The Game of Love and Death Quotes

“We do not choose whom we love...We can only choose how well.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“Life is a temporary condition, Henry. And it's uncertain. That's why you have to seize chances when you find them. Pursue what you want. Take risks. Live, love...all of it. Every last one of us is going to die, but if we don't live as we truly want, if we're not with the one we want to be with, we're dead already.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“To be written into story. That was how even the lost lived on.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“Why choose fear over love? In what world does that make sense?”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“Game or no, she would someday die, as all living beings did. But that wasn't the tragedy. Nor was there tragedy in being a pawn. All souls are, if not of eternal beings, then as pawns of their own bodies. The game, whatever shape it takes, lasts only as long as the body holds out. The tragedy, every time, is choosing something other than love.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“She'd known it her whole life. It was the one thing she was certain of. That someday, everyone she loved would die. Everything she loved would crumble to ruin. It was the price of life. It was the price of love. It was the only ending for every true story.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“If life didn't end... there would be no need for me to choose love in the face of death is the ultimate act of courage. I am the joy, but you are the meaning. Together, we make humanity more than it otherwise might have been.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“Someday. Just as it wasn't only something to be afraid of, it also was not something that existed only in the future. She and Henry had their someday moments. To see them all again, to hear them, to feel them without the blunting filter of fear: It was like nothing Flora could have imagined.
To die was not the worst thing that could have happened. The worst thing was that she'd almost missed the wonder of love.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“Someday starts now.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“The kiss: It felt like light rising through them. It was a memory and it was a promise, an enigma and a wonder. It was music. A conversation. A flight. A true story. And it was theirs.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“This same system could condemn injustice, but instead it chooses to condemn something as simple and fundamental as the search for the second half. We are all born wanting this. Why does it matter what shape this second half takes, provided it is the thing both sides seek?”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“We have all the time in the world.' Love found a record. He laid it on the player. The music started again, scratchy from age, but so sweet and beautiful and deep.
Someday.
And there, in the darkness, Love and Death and the ones inside of them danced until the song was done.
And then, when all around them was silent and still, they disappeared.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“There's no time to waste on regrets, Love said. There is only time to live the way you would have, had you known the stakes from the start.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“Are you thirsty?” she asked.
“Like a camel,” Henry said.
She led him to a chair by the window. Then she went to the kitchen, wishing she had something better than water to serve. She filled a glass.
“Are you hungry?” Food, she had.
“Like a camel that hasn’t eaten anything in days.”
“Ham or casserole?”
“No self-respecting camel eats casserole. It could contain a relative.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“But don’t you remember being a child?” he said. “How much simpler and clearer everything was? Sometimes I think they’re smarter than any of us when it comes to love. They don’t doubt it. Not for a second. And they don’t doubt that they’re loved in return. Something happens to us when we grow up. Misfortune tramples us. We forget how it feels to simply love without throwing the whole mess of life into the stew. We trade love for fear. I’m not willing to do that anymore.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“She sent Death a thought, one she hoped would be her final gift. The Game means something only because we lose. That is your gift to humans. So thank you.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“In my opinion, anyone who claims to speak for God is probably talking out of the wrong end, anyway.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“We do not choose whom we love, he wrote. We can only choose how well.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“People were funny about things they couldn't see. If they couldn't see it, it wasn't there. Or at the least, it didn't affect them. But the world didn't work that way, did it? There were things all around that you couldn't see, and these things had power.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“But maybe that was what it meant to grow up and have the seemingly infinite possibility of childhood vanish in an instant. You had to press on, no matter how dark and narrow the path ahead seemed.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“If the world made any sense, a new day of the week would be born, one that didn't require him to think about school, one in which he could lie on his back in the grass and look at the sky and imagine what it would be like to run away with her and do nothing but play music and eat fruit and walk down the street together for as long as they lived without feeling like the whole world would be staring and judging, or worse.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“I have known my whole life that I wanted you. You and no one else. I have loved you from the first moment I saw you."
"We were children," she said.
"But don't you remember being a child?" he said. "How much simpler and clearer everything was? Sometimes I think they're smarter than any of us when it comes to love. They don't doubt it. Not for a second. And they don't doubt that they're loved in return. Something happens when we grow up. Misfortune tramples us. We forget how it feels to simply love without throwing the whole mess of life into the stew. We trade love for fear. I'm not willing to do that anymore.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“Someday, everyone you love will die. Everything you love will crumble to ruin. This is the price of life. This is the price of love. It is the only ending for every true story.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“And this love between Henry and Fora . . . at first, it was a small, uncertain thing, like the glow of the morning sunos the horizon. And then it was its own wild animal, bucking against the world and anything that threatened it, so hot it could burn and sometimes did. And then it was quiet, as quiet as a snowfall, covering everything, certain of its place, even as it was certain it could not last forever.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“If life didn't end,' he said, 'there would be no need for me. To choose love in the face if death is the ultimate act of courage. I am the joy, but you are the meaning. Together, we make humanity more that it otherwise might have been.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“He was quite fond of the young man, surprisingly so. But he was equally conscious of the fact that Ethan stood in way of the players. It wasn't just Ethan's unspoken attraction to Henry, but also his growing interest in an alliance between Henry and Helen. Love wouldn't break the rule against interfering with the players' hearts directly. But with one close to them? Especially one so full of charm? It would be his pleasure.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“he realized that he would would let flora break his heart a million time's just so he could look at her everyday”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“Had any human eyes been on them in that moment, they would have seen what looked like a couple in love standing beneath a sky pinned in place by a fishhook moon.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“I, however, have not yet succeeded at love. Henry hardly looks at me. And to think that I've made him at least thirty-seven sandwiches.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death

“My fate is a prison. It's the only one of us who didn't need to inhabit one. I took your responsibility for those souls for you, even though their deaths are your fault. You should be forced to feel what it's like for someone to be imprisoned.”
― Martha Brockenbrough, The Game of Love and Death