Final Draft Quotes

“Interrogate your instincts. Insecurity isn’t shameful. Attraction isn’t an embarrassment. Interpersonal affection isn’t a side note to be glossed over. Whatever the nature of the material that forms between two people, it’s the backbone of literature.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“Let's short circuit in the rain. I loved you then, too.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“I promise you, two dozen words were not the difference between mediocrity and excellence. Make a habit of burning something to ash before expecting a rebirth.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“I don't want to read your walls ... I don't want to read your hang-ups. I don't want to read skeletal concepts of people who operate without the influence of a limbic system. You are not an archaeologist excavating and presenting old bones. Your work is the connective tissue. Give me some DNA, or don't bother.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“Kiss a girl once and suddenly the world seems built to support her existence.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“Still her words were quiet and halting. “So what do I do?”

Nazarenko gave her a thin, unpleasant smile. “You never ask that question again.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“Maybe Nazarenko’s guidance would puncture her, but something would grow back over the injury, not scar tissue but armor, gleaming and valuable.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“The only real thing was her phone, alive and moving in her pocket, where her friends’ reassurances built up. Every so often she looked down at it, the corner of a glowing screen peeking out of her pocket, and felt herself slipping inside that digital place they had together, where the world was made out of words and everything was safe.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“Hannah gave a feral smile and let her dark eyes bore into Laila’s. This was one of several reasons people were terrified of her: the Hannah Park stare. If it weren’t enough that Hannah was beautiful, in the same way an ice storm or a forest fire was beautiful, she also had the habit of making more unbroken, intense eye contact than was comfortable for anybody.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“She guessed she was pansexual, a word acquired from the internet, from people who seemed more confident in it than she was: Yes, she still couldn’t say, I could want anyone, any gender, any type. Any person in the universe. Past layer and layer of self-consciousness, she knew it was true. But admitting the want was excruciating. The idea that somebody could look at her and just see it made her want to cry.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“It's like okay, guys, we get it, life is futile, existing is a tragedy. Smile for once, oh my God.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“Wow. she is pretty,' Laila said. Her voice stuttered across the last word. The original thought had been, Wow she is hot, and the sentence had transformed on the way out. Laila couldn't talk about anybody like that. Not even her celebrity crushes, not even avatar of perfection Samuel Marquez. A barrier of shame as impermeable as plexiglas walled her off from everything sexual, every thought, every action, even something as small as the difference in connotation between 'pretty' and 'hot.' Hannah had teased her about this once and had stopped when Laila didn't come close to smiling. Her inexperience didn't feel charming or virtuous, like she was some good-girl persona from a movie. It felt furious and heated, humiliating and childish, as if physicality were a language she was supposed to have learned, and here she was in senior year, surrounded by a horde of native speakers, unable to translate the most basic concepts.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“Out there, danger wasn't something that erupted purposelessly in parking lots or at traffic intersections; it was peril, pure and moral and invigorating. Unifying. Out there, love bridged the space between planets, and betrayal risked the destruction of universes. Life was lived along a spectrum so vibrant it felt ultraviolet. How could the world outside the window seem anything but gray in comparison?”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft