- if beale street could talk, james baldwin
- "it's a miracle to realize that somebody loves you."
- "fonny liked me so much that it didn't occur to him that he loved me."
- "'you're with me, all the time, all the time, without you i don't know if i could make it at all, baby, and when i put down the chisel, i'll always come to you.'"
- "'now, don't be scared,' he whispered. 'don't be scared. just remember that i belong to you. just remember that i wouldn't hurt you for nothing in this world. you just going to have to get used to me. and we got all the time in the world.'"
- "'you're her father. you love her. and so i know you know – you have to know – that i love her. i've loved her all my life.'"
- "joseph looked hard at fonny – a long look, in which one watched skepticism surrender to a certain resigned tenderness, a self-recognition."
- mask of shadows, linsey miller
- "i shuddered and gripped at the table's edge with my free hand. this was tender, intimate, and totally new."
- "she wanted some part of me on her for longer than a heartbeat, and the thought rendered me senseless, unable to even recall what letters made up my name. 'it won't be pretty.' 'i don't want it to be pretty. i want it to be yours.'"
- "'say my name again,' i said and braced myself for the chill of leaving her."
- i wish you all the best, mason deaver
- "the way he's looking at me warms me from the inside out, and part of me wants to cry and the other part wants to laugh and all of me wants him to look at me this way forever."
- NATHAN: what about my person?
- BEN: "your person." i like the way the words sound. on his lips and to my ears.
- NATHAN: my ben.
- when the moon was ours, anna-marie mclemore
- "he could give his body, as it was, to the one girl who understood it was not the whole of him."
- "she didn't want to take it from him, to strip from him something that belonged to his body. but now he held on to her harder than she'd held on to him. now he wouldn't let her break away from him any more than she'd let his hand go."
- tipping the velvet, sarah waters
- "'when i see her,' i said, 'it's like – i don't know what it's like. it's like i never saw anything at all before.'"
- "'she makes me want to smile and weep, at once. she makes me sore, here.' i placed a hand upon my chest, upon the breast-bone. 'i never saw a girl like her before. i never knew that there were girls like her...'"
- "hearing it, i understood at last my wildness of the past seven days. i thought, how queer it is! – and yes, how very ordinary: i am in love with you."
- "'then i shall call you 'nan' – if i might?' if she might! i nodded and smiled like an idiot: for the thrill of being addressed by her i would gladly have lost all of my old name and taken a new one, or gone nameless entirely."
- "i had the same sensation: a pang of disappointment and regret that turned instantly to pleasure and to aching love; a desire to touch, to embrace and caress, so strong i had to turn aside or fold my arms for fear that they would fly about her and press her close."
- "i knew by the changing tempos of her set just when to set the kettle on the hearth, so the cup would be ready for her return."
- "i loved everything that she left behind her."
- ruin of stars, linsey miller
- "the best parts of him kept getting better."
- "'i'm furious at you, but stop staring at me like i stabbed you. we'll always be family.'"
- "'what happened?' she asked, lips moving against my ear, and the closeness of it, the intimacy, nearly made me sob."
- "'i want to love you. i want to know you. all the little parts i don't know yet.'"
- wild beauty, anna-marie mclemore
- "she held one hand to her chest like she was keeping her heart from breaking out of her. she looked at his paprika- and herb-stained hands like this small thing had both wrecked and mended her."
- "he didn't believe anything that his brother was could be wrong. even if he could not remember his brother's name, or his face, or anything more than his hands, he knew those were hands that had cared for him."
- "but this girl. she had led him through these gardens. she had given him back everything good."
- annie on my mind, nancy garden
- "'i – like you so much. i told you, you make me feel – real, more real than i've ever thought i could feel, more alive, you – you're better than a hundred californias."
- "'better than all those white birds?' i said around the ache that was in my throat again. 'because you're better than anything or anyone for me, too, annie, better than – oh, i don't know better than what – better than everything - but that's not what i want to be saying – you – you're – annie, i think i love you."
- "'you're my lover, for god's sake; of course it's your business. everything about me is your business. annie, i – i love you; it's crazy, but that's the one thing i am sure of.'"
- "'i'm not used to having a lover yet,' i whispered into her hair. 'i'm not used to someone else being part of me like this.'"
- the tyrant's tomb, rick riordan
- "i thought about hazel and frank and the washing away of curses. i supposed that kind of love could come from many different types of relationships."
- good moon rising, nancy garden
- "i love you, thought jan, watching kerry, barely noticing the thought at first. then it came again, and she caught herself almost wishing that she were mrs. nicholson, so kerry would be touching her so gently."
- "'when hamlet said to horatio, 'if thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,' i thought of you. of me. when horatio called hamlet 'sweet prince,' too.'"
- "it was a quick, soft kiss, over soon, but jan felt all her muscles melt and feelings she had never had before stirred in her. she felt as if she were waking out of a long sleep into something new and wonderful – scary, too."
