Release Quotes

“Will I spend my whole life trying to let go of you? Will there never be a time that´s free from you? I bend down and gather sticks, leaves and berries, shaping them into a wreath in the snow, imagining it glowing with candles. I write your name in the centre.
Ty.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“If I erase you from my life, what´s left inside? What parts of me remain that are mine alone?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“And you know the cruellest thing? After you´d made me love you more than any of them, you went away anyway. Or they took you away. But you know, Ty, on that final day, I was coming around to what you wanted. I might´ve even stayed with you forever, like you asked for. Does it kill you to know that? That on that day you finally took me to a town and left me at those hospital doors, I felt like an orphan for adoption. A nobody. You were covered in sand and smiling, and I left you to be arrested.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Maybe you were the best thing that ever happened to me-how would I ever know?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“You´re close now, days away. I feel you in my blood, making my pulse race. Now I can´t imagine a version of my life in which I don´t make up this trip: I´d only ever find a way to return. And why shouldn´t I let you in properly after all this time?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“I guess there´s no such thing as a true vision; everything is always just a scape.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Perhaps my memory of your arid home-of you, even- is also like a painting: a constructed landscape, a vision, but not the real thing. My vision.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“But why do I care about him? He doesn´t see me like you did; he doesn´t care about me. But he is right about one thing: there is something missing.
You took it.
I want it back.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Does he want to save me, tip me back from the edge? Or is it simply that, if he can´t understand me, he can´t control me? What is it with men always needing control? He´s not in control of me, and he hated it.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“My fingers fasten around the knife again. "You should be the one thanking me."
And he should be, for allowing him to be anything like you.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“You always said that the only art worth anything was made directly from the land, about the land-was the land. You´d never paint a woman who wasn´t me onto your skin.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Because this time, you saw me waiting: you found me. And I saw you, too.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“This feeling I have... this longing... I don´t want anyone else to know, even her. Especially her. Even now, I want you all to myself.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“I look at one photograph of you leaving the courtroom, hands cuffed but eyes fierce and clear. Your hair had been cut by then, slicked back. You were wearing a shirt with a loose tie. You could have been an Australian poster boy, a surfer, a stalker.
I miss you.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“You are beautiful and terrifying, and I can´t look away. Something pulls behind my ribs, a longing. But for what?
Closure?
You?
For you to be out of my head?
But if you leave, what´s left?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“...if you had only been good. But maybe you were. Is it possible the judge and the newspapers and my parents were wrong? Maybe you were the best thing that ever happened to me-how would I ever know?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Our story never fitted nicely into police terminology and courtroom procedure, and nobody ever listened hard enough to understand what any of it was really like. It took me years to see it, but as Rhiannon always tells me, I was a girl who survived something traumatic, survived your coercive control. And I did it through love.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“When I lick them, I taste yours. Your lips in the hospital when I said goodbye. Salty. Earthy. Dirty. I kissed you then, remember-my choice, not yours. And they told me it was all Stockholm Syndrome. A ´psychological alliance´. A way to survive. Are you amused to know that I objected to that term then, just as I object to it now?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“When I like them, I taste yours. Your lips in the hospital when I said goodbye. Salty. Earthy. Dirty. I kissed you then, remember-my choice,not yours. And they told me it was all Stockholm Syndrome. A ´psychological alliance´. A way to survive. Are you amused to know that I objected to that term then, just as I object to it now?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“You are in me, still. I cough, and pain flares in my throat.
Ty.
Your sweat in my sheets, your arms on my shoulders.
You and me.
Everything I can´t have.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“We love what we come to know and fear, don´t we, Ty, even when we know it's bad? Sometimes we come to love it so much, we don't see anything else. Maybe there's no other way to love.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“But before I can, your head tilts; you´re listening. Then you smile, and I follow your gaze. There she is again, our fox. You reach into your pocket and hold something out to her-food? O go out to the veranda and hear you telling her she's a good girl, with the reddest of red coats, and the most beautiful amber eyes…”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Kate," you say, trying it out again.
It's wrong in your mouth, too ordinary.
“Gem,” I say.
“Gem.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“And you release into me and sigh.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“This is all new, something we couldn't do before, not like this. “Maybe we could stay,” you tell me whispering into my neck.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“I flip through the envelopes and pause at a postcard-nothing written on it apart from my address here in the prison. The postmark is from Derby, up past Broome, far north. It can´t be you, it's not your writing.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“But isn't every story wrong for someone?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Do I forgive you for taking me all those years ago? And does it matter in the end if I do or I don´t? I´m not sure if my forgiveness is the burning question this time around. “Perhaps the real question is, would he forgive me?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“I remember more than you give me credit for.” Your mouth curls into a small smile. As you look at me, perhaps you also remember more, too-your dreams and fantasies, all you wanted from me. Do you remember the feeling of wanting something impossible, then going to get it?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Ah, what´s the fucking point anymore, Gem? If you don´t look after the things that stick around, what else you got?” This time you give me a broad smile, an acknowledgement that you´ve backed down. A change.
It's you, back.
You, almost beautiful.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release