The Last of August Quotes

“I tended to spend too much time with my favorite things, loved them too hard until I wore them down. After a while, they became more like a shorthand for who I was and less like things I actually enjoyed.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“It’s strange to grieve for your former self, and still I think it’s something that any girl understands. I’ve shed so many skins, I hardly know what I am now—muscle, maybe, or just memory. Perhaps just the will to keep going.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“There’s not a lot you can control, you know. Where you’re born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it’s important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity.” She smiled, ducking her head. “So I blow things up.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“I’m a teenage girl. He is my boy best friend. We would be everything to each other until we couldn’t.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“That’ll be written on a few tombstones before this is over,”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“She smiled at me, that one particular smile I hardly ever saw, the one that could open padlocks, Yale locks, bank vaults, the one that was a trapdoor down into everything.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“She looked like a whisper made real.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“Maybe this is what happened when you built a friendship on a foundation of mutual disaster. It collapsed the second things righted themselves, left you desperate for the next earthquake.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“I imagine she'd do anything to keep you alive. But giving her your heart is like handing a glass figurine to a child. She'll flip it over, peer through it like a lends. Shake it to see if it makes a sound. In the end, it will slip her hands and shatter. In the end, it's your fault. You were the one who gave it to her.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“You know, I told Dad not to tell you about that whole near-death thing. I said that you'd overreact, and I was right."
There was a long pause, and then the shouting got somewhat louder.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“Jamie Watson," he said. "Do you know, you look just like your father when I met him. Which is making all of this quite a bit stranger for me, so could you please get out of the bed you're sharing with my niece?"
I scrambled to my feet. "We're not - I'm not - it's very nice to meet you." Behind me, Holmes was snickering, and I rounded on her. "Come on, really? Some backup would be nice."
"So you want me to give him the details, then?"
"Do you want me to give you a shovel so you can keep on digging me this hole?"
"Please," she shot back. "I'd rather watch. You're doing such a nice job of it, after all.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“someone you knew so well you could imagine them beside you, even when they were across an ocean, living out another life.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“There are many ways of taking responsibility. We don’t always have to pay for our sins with our blood, or by sacrificing our futures.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“There's not a lot you can control, you know. Where you're born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it's important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity." She smiled, ducking her head "So I blow things up."
"Did you hear that? You almost said something profound. You came so close .”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“With the air of long practice, Holmes waited until Milo raised his mug to his lips, and then reached up to whack his elbow. Coffee splattered down his front. She smiled her black-cat smile.
"When we're finished here, I'll fetch you a bleach pen and a new shirt," Peterson said to a sputtering Milo.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“There needs to be a German compound word for feeling both guilty and enraged.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“He is a boy and he is in love with me, but only because the world bores him. His world is boring because it loves him, you see.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“As for Holmes, she disappeared into her magician's trunk and swallowed the key. There would be no prying her out, not until the big reveal.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“I hate you," Watson said to me, empathetically. "What is it with you and closets?"
"They're often quite clean. And if they aren't one can usually find cleaning supplies in them."
"Holmes-"
"Actually, I booked us a room in an Art Deco hotel," I said, and moments later our car pulled into its circle drive. I'd always prided myself on my timing.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“Before we'd arrived, I'd asked my brother to stock our room with paperback classics and murder mysteries - Jamie Watson's poison, if you'll excuse the expression - and I hope that he'll be engrossed enough in Slaughterhouse 5 to not notice that, from time to time, I would slip out to do some work on my own. The fact that Milo ordered those books in German is an unfunny joke and hardly my fault.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“I took her to my favorite bookstore, where I loaded her up with Ian Rankin novels and she bullied me into buying a book on European snails. I took her to the chip shop on the corner, where she distracted me by giving a detailed-and-probably-bullshit account of her brother's sex life (drones, cameras, his rooftop pool) while she ate all my fried fish and left her own plate untouched. I took her for a walk along the Thames, where I showed her how to skip a stone and she nearly punctured a hole in a passing pontoon boat. We went to my favorite curry place. Twice. In one day. She'd gotten this look on her face when she took her first bite of their pakora, this blissful lids-lowered look, and two hours later I decided that it made up for the embarrassment I felt that night, when I found her instructing my sister, Shelby on the best way to bleach out bloodstains, using the curry dribble on my shirt as a test case.
In short, it was both the best three days I'd ever had, my mother notwithstanding, and a fairly standard week with Charlotte Holmes.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“Do you need the access code? I can text him for it. He changes it remotely every two days."
"The code to his childhood bedroom. He changes it. From Berlin."
"Well, he's the head of a mercenary company." She reached for her phone. "Can't have anyone finding Mr. Wiggles. Plush bunnies need the same protection as state secrets, you know.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“Charlotte. There's a girl on the roof. She says her name is Lena... She says she brought the helicopter you wanted? - August”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“It’s wrong if I don’t like the idea that there are a demanded set of responses and that I’ll be judged on how well I can provide them?”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“It was incredible the lengths people would go to to feel like they were in the know.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“Is it pathetic to say that I have art in my blood? I do. I am an artist. My medium is unseen, but I am one all the same.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“Some people don’t like to read. Or they don’t like sport. They don’t like the routine of it, or the slow pace, or the fast pace, or the noise. Whether it seems too intellectual or too base. But I’m an anomaly if I don’t like parties or restaurants? It’s wrong if I don’t like the idea that there are a demanded set of responses and that I’ll be judged on how well I can provide them?”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“There’s not a lot you can control, you know. Where you’re born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it’s important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“The simplest explanation is the truest. Always.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August

“Thinking you know everything is dangerous.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, The Last of August