- "'jan, don't be like that! believe me, i – oh...' kerry threw her arms around jan and kissed her hard. 'i love you,' she whispered. 'i'm not experimenting! i'm not being faust now. i'm being kerry ann socrides, and i love you. do you hear me? i love you!'"
- "'sometimes i wonder how i existed before i knew you,' she said as jan pulled the car out of the lot. 'i used to dream of having a perfect friend, someone who'd be almost a second self, or another half of me and not expect me to be someone else. but i never thought i'd find that person.'"
- on earth we're briefly gorgeous, ocean vuong
- "i got what i wanted – a boy swimming towards me."
- "and we cracked up. we cracked open. we fell apart like that, laughing."
- "under the covers, we made friction of each other and fiction of everything else."
- "that's what i wanted – not merely the body, desirable as it was, but its will to grow into the very world that rejects its hunger... when he came to me, his mouth wet and wanting, he came from a place on fire, a place he could never return to."
- "yes, i wanted it all. i drove my face into him as if into a climate, the autobiography of a season... 'close your eyes,' he said, shaking. 'don't want you seeing me like this.' but i opened them anyway."
- "afterward, lying next to me with his face turned away, he cried skillfully in the dark. the way boys do. the first time we fucked, we didn't fuck at all."
- 'hey.' he did that thing where he made a fist under my chin and tilted my head up to meet his gaze, a gesture that would usually get me to smile. 'you heard me?'
- "i touch your shoulder with the gentleness trevor showed me back in the river."
- "i felt this sudden surge of tenderness for him right then, a feeling so rare in me back then it felt like i was being displaced by it."
- TREVOR, half-asleep: hey, what were you before you met me?
- LITTLE DOG: i think i was drowning.
- TREVOR, whispering: and what are you now?
- LITTLE DOG, after a beat: water.
- how long 'til black future month?, n. k. jemisin
- "'yes,' jessaline said, and smiled, letting her heart live in her face for a moment. eugenie's mouth fell open, then softened into a small smile. her glasses were still askew, jessaline saw with a rush of fondness."
- "eugenie stared at her in such dawning amazement that jessaline could no longer help herself. she caught eugenie about the waist, pulled her near, and kissed her most soundly and improperly, right there in front of her brother. it was the sweetest, wildest kiss she had ever known in her life."
- "the men of my village were confused by me, but i was not so very different from other women. i wanted to be touched with tenderness. i wanted to be special in another's eyes. i wanted someone to talk to who would not think me strange; someone who would look at me and not think, how do i control such a woman?"
- the goldfinch, donna tartt
- "and though it's a bleak thing to admit after all these years later, still i've never met anyone who made me feel loved the way she did."
- "i loved the sandalwood perfume she wore, rough and unexpected, and i loved the rustle of her starched skirt when she swooped down to kiss me on the forehead. and her laugh was enough to make you want to kick over what you were doing and follow her down the street."
- "on nights when i woke strangled with fear there he was, catching me when i started up terrified from the bed, pulling me back down in the covers beside him, muttering in nonsense polish, his voice throaty and strange with sleep. we'd drowse off in each other's arms, listening to music from my ipod and sometimes wake clutching each other like castaways or much younger children."
- THEO: boris, i'm a minor. i could feel my panic rising in an all-too-familiar way - maybe the situation wasn't literally life or death but it sure felt like it, house filling with smoke, exits closing off. i don't know how it works in your country but i don't have any family, no friends out here -
- BORIS: me! you have me!
- "i was still babbling when boris said: 'potter.' before i could answer him he put both hands on my face and kissed me on the mouth. and while i stood blinking – it was over almost before i knew what happened – he picked up popper under the forelegs and kissed him too, in midair, smack on the tip of his nose."
- "i knew him well enough to know that if you asked him the right way, at the right moment, he would do almost anything; and in the very act of turning away i knew he would have run after me and hopped in the car laughing if i'd asked one last time."
- "but i didn't. and, in truth, it was maybe better that i didn't – i say that now, though it was something i regretted bitterly for a while. more than anything i was relieved that in my unfamiliar babbling-and-wanting-to-talk state i'd stopped myself from blurting the thing on the edge of my tongue, the thing i'd never said, even though it was something we both knew well enough without me saying it out loud to him in the street - which was, of course, i love you."
- "whenever she smiled at me heaven blew in."
- "she was the missing kingdom, the unbruised part of myself i'd lost with my mother. everything about her was a snowstorm of fascination."
- "there was simply no way in hell she could matter half as much to mr. music library as she did to me. we belonged together; there was a dream rightness and magic to it, inarguable; the thought of her flooded every corner of my mind with light and poured brightness into miraculous lofts i hadn't even known were there, vistas that seemed to exist not at all except in relationship to her... she had only to mention a recently read novel for me to grab it up hungrily, to be inside her thoughts, a sort of telepathy."
- "she was the golden thread running through everything."
- "'i owe you everything. everything good that has happened to me in life, potter, has happened because of you.'"
may 15 2019 ∞
jan 1 2020 +