If Not for My Baby Quotes

“Devoting your entire life to the pursuit of another person”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“I cannot fake—cannot *perform*—what that does to me. Our eyes are locked as the rich, final note splits from both my lips and his. I don’t even need my own mic—our faces are so close we share his, held between us. The melancholic tune pulses through us, my chest aching as I sing directly to Tom, and him to me.

The duet ends. I close my eyes. Tom tips my chin up with his thumb, stooping to bring his head toward mine, and I think for a brief, impossible moment, that he’s going to kiss me. I lean into him like warm honey over the curve of a spoon. Our noses brush, his forehead pressed to mine, our sweat mingling. If there’s a cheering audience, I can’t hear a peep.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“Whatever you want out of this life, and I’ll have it done.”
His hands circle my waist, and he’s sighing, breathing me in. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, and nowhere, I realize, that I cannot go as long as we are together. “What if all I want is you?”
“Like you once said to me...” Another kiss. Warm hands on my back...
And when he speaks again, I’m reminded how we got here. How his voice alone drew me to him like a siren’s call that terrifying day on a Greyhound bus heading for Memphis. His lyrical baritone. My home in a sound.

“I’m yours.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“Baby.” His eyes darken. “I’ll take care of you, I swear it.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“Whatever you want out of this life, and I’ll have it done.”

His hands circle my waist, and he’s sighing, breathing me in. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, and nowhere, I realize, that I cannot go as long as we are together. “What if all I want is you?”

“Like you once said to me...” Another kiss. Warm hands on my back...

And when he speaks again, I’m reminded how we got here. How his voice alone drew me to him like a siren’s call that terrifying day on a Greyhound bus heading for Memphis. His lyrical baritone. My home in a sound.

“I’m yours.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“Whatever you want out of this life, and I’ll have it done.”
His hands circle my waist, and he’s sighing, breathing me in. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, and nowhere, I realize, that I cannot go as long as we are together. “What if all I want is you?”
“Like you once said to me...” Another kiss. Warm hands on my back...
And when he speaks again, I’m reminded how we got here. How his voice alone drew me to him like a siren’s call that terrifying day on a Greyhound bus heading for Memphis. His lyrical baritone. My home in a sound.
“I’m yours.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“So what does ‘dating’ Tom Halloran look like, then?”
He smirks down at his hands, wrapped softly around the epic poem. It’s like it was shrunk in the wash, so dwarfed by his grasp. “I could show you.”
My mind stalls. Scatters and reconfigures. Sharper and blurrier all at once.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“Nothing about you is *just* anything.”

And I can see it in his eyes. That look of reverence, of worship. Of white-hot desire. He’s going to wring me out and make me beg. He’s a man who tortures himself—you can hear it in his music—he’s a glutton for punishment, for driving the edge of the knife deeper.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“I’m learning lessons in love in real time these days: when you feel about someone the way I do about Tom, there isn’t much room for shame. To be loved is to be known—the worst of you, the best of you. Maybe that was what I was hiding from all along, and now I can’t understand why.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“Loving someone doesn’t mean saying it out loud one time on a tour bus and then running for the hills. Loving someone means choosing them every day regardless of all the things that might stand in your way. Or, for some of us, the things we put there ourselves. That’s how I level these walls and stomp right over them.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“His eyes are wet. Harrowing green and bloodshot red, like a forest ravaged by wildfire. “I can’t promise you a life free of sorrow. Nobody can. But I can swear to shelter the heart of ye with all I have.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“And that’s why they call it *falling* in love, right? Because while I’d had my stupid head in the clouds, romanticizing a halo of sunlight around Thomas Patrick Halloran, I had forgotten that flying always leads to free fall—to plummeting down through reality until you’re mere rubble and wreckage.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“Nothing about you is *just* anything.” | And I can see it in his eyes. That look of reverence, of worship. Of white-hot desire. He’s going to wring me out and make me beg. He’s a man who tortures himself—you can hear it in his music—he’s a glutton for punishment, for driving the edge of the knife deeper.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“I cannot fake—cannot *perform*—what that does to me. Our eyes are locked as the rich, final note splits from both my lips and his. I don’t even need my own mic—our faces are so close we share his, held between us. The melancholic tune pulses through us, my chest aching as I sing directly to Tom, and him to me. The duet ends. I close my eyes. Tom tips my chin up with his thumb, stooping to bring his head toward mine, and I think for a brief, impossible moment, that he’s going to kiss me. I lean into him like warm honey over the curve of a spoon. Our noses brush, his forehead pressed to mine, our sweat mingling. If there’s a cheering audience, I can’t hear a peep.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“Come back here.’
I read it, and then reread it. My heart has stalled out, wheezing on its hands and knees.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“He sings of solitude and ennui, the climate apocalypse, worshipping a woman’s mind and body and the “exquisite rhapsody” of falling in love. But mostly, he sings of heartbreak. Yearning. Begging on his knees. Someone clearly trampled this man’s heart into the ground. And then threw it into a wood chipper. Repeatedly.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“With each rip of his guitar and sailing chorus from the depths of his chest, I realize more and more that Tom Halloran is the most sensual, soulful, roaringly talented musician I’ve ever borne witness to. His voice has a swaggering fullness to it—round and smooth and complex. An intimacy, though he’s playing to thousands.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby

“There’s a loneliness to that mental admission—the realization of how few people I’ve let in. I’m an island—a selfimposed one, but still—yet he’s become the constant, peaceful waves lapping at my shores.”
― Kate Golden, If Not for My Baby