I Kissed Shara Wheeler Quotes

There was this one weekend, a million summers ago, when I sat on the shore drinking a frozen limeade, and I realized the only thing I wanted to look at was the way the sun hit the girls swimming in the lake. The problem has always been this: When I look at you, I taste lime, and I see light on water.

I have done some of the best work of my life because of you. And I know you have done some of the best work of your life because of me. I don’t know a better way to explain what love means to two people like us.

I don’t believe doing something in front of everybody makes it more meaningful, anyway. If anything, it makes it stop belonging to you.

What do you say when The Girl tells you that you're The Girl to her?

She feels like spine of a book about to crack and spill out all the love story guts.

You were the only one it could be.

She’s glad it’s Shara. Nobody else would have felt important enough.

If I seem confident, it’s because I have to. You, of all people, know what I mean.

All I want is a nice girlfriend in a cottage where we have philosophical conversations over scones or something.

Jealousy is a funny thing. We spend so much of high school consumed by it, hating that another person has something we don’t, wishing we could taste what it’s like to be them.

...but if she learned anything from her mom, it's that the real world is where people who hate high school go to be happy.

There's a girl with brown eyes who reminds me of the first book I ever loved. When I look at her, I feel like there might be another universe in her. I imagine her on a shelf too high for me to reach, or peeking out of someone else's backpack, or at the end of a long wait at the library. I know there are other books that are easier to get my hands on, but none are half as good as her. Every part of her seems to have a purpose, a specific meaning, an exact reason for being how and what and where it is.

And to the girl who kissed me,’ she says, ‘I have done some of the best work of my life because of you. And I know you have done some of the best work of your life because of me. I don’t know a better way to explain what love means to two people like us.

All frogs do is eat bugs that we hate and mind their business. They don't deserve all that. They're literally just vibing.

God, Shall I compare thee to an icebox pie? Couldn't be gayer if she tried.

Shara’s always been this person. ‘This is what I’ve been trying to tell you’, she wrote on a card stuck under an auditorium seat. Shara’s not nice. Shara’s so many more important things than nice.

Shame is a way of life here. It's stocked in the vending machines, stuck like gum under the desks. Spoken in morning devotionals. She knows now that there's a bit of it in her. It was an easy choice not to go back in the closet when she got here, but if she'd grown up here, she might never have come out at all. She might be a completely different person.

Depends if you don't mind that they're all about you.

While she does like boys, she generally finds the traits of a compelling villain—arrogance, malice, an angsty backstory—tedious in a man. Like, what do hot guys with long dark hair even have to be that upset about? Get a clarifying shampoo and suck it up, Kylo Ren. So your rich parents sent you to magic camp and you didn’t make any friends. Big deal.

High school matters because it shapes how we see the world when we enter it. We carry the hurt with us, the confirmed fears, the insecurities people used against us. But we also carry the moment when someone gave us a chance, even though they didn't have to. The moment we watched a friend make a choice we didn't understand at first because they're brave in a different way. The moment a teacher told us they believed in us. The moment we told someone who we are and they accepted us without question. The moment we felt in love. "Most of the things we are feeling right now are things we're feeling for the first time. We're learning what it means to feel them. What we mean to one another. Of course that matters.

That works for me," Ash says. "My ideal body is no body at all." Chloe snorts. "Just a head floating above a sexy void." "That's so gender of me," Ash says, beginning to chisel out Smith's cheekbones.

This is why we need you,” Georgia says. “Once in a generation, there is born a bisexual who can do math. You’re the chosen one.

So, if she’s the only one in the class of ’22 who’s really out for now, if her existence can provide cover for half her graduating class to stand up for something without saying things about themselves they can’t yet say, that’s enough. That’s plenty.

She links arms with Georