Sweethearts Quotes
"Most specific things about Cameron are fuzzy — the day we met, how we got so close, exact words we said to each other. There are only moments, snapshots, pieces of the puzzle."
"You can never have the whole picture; inevitably, there’s stuff you don’t know, can’t know. But when it comes to Cameron I always want more than I have."
"Memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn’t. They’re like a song you hate but can’t ever get completely out of your head."
"I understand that you can never have the whole picture; inevitably, there’s stuff you don’t know, can’t know."
"Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn’t. They’re like a song you hate but can’t ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life."
"I remember that Cameron made me feel special, protected and watched over, loved."
"Life needed a fast-forward button. Because there were days you just didn’t want to have to live through, not again, but they kept coming around and you were powerless to stop time or speed it up or do anything to keep from having to face it."
"Life was mostly made up of things you couldn’t control, full of surprises, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you."
"I had an impulse to join them, to wedge myself in there and feel Alan on one side of me and Mom on the other and the TV in front of us and the solid wall of the house behind us."
"I’d like to fall asleep like that, hemmed in, and wake up and have a better day in front of me."
"The truth was we’d go home and I’d sit in my room and do my homework and try not to think too much about the past, and go to bed hoping to feel more like myself — or, I should say, more like Jenna Vaughn — in the morning."
"Not that I knew what it was. But in more than three years of having the friends I did, there had never been a note in my mailbox."
"I sat there imagining all the bad or scary things it could be. It could have been something from my biological father, who I only knew as Don Harris and had not seen since age three."
"I sat up and opened the curtain so I could look out my bedroom window, as if I might see him hiding there in the dark, looking at me with his big eyes, seeing me the way I hadn’t been seen since he left — the real me who was still there under the layers of my new unfat body and acceptably stylish clothes, my nice house, my nice stepfather, my new car."
"I’d learned to stop reacting to anything Jordana and Matt said or did, instead counting in my head or saying the Pledge of Allegiance backward to make my face blank."
"I stayed parked for a few minutes, trying to talk myself out of what I was about to do."
"Knowing it was there in my bag gave me some satisfaction, but anxiety about whether it would be enough."
"I actually bought those things in the express lane. I had the money. I could have paid for the other stuff, too, but I didn’t."
"I HAVE TO GO HOME. That is what I tell Cameron’s dad."
"For a long minute he stares into the cage, not turning around."
"The first thing you need when you’re playing doctor is to decide who’s gonna be the doctor and who’s gonna be the patient."
"Midnight. After Mom and Alan went to bed, I put on my pajamas and got the ice cream and a spoon and the bag of mini candy bars."
"I WOKE EARLY SATURDAY, FEELING LIKE CRAP — HEADACHE, nausea, intense thirst."
"What’s the prognosis? On the fin rot, I mean."
"But now I’m worried about Monty. Does he look lethargic to you?"
"I didn’t know... you... had any friends from back then."
"But they’ve got all kinds of lady doctors these days so it could go either way."
"I closed the closet door with my foot and finished the ice cream."
"I tried to read her expression, but her hand still mostly covered her face."
"He was just a few yards from us now. 'Oh my God,' Mom said."
"I glanced at Alan to see what he knew, if anything, but he was distracted."
"He didn’t say good-bye, he didn’t even look back."
"You have to help me with the trig homework."
"When I got home, Alan was sacked out on the couch with his laptop."
"Jenna, you have to help me get Cameron."
"I’m not ready. You can’t just show up after all these years."
"And then I saw my mom’s favorite coffee cup on the table."
"I haven’t binged since Sunday night in the Crown Burgers parking lot."
"I wanted to curl in a ball in her lap, but she was running late."
"You could have fixed all that by telling me the truth, that he wasn’t dead."
"He didn’t have any idea the steps I’d taken, the enormous mountain I’d climbed."
"I drove around that night after telling Mom and Alan I had to return a shirt at the Gateway."
"In a parallel universe in which Cameron and I continued on the way we were, what would my life be like now?"
"I wasn’t really there. Narration ran through my head: There is Jenna Vaughn kissing her boyfriend."
"I felt the memory of myself standing next to me, sticky hands on the door."
"You remember that he moved a couple of months before you heard he died."
"Once I heard that you believed he was dead I thought maybe that would be easier for you to understand."
"I never thought we’d have to have this conversation."
"There were things going on in the Quick house that would make your blood curdle."
"Why do you think I never let you go over to Cameron’s?"
"It's the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people."
"Everything out here reminds me of something."
"We’re the kind that lives on stuff only requiring a person to work the microwave or add boiling water."
"She’s been lifted, as if by the hand of God but in truth by the long arm of the law, out of this messy life."
"If I could split myself in half and take part of me to CA and leave part of me in UT, I would have done it in a second."
"Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways."
"I know that church comes first, and I didn’t expect us to actually get five minutes to talk."
"This is what a family is supposed to feel like."
"I thought you were going to dress sexy. Anyway, shouldn’t you be more patchy than stripy?"
"Out in the yard the ripe tomatoes are almost jumping into our hands."
"I love your haircut. It makes you look older."
"It takes time, and patience, and perseverance."
"Because, as we’re reminded all the time at church, community happens through sharing."
"I’m always watching Nick and Jody, and Kaleb and Kacey Franklin, and Vanessa and Robby."
"It’s hard to explain how it feels when Nick Shaw smiles at you."
"This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it."
"Miracles are things that happen in stained glass, and on dusty Jerusalem roads thousands of years ago."