Rainbow Rowell

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“You were the sun, and I was crashing into you.”

“Fighting doesn’t feel good anymore. It feels like breaking something because you don’t know how to fix it.”

“Can't you just like a girl who likes you back?' 'None of them likes me back. I may as well like the one I really want.”

“I don't want to do anything. I don't even want to start this day because then I'll just be expected to finish it.”

“I’d give him all that I am. I’d give him all that I was. I’d open up a vein. I’d tie our hearts together, chamber by chamber.”

“Every woman wants a man who'll fall in love with her soul as well as her body.”

“I just meant that … I want to be the last person who ever kisses you, too.… That sounds bad, like a death threat or something. What I’m trying to say is, you’re it. This is it for me.”

“Sometimes writing is running downhill, your fingers jerking behind you on the keyboard the way your legs do when they can’t quite keep up with gravity.”

“The professor leaned forward. “But there’s nothing more profound than creating something out of nothing.” Her lovely face turned fierce. “Think about it Cath. That’s what makes a god—or a mother. There’s nothing more intoxicating than creating something from nothing. Creating something from yourself...”

“In my mind, every single female character I've written is plus-size.”

“My favorite Starbucks is nice - Omaha Starbucks stores tend to be friendlier than big-city ones, and the baristas are especially lovely at mine - but it's still a Starbucks.”

“I feel like some sort of fiction-writing hobo, jumping trains and always hoping I'll find a good place to start a fire in the next town. And I keep having these panicky episodes where I corner my husband and rant at him: 'I don't have anywhere to write! I can't write! I don't have a place to write!'”

“Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.”

“I want everyone to meet you. You're my favorite person of all time.”

“I love you more than I hate everything else.”

“The first time he'd held her hand, it felt so good that it crowded out all the bad things. It felt better than anything had ever hurt.”

“I let myself slip away... Just to stay sane. Just to get through it. And when I felt myself slipping too far, I held on to the one thing I'm always sure of - Blue eyes. Bronze curls. The fact that Simon Snow is the most powerful magician alive. That nothing can hurt him, not even me. That Simon Snow...”

“I didn't know love could leave the lights on all the time.”

“I want someone whose heart is big enough to hold me.”

“It was the nicest thing she could imagine. It made her want to have his babies and give him both of her kidneys.”

“My girlfriend is sad and quiet and keeps me up all night worrying about her.”

“You think that holding someone hard will bring them closer. You think that you can hold them so hard that you'll still feel them, embossed on you, when you pull away. Every time Eleanor pulled away from Park, she felt the gasping loss of him.”

“You don't know when you're twenty-three. You don't know what it really means to crawl into someone else's life and stay there. You can't see all the ways you're going to get tangled, how you're going to bond skin to skin. How the idea of separating will feel in five years, in ten - in fifteen. When...”

“She wanted to lose herself in him. To tie his arms around her like a tourniquet. If she showed him how much she needed him, he'd run away.”

“Don't bite his face, Eleanor told herself. It's disturbing and needy and never happens in situation comedies or movies that end with big kisses.”

“Emergency dance party--go away.”

“I really am happy for Kiley. And for you and every other happily married lady. Except for that I'm not happy for you. I kind of want you all to drop dead.”

“There's no reason to think we're going to stop loving each other,' he said. 'And there's every reason to think that we won't.”

“I'm ending this.' 'No. Come on. It's not worth it.' 'You are,' he said fiercely, looking at her. 'You're worth it.”

“I believe that worrying about a bad thing prepares you for it when it comes. If you worry, the bad thing doesn't hit you as hard. You can roll with the punch if you see it coming.”

“Maybe I don't have that sort of love in me - maybe I'm defective.”

“I can't seem to help writing love stories. I definitely crave romance. When I was young, I craved romance in books, but I didn't want to read just romance - love plays such a big part in our lives, it shouldn't be cut out and restricted to its own fiction.”

“What are the chances you’d ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away? The math seemed impossible.”

“When I’m writing my own stuff, it’s like swimming upstream. Or … falling down a cliff and grabbing at branches, trying to invent the branches as I fall.”

“There's only one of him, she thought, and he's right here. He knows I'll like a song before I've heard it. He laughs before I even get to the punch line. There's a place on his chest, just below his throat, that makes me want to let him open doors for me. There's only one of him.”

“Months are different in college, especially freshman year. Too much happens. Every freshman month equals six regular months—they're like dog months.”

“Maybe we should go on lots of double dates,” Cath said, “and then we can get married on the same day in a double ceremony, in matching dresses, and the four of us will light the unity candle all at the same time.” “Pfft,” Levi said, “I’m picking out my own dress.”

“Maybe this was why Neal always had his guards up. His eyes, unguarded, could burn tunnels through mountains.”

“I don’t trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more that I care about someone, the more sure I am they’re going to get tired of me and take off.”

“If you were an alien who came to our bookstores - or browsed our teen magazines - you'd think that only Earth girls who look like Mila Kunis ever got any action.”

“Happily ever after, or even just together ever after, is not cheesy,” Wren said. “It’s the noblest, like, the most courageous thing two people can shoot for.”

“It's more like you meet someone, and you fall in love, and you hope that that person is the one—and then at some point, you have to put down your chips. You just have to make a commitment and hope that you're right.”

“I’m sort of… coming off a bad relationship” “When did it end?” “Slightly before it started.”

“If you can’t save your own life, is it even worth saving?”

“Well,” she said. “I’m frustrated.” “Don’t make me angry-kiss you.” “Give me the laundry.” “Tempers rising, faces flushed … This is how it happens.”

“When she opened her door, Levi was sitting in the hallway, his legs bent in front of him, hunched forward on his knees. He looked up when she stepped out. “I’m such an idiot,” he said. Cath fell between his knees and hugged him. “I can’t believe I said that,” he said. “I can’t even go nine hours wit...”