I Could Live Here Forever Quotes

“There are certain memories I'd never write down or tell anyone. I know what happens when you write things down. They change shape. Some of the feeling goes away. Things on the page are never as rich as they are in your head, as they were in real life.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“When I was young I’d always known that the antidote to my loneliness would be to fall in love someday. I looked forward to love more than anything else about growing up. More than leaving home or learning to drive or doing drugs—things that other kids were excited about. I didn’t care about those things. The only thing I wanted was to be known completely by someone, to know someone completely.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“I’d always thought of quiet as synonymous with steady. Partly because that’s what I’d always been. Leah: tall, quiet, predictable. I had emotions, though. Big, torrential emotions. But that was why I read. That was why I wrote. I wasn’t one to call attention to myself in real life.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“Charlie had explained to me once what heroin felt like. He said, “Imagine you’re in pain—the most excruciating pain of your life. Your skin is on fire and your thoughts are agonizing you and any inch of light or movement makes you nauseous. And you’re scared because you don’t know when or if it’s ever going to end.” He was talking about being dope-sick, but I imagined here that he was also talking about the pain of being alive. “But you know that there’s a button somewhere, and all you have to do is press that button, and that pain will vanish. It will just disappear.” He snapped his fingers. “And you will feel warm and safe and completely protected. That button is heroin.” “Jesus,” I said. “I spend every second of every day convincing myself not to press that button, even though I know exactly where it is and how easy it would be to press it, just one more time.” “It sounds like torture,” I said. Charlie nodded. “For me, heroin is like air.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“I didn’t need to be the prettiest or the most successful or even the most talented. But I desperately wanted—needed—to be loved.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“It wasn’t that we didn’t know how to show each other love. I had no doubt that my family loved me. We didn’t know how to show each other pain. We didn’t know how to comfort one another.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“Robbie was cute, in a chubby, lumberjack kind of way. He was my height or a little shorter depending on both of our postures. And he was the only person in the world who loved me, outside of my family. But he didn’t read books or think in the same way I did. Not that I needed to be with someone exactly like me, but sometimes I would tell Robbie something about my day or a thing that I noticed, and he would just nod or shrug without asking a question or adding to the conversation. We talked. We talked all the time. But I wanted him to say something that surprised me. Or look me deep in the eye and ask: Why? And really want to know.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“They were the kind of couple you’d find on the glossy black-and-white photo that comes inside the frame before you replace it with the real, more unfortunate-looking photo of whoever you were—zits and all.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“But he was here, she told me. A song he loved would come on the radio; the sun would come out on a day it was supposed to rain; he appeared in her dreams. At first it sounded crazy to me, but then I realized I did it, too. I looked for proof of him all the time.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“But does this mean I don’t get what everyone else gets?” His face was swollen, his cheeks gleaming. “I don’t get married and I don’t have a family?”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“Charlie had explained to me once what heroin felt like. He said, “Imagine you’re in pain—the most excruciating pain of your life. Your skin is on fire and your thoughts are agonizing you and any inch of light or movement makes you nauseous. And you’re scared because you don’t know when or if it’s ever going to end.” He was talking about being dope-sick, but I imagined here that he was also talking about the pain of being alive. “But you know that there’s a button somewhere, and all you have to do is press that button, and that pain will vanish. It will just disappear.” He snapped his fingers. “And you will feel warm and safe and completely protected. That button is heroin.” “Jesus,” I said. “I spend every second of every day convincing myself not to press that button, even though I know exactly where it is and how easy it would be to press it, just one more time.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“I remember my mother as someone who was always searching for something. She seemed lost. Like she’d ended up in our house, in our family, by accident.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“When I was younger I thought the way my parents met was romantic, even though their relationship had started and ended in heartache. Being saved from sadness and saving someone from sadness—these weren’t just things I yearned for out of the blue. It was something I’d been born into. I didn’t know how to separate the feeling of love from the feeling of wanting to escape.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“You’ve been glued to your phone all night, Leah. That kind of texting isn’t normal.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“Listen, Lee. You have to adjust your expectations. That’s what my therapist told me. You have to expect literally nothing from her. Otherwise you’re always going to be disappointed.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“I watched the video, over and over and over.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“Miss, you okay back there?” Jeffrey turned around in his seat. He was a middle-age guy with thinning orange hair and pockmarked cheeks. His eyes were kind and watery.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“I never actually knew what he was doing. I was outside his world, even though he was inside of mine. Really, he was my entire world.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“I was on my own.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“I understood then that Soo Min might actually be falling for my brother. I recognized the look on her face; she was starting to imagine a future with him. It pained me, because I knew that my brother was going to disappoint her. He would hurt Soo Min, just like he’d hurt the others.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“We watched the first episode of Game of Thrones. I made him stop it every few minutes to explain what the hell was going on.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“Everyone in Wisconsin was imperfect, but nobody there was trying to pretend otherwise. It made being around them so much easier.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“And they were impressive. They were good-looking, fit, polished. They were the kind of couple you’d find on the glossy black-and-white photo that comes inside the frame before you replace it with the real, more unfortunate-looking photo of whoever you were—zits and all.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“Our lopsided family was starting to grow. Aaron met Haley. My father met Monica. Home looked the same but I didn’t recognize it anymore. It was just a group of people.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“Several weeks after my seventeenth birthday, I had sex for the first time. Robbie and I did it on an unzipped sleeping bag in his parents’ basement. Robbie was the nicest guy I knew. It hurt a little, but I didn’t care. I cried afterward, not because I was upset, but because I was relieved. He held me the entire night, and that part was better than the sex.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“Charlie had explained to me once what heroin felt like. He said, "Imagine you're in pain - the most excruciating pain of your life. Your skin is on fire and your thoughts are agonizing you and any inch of light or movement makes you nauseous. And you're scared because you don't know when or if it's ever going to end." He was talking about being dope-sick, but I imagined here he was also talking about the pain of being alive. "But you know that there's a button somewhere, and all you have to do is press that button, and that pain will vanish. It will just disappear." He snapped his fingers. "And you will feel warm and safe and completely protected. That button is heroine."
"Jesus," I said.
"I spend every second of every day convincing myself not to press that button, even though I know exactly where it is and how easy it would be to press it, just one more time.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever

“Losing her has never stopped. While her disappearance happened fast, overnight - it's been a slow, endless transformation of our lives.”
― Hanna Halperin, I Could Live Here Forever