The Paper Palace Quotes

“Does letting go mean losing everything you have, or does it mean gaining everything you never had?”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“But it’s what we do, what we’ve done for years now. We drag our past behind us like a weight, still shackled, but far enough back that we never have to see, never have to openly acknowledge who we once were.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Flip a coin, Eleanor. If the answer you get disappoints you, do the opposite."
We already know the right answer, even when we think we don´t.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Nice is the enemy of interesting.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“There are some swims you do regret, Eleanor. The problem is, you never know until you take them.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Every single time I see the ocean, even if I’ve been there in the morning, it feels like a new miracle—its power, its blueness always just as overwhelming. Like falling in love.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“There is no such thing as unforgiveable between people who love each other. But even as I'm thinking it, I know it's not really true.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“I wonder if he would love me if he could see inside my head, the pettiness, the dirty linen of my thoughts, the terrible things that I have done.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“If I could fly backward, I would," I said. To the safety of branches, to the time when my heart raced for him like a hummingbird's, 1,200 beats per second. And he said, as he always did, "I know.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Knowledge can be power, but it can also be poison.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Ever since I was old enough to question my own instincts, my mother has given me the same piece of advice: “Flip a coin, Eleanor. If the answer you get disappoints you, do the opposite.” We already know the right answer, even when we don’t—or we think we don’t. But what if it’s a trick coin? What if both sides are the same? If both are right, then both are wrong.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“High above the tallest dune, a star appears in the sky, faint at first, then gaining strength until it becomes a brilliant jewel. And yet I know it is death I am seeing. The flickering out. The silent gasp. The sputtering beauty. A desperate flame—massive, transcendent—fighting for its last breath.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“The waiting begins early, I think. The lies begin early. But so do dreams and hopes and stories.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“But this time when I pull away from him, it is agonizing. Not found, but lost. I pause, stand on the precipice of memory, wanting so desperately to fall into it, knowing I can't. Jonas is animal, Peter is mineral. And I need a rock.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“...now there is no turning back. No more regrets for what I haven't done. Now only regrets for what I have done. I love him, I hate myself; I love myself, I hate him. This is the end of a long story.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“I could look at him and nothing else for eternity and be happy. I could listen to him, my eyes closed, feel his breath and his words wash over me, time and time and time again. It is all I want.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Brits always insist on acting as if weather doesn’t exist. It starts pouring rain and they just turn their collars up.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“At the crest of the hill two stallions backs black against a nectar wash graze on the green-tang clover, acorns to sniff out. We lie together beneath the flowering hawthorn, your white collar unbuttoned. Once, I heard the sound of wind under water, breathed in the sea and survived.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“I hold my book up to my face, sniff the pages. I love the way library books smell: more important than regular books, a grand olden-days smell, like the steps of a marble palace, or a senator.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Every single time I see the ocean, even if I've been there in the morning, it feels like a new miracle--its power, its. blueness always just. as overwhelming. Like falling in love.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“I love Gina. But I carry you in my bloodstream. This isn't a choice."

"Of course it's a choice."

"No, it's what I have to do.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Flip a coin, Eleanor. If the answer you get disappoints you, do the opposite.” We already know the right answer, even when we don’t—or we think we don’t.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Elle . . .” Jonas calls out as I head down the steps into the subway. I stop, but this time I don’t turn around. “Peter isn’t the ring guy,” he says. “I’m the ring guy.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“He would never know. But I would. Knowledge can be power, but it can also be poison.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Andrea waves the smoke away from her face every time Martha exhales, but Martha ignores her and, if anything, seems to exhale more directly into Andrea’s face each time. I have always enjoyed Martha.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“It hasn't even been twenty-four hours and already, when I'm not with him, I'm marking time until I am--as if my own life has ceased to exist and is only the time in between him and him. It angers me, this endless jangling. I picture my stomach cavity filled to the brim with little pieces of bitten fingernails. A lifetime's worth of pain that never got digested. When they cut me open, that's what they will find. Strange deposits, sharp and brittle.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Sitting around a beach bonfire at night, grown-ups and children ate sand-crunchy hamburgers covered in ketchup and relish, set up on driftwood tables. Our parents drank gin from jelly jars and disappeared into the darkness beyond the fire’s glow to kiss their lovers in the tall beach grass.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Kisses me with the intensity of every day, every month, every year we have loved each other. It is not our first kiss. That was long ago, underwater, when we were children—when we said goodbye for the first time, knowing it would not be the last.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“All these years I’ve thought about him, missed him, wanted to walk next to him on the quiet paths, souls twinned together. But now that he is here with me, all I see is how far apart our lives have grown.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace

“Divorce is good for children.” She stood up and began clearing away a few lingering dinner forks. “Unhappy people are always more interesting.”
― Miranda Cowley Heller, The Paper Palace