far as I know. Take it. Even if its not with me.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“That was the thing about pictures. No matter how beautiful, they couldn't capture the truly felt parts of a moment.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“Sometimes, a sigh was all the fight you had left.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“There was no going back to the way things were, because all you ever got was the way things are.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“For all its ridiculous imperfections, life is pretty damn perfect sometimes.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“You ask me why I’m nice to you,” he said. “Why, why, why. But you don’t ask me stuff that matters. Who I am or where I been. What I see when I look at you. What I want.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“I was falling in love.
I am losing my father.
With Emilio Vargas.
To smoke and shadow.
My heart fluttered.
My heart aches.
To feel it.
To deny it.
Life.
Death.
Possibilities.
Endings”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“I gave him my own sexy raised eyebrow, because unlike Emilio, I knew how to do that shit correct.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“But I knew he wouldn't kiss me. Not tonight. Not like this. There was too much between us now, all the words and near misses. All the potential, the alternate futures that would stretch out before us in an unending spiral, all built on what happened in this moment. I held his fiery gaze and remembered the five-oh, the half-and-half, the promises I'd whispered to myself in the dawn light.

I might lose all my memories one day, but that wouldn't keep me from making them.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, watched it settle against Emilio's lips. He shivered and whispered my name, and in that moment I knew the whole truth. I was falling in love.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“There was no going back to the way things were, because all you ever got was the way things are. One moment. Then another. What you did with that moment was up to you. No regrets.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“My sisters were wrong to name the Varga boys in the oath. Names had nothing to do with it. All boys were destined to break your heart.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“No regrets, princesa.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“Are you for real?' I whispered against his lips. 'Yes or no.'
'You're killing me, princesa.' His words slid into my mouth as our bodies pressed together.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“Emilio smiled, and it was like, stubble, dimples, scar. Damn.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“I'll be thinking of you. Always.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“They say you can never step into the same river twice. And maybe that's how it was for Papi now, memories shifting and re-forming soundlessly beneath him while the rest of us sat on the shore and watched.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“As we rolled down the Million Dollar Highway, I closed my eyes and held him close around the waist, and he squeezed my hand like it was forever, like we'd really found a way to stop time, and I wanted so, so badly to believe it.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“We only had this one life. We could wish for the past all day long. We could look at old pictures and tell ourselves the same old stories but they're just that—stories. Memories. They happened. And maybe they were wonderful and amazing, and maybe they changed our lives in ways we'd never be changed again, but they no longer existed. By the time we stopped to reflect on one moment, it was gone, and another was instantly upon us, also destined to pass.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“I grabbed my tackle box and bole and caught up with Pancake to go scare away some fish. He was really good at it- stuck his snout in the water like he could sniff them out, and then he'd come up sneezing and shaking like, Blasted! Dog's can't breathe underwater- how could I forget? We don't have gills and we can't... Hey, what's this? Water? Oh boy oh boy I wonder if I can sniff out fish?”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“Your heart's pounding like mad,' he whispered. Fingers brushed my collarbone, tapped gently. 'Ba-bom. Ba-bom.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“Through pictures, we cut reality in pieces. We selected only the choicest moments, discarding the rest as if they'd never happened.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“Family tragedies had a way of smashing everything apart and then gluing it all back together. The problem was no one ever knew how long the glue would hold.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“Emilio and his brothers had been a topic of more Jude-and-Zoe middle school gabfests than the Cullens, the Lightwoods, or any of the other mysterious yet fictional bad boys we dreamed about back then, and she'd freak if she knew he'd resurfaced.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“The sun rises over the Grand Canyon, igniting rocks that have been there for two billion years before we were born and will likely remain two billion years after we're gone. My heart aches with the cruel and unimaginable beauty of it. We are nothing. We are everything.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“He’s a dumb ass,” Emilio said to me. “I’m almost finished.”
The second he was out of earshot, Marcus sauntered back up to the bench with stiff, rehearsed swag. Definitely a mirror practicer, that one.
“Why you messin’ with Emilio? What’s up with you and me?” He wiped his hand on his black tank top and held it out, presumably for me to take, at which point we’d presumably climb aboard his moped and ride off into the sunset. Before I could shatter his dreams, Samuel smacked his hand away.
“Keep it movin’,” Samuel said. He nudged him back toward the bikes, but the guy was unfazed.
“She likes me.”
“She thinks you stupid,” Samuel said. “And she right.” Marcus cocked an eyebrow and licked his lips, more dazzling mirror work, and leaned in for another proposition. “When you’re ready to graduate from a boy to a man, you call me.”
“How about I call when you’re ready to graduate from a boy to a man?”
The other guys howled, and just when I decided this game might be kind of fun, Emilio was at the bench, tugging a shirt over his head. “Vamos, princesa.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“I'd send them both letters wishing them safe travels. Maybe they'd send me a postcard. Maybe they'd call when they got back, or when they settled in at college. Maybe they wouldn't, and they'd end up in the book. It was uncertain, like life.

I was starting to be okay with that.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“The bike would be finished this
summer and Papi would be fine, and Janice and all the
other concerned medical professionals could take their
long-term care facility and shove it, while the rest of us
ate empanadas and laughed about that one summer Papi
almost lost his mind.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“It seemed everything that had ever lived and died in this world had passed through here, had left its indelible imprint.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts

“No matter how long you waited, no matter how hard you wished, no matter how much you missed the past, time marched forward.”
― Sarah Ockler, The Book of Broken Hearts