The Conditions of Will Quotes

“The nicest thing you can ever do for another human being is see them, and really see them, at that. To be understood is one of most base desires we as people have,”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“And I think to myself, wouldn't it be so lovely if we viewed ourselves through the same lens as the people who love us?”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“Silence with him is five fifteen in the morning before the sun’s up and it’s still dark but the birds are singing. He’s the heavy quilt you pull over your head when it’s too cold and too early to wake up. He’s the song no parent ever loved me enough to sing. He’s the way water runs and bubbles over stones in a stream. He’s a quiet mind.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“That God that my mom thinks she serves—he’s so much smaller than who I think the real one is. The real one—to me, he’s everywhere, in everything. And sure, maybe he speaks through the Bible. But also maybe he speaks through Narnia, and Harry Potter despite J. K. Rowling lately, and the trees, and science, and the stars, and black holes and the ocean and the way the sky looks sometimes, and you can feel it in your chest.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“But then this thought floats through my head: You survive whatever you need to, however you can.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“This is it. This is what music exists for. This is why birds sing. This is why the tide pulls and the water falls. It's why the sun rises and it's why the moon hangs all ghosty white.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“It’s a funny part of growing up, actually… Accepting that things that are better for you, healthier—they can still be painful. That the worst, most shameful day of my life to date would in turn become the most defining.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“He’s the song no parent ever loved me enough to sing.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“You want to get over someone quickly?” I stare over at him. “Feel everything. Every shred of loss, everything you’re missing now that they’re gone. On lonely nights, be lonely. When you’re sad, look it in the eye. Every single memory I had of Storm, I ruminated on them for weeks on end and it felt like I fell into a fire, and then somehow, one day, after months of pain and months of forcing myself to feel all of it, I saw a picture of him and I didn’t feel like I was going to die anymore.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“Conscious feelings are present on the surface, and you make decisions around them, but subconscious feelings exist under the surface, and they dictate your decisions too, arguably even more so, but often you only realize that in retrospect.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“You can tell yourself you don’t even really want to be wanted by people like them anyway, but it isn’t true because the same way parents are supposed to want their kids, kids have a genetic predisposition to want to be wanted by them.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“And I think he loves everyone, and he wants everyone to be okay, and I think almost everyone who is, like, earnestly seeking God—people aren’t seeking that out of ego; they’re looking for the meaning of life and they’re looking beyond themselves for it—and, I mean, I don’t know anything, except that I think God is the kind of guy who when someone dies, he’ll sit there and sift through every heartfelt thought, every drunken prayer, every desperate plea for help, every Mumford & Sons song that you’ve sung to look for a hint of a confession that you believe in him.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“But that’s not how pain works… You ignore it and it just sinks down deeper. It lodges itself in the corners of our memories, hangs off tree branches on Callawassie Drive. It hides under the pews in the back row of the church. It gets caught in a pile of sheets no one knew what to do with.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“Sam doesn't do anything, doesn't say anything-it's not his fight, he doesn't need to-but the light casts his shadow on me and I know he’s there and I'm not by myself, which is a very powerful thing to feel when you've felt by yourself most of your life.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“I take a photo in my mind, let history rewrite itself for a second. It doesn't erase it, but it scribbles over it a bit in a louder color.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“their treatment of you has nothing to do with you.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“People read the Bible wrong. It’s a diary of normal people, like us, from thousands of years ago, trying to make sense of the God they’d heard of from their ancestors. They didn’t write it for us to read it now. And I think people read it without the true social or historical context, and they bring their own instead.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“His kisses are commas.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“Our eyes catch, and there's that strange new warmth again that's so unfamiliar and so welcome, all at once. It's to not feel alone in the world, I think— the world can feel so lonely sometimes. Most of the time, I suppose.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“It was this almost otherworldly feeling, where you’re so small, but not in a way that’s degrading or upsetting, but the fact that you’re on the planet at the same time as something so big and so significant, I don’t know—it was strangely life-affirming? Like you’re not alone in the world. And I get that same feeling when I’m near Sam Penny. Other feelings too, like this buzzy electricity. And it’s there, all thick in the air, us trying to learn about the other. It feels like we’re cramming for an exam, studying like maniacs the night before a test on a subject we’ve half-listened to all year. The content isn’t unfamiliar when you read it; it’s like you’ve read it before. Sam feels like I’ve read him before, but I haven’t. He feels like the kind of memories I wish I had but don’t. He’s like déjà vu. And you know how when that happens, your brain is like, “Wait, we’ve been here before,” and you’re watching everything unfold and you’re waiting for the next thing to happen and you’re like, “I knew that,” and then the next thing happens and you’re like, “I knew that too,” and every time something happens that you’ve been waiting to happen because you feel like it’s already happened even though it hasn’t, you feel this floaty sense of delighted satisfaction—that’s what it feels like to be near Sam Penny.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“The idea that it ends—that it all ends—that everything you spend your life doing and building toward one day amounts to actually nothing the second you take your last breath.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“So maybe it's the cosmicness of it, or maybe it's the way his mouth feels against mine-like some sort of soul resuscitation, like Sam Penny is a heart-stretch put on the planet to reinstill faith back into mankind so we have something worthwhile to write the poems about.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“He tried to smother the memories of our childhood. I tried to pull them apart.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“To death and for free.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“I do try to switch it off, try to look at everything like a person who hasn’t taught herself to see the world stripped back to its sinew and bones, but sometimes it’s hard. It’s hard not to keep seeing things that are there in plain sight once you’ve taught yourself to see them.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“Sam sees the world through this peculiar and raw lens of knowing there’s bad out there. He knows it, can see it, recognizes it—he might even acknowledge it, but it doesn’t seem to affect him. He just breathes deep and constant until the good he knows is coming comes.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“It’s been about thirty seconds since I met him, and I’m enamored with him.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“Sam’s face softens. “You asking me to fall in love with you?” I smile coyly. “Maybe.” “Maybe I will.” He shrugs. And then he looks serious. “You’ll watch me?”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“You can have my—fuck—have whatever you want. Have everything.”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will

“how many people just light up because you walk into the room? One in a lifetime, two maybe?”
― Jessa Hastings, The Conditions of Will