Only If You're Lucky Quotes

“I guess that’s the thing about grief, loss: it changes everything, not just you. Colors are duller, foods are blander. The words don’t sing like they used to.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“that’s what people do, after all. Destroy the very thing they desire the most.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted, really: for someone to scoop me up and tell me what I’m supposed to be. My entire life, I’ve contorted so easily in the hands of others—my parents, Eliza—shape-shifting at any given second to be the thing that everyone else wants. So maybe that’s who I am: a chameleon that can take on the appearance of its surroundings. A master of camouflage to stay invisible and safe. I need someone to mold me like putty; give me function and form.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“We break rules when we decide the cost of getting caught doesn't outweigh the reward of doing it, right?”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“That’s the beauty of fiction, of words: when your life becomes too boring, too bland, too hard or depressing or chaotic or calm, they allow you to simply float away and inhabit another, try it on for size. With so many options so ripe for the picking, it would be a shame to only taste just one.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“That's the beauty of fiction, or words: when you life becomes too boring, too bland, too hard or depressing or chaotic or calm, they allow you to simply float away and inhabit another, try it on for size. With so many options so ripe for the picking, it would be a shame to only taste just one.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“The concept of being mutually good and evil, dark and light, tickling my subconscious like an incessant itch growing stronger, harder to ignore. What a profound notion: that neither of those things needed to cancel out the other, but instead, could simply swirl together until you became your own unique mixture of each.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“that’s what people do”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“once you bend one rule without consequence”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“You’re only young once”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“it had scared me for a while”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“I guess that’s the thing about grief”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“That’s the beauty of fiction”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“I think I hurt her because I loved her—that’s what people do, after all. Destroy the very thing they desire the most.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“The two of us talking about boys and tampons and growth spurts and braces, all those tumultuous things that present themselves during the fragile years—years so fragile they were always in danger of shattering completely if not for that one friend who helped you hold it all together.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“Deserted and dangerous and ours for the taking.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“It wasn’t the parties or the games or the drinks she craved, I know that now, but the little things that appear in the moments in between: the way it feels to have someone recognize your face, know your name. Call you over to the other side of the room like they genuinely want you there. It’s the roar of laughter when a joke lands just right or the feeling of someone’s eyes on your skin that makes you feel so achingly alive.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“guess that’s the thing about grief, loss: it changes everything, not just you. Colors are duller, foods are blander. The words don’t sing like they used to.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“One day we were strangers and the next we were friends. That’s usually how it works with girls.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“A collector, maybe. The kind of person who saves”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“A collector, maybe. The kind of person who saves ticket stubs and old receipts, applying sentimental value to inanimate objects. Like they have feelings. The idea of tossing even a single happy memory into the trash is enough to make my eyes prickle—”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“They’ll be your friends for life.” That’s what I had been hoping for. Different. But friends for life is a myth, a fable. A feel-good fairy tale we tell ourselves to avoid having to think too hard about facing the world alone. I had believed it once. I had held it tight against my chest like some kind of feral animal I’d claimed as my own before it scratched my neck and wriggled itself free, leaving me battered and bloodied and alone.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“I don't like the way he says that -- Girls -- like we're children being scolded. Some words should be ours to own, at-times-vicious yet tender terms of endearment we toss around like glitter that suddenly taste sour in the mouths of men.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“How interesting: that female instinct to duck, to hide, like prey catching sight of glowing eyes in the night. Something inherent in our very genes, our very DNA”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“It is possible to both love her and hate her; to trust her and mistrust her. To feel so radically on both sides of the coin.

It is possible to want my friend back more than anything and to also want her to stay gone for good.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“She's all the way in the front, perched on the bow like a figurehead pulling us forward.

Or maybe a siren, seductive and dangerous, her little lies fooling us all.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“And if Eliza was adrenaline, that makes Lucy something even more. Something more addicting, more dangerous.

Something I probably shouldn't be dabbling in -- but at the same time, something impossible to refuse.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“...with an entire year lost since I lost Eliza, I don't just need to be saved anymore. I need to be resuscitated.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“They were right, those women. College friends are different. We would do anything for each other. Anything.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky