Beach Read Quotes
"Life is pretty much a series of good and bad moments right up until the moment you die. Which is arguably a bad one. Love doesn’t change that."
"It’s better to be realistic so shit’s not constantly blowing up in your face. And love is way more likely to blow up in your face than to bring eternal happiness."
"If you swapped out all my Jessicas for Johns, do you know what you’d get? Fiction. Just fiction. Ready and willing to be read by anyone."
"It’s the happy endings. It’s not that I don’t take romance seriously as a genre. And I like reading about women. But I have a hard time with happy endings."
"You have a thing about shoes, from the very cheap and tacky to the very expensive and dramatic."
"You just revealed you know the title of my book. Who knows what other secrets are on the verge of spilling out of you?"
"I missed feeling that deep curiosity about people, that spark of excitement when you realized you had something in common."
"It’s like sixty-five degrees out. You’re literally shivering. Maybe I’m trembling with the anticipation of an exhilarating walk home."
"Entering a relationship is borderline sadomasochistic. Especially when you can get everything you would from a romantic relationship from a friendship, without destroying anyone’s life when it inevitably ends."
"You need a policy. It doesn’t turn into more if it only happens once."
"Coldly horny? No, Gus Everett had been all hot breath and sparking touches."
"It’s always harder to write when you have to. It’s like … the pressure turns it into a job, like anything else, and you might as well be selling insurance. The story suddenly loses any urgency to be told."
"Happy endings don’t matter if the getting there sucks."
"The loser will promote the winner’s book, write an endorsement for the cover, recommend it in interviews, choose it when guest judging for book clubs, and all that, guaranteeing sales."
"The first time she met the love of her father’s life was at his funeral."
"You could plot all day, but it didn’t matter if you didn’t fall into the story headfirst, if the story itself didn’t spin like a cyclone, pulling you wholly into itself."
"I have no idea what my book was," I said. "And little idea what it is. I think it’s about a girl."
"I thought it was a beautiful dedication," he said. "It didn’t feel like a lie. Maybe a complicated truth, but not a lie."
"Happy endings don’t happen to everyone. There’s nothing you can do to make someone keep loving you."
"I thought it meant that the two of us added up to something bigger than we were on our own."
"Not believing in something doesn’t stop you from wanting it."
"I was married two years. Two years before my wife left me for the best man at our wedding."
"I don’t just sit through hours of conversations with you silently judging you."
"There were thousands of times I’d thought, 'He is the perfect boyfriend'. But once my dad was gone, and I was furious with him but also couldn’t stop missing him, I realized I’d never thought, 'Jacques is so perfectly my favorite person.'"
"I wanted to take it back, show him that I understood him now, that I trusted him."
"Gus laughed. 'Shadi,' he said ruefully. 'I remember Shadi.'"
"It's strictly need to know,' he said. 'The last thing I told her must've been that we got caught making out at a drive-in theater.'"
"You’re the one who said I could ask anything,' I shot back. 'What do you say?'"
"When we finally stood to go to bed that night, Gus didn’t say good night. He said, 'Tomorrow.' And that became our nightly ritual."
"I think that’s essentially what drugs are,' Gus said."
"I had no thoughts of caution or wisdom. I had thoughts of him on top of me, under me, behind me."
"I had begun to cry without giving myself permission to."
"Gus’s hand moved softly through my hair, turning slow circles against the back of my neck."
"He gave one nod, confirming. 'And what do you say?'"
"I wanted to tell him another true story, instead of a beautiful lie."
"I’ll try,' I said. 'But that’s going to be extremely hard, what with how often rocks come up in everyday conversation.'"
"I thought about Jacques and our determination to have a beautiful life."
"I shifted forward, leaning my elbows on my knees."
"Maybe not,' Gus said. 'But there’s still a difference between people like me and people like you, January.'"
"I don’t need you to tell me you care about me,' I said finally."
"We stayed there, letting nothing happen all around us."
"I texted her back. See you then, babe. Keep me posted on the hauntings of your heart."
"I fought a smile. 'Are you praying to me, Gus?'"
"I couldn’t leave Gus here alone. If he was descending into the darkness, I was going to tie a rope between our waists and go down with him."
"This is why bad things happen. This is how it all makes sense."
"If you focus on January, you won’t go too far off course."
"Sometimes life is very hard. Sometimes it demands so much of you that you start losing pieces of yourself as you stretch out to give what the world wants to take."
"I’m looking at you now, January, as I’m writing this, and I can barely get the words onto the page."
"You have made me a new person: January’s father. And I know this is who I will be for the rest of my life."
"I am in shock, January. I didn’t know I could be this person. I didn’t know I could feel all this."
"I want to be your perfect fucking Fabio, January, but I can’t."
"I’m trying to be brave. Sometimes I worry the truth can’t be worth the pain it causes."
"I am still standing. Well, not quite. I was leaning, letting him take the bulk of my weight. But I was alive."
"You shouldn’t be married to an asshole, I guess. Probably no one should, except maybe other assholes."
"I’ve never met someone who is so perfectly my favorite person."
"I want to be the one who gives you what you deserve."
"I could live with that. I could learn to live with that."
"Sometimes, it was your body. Your cells turning into poison and fighting against you."
"I don’t care how the story ends as long as I spend it with you."
"My Happily Ever After was a strand of strung-together happy-for-nows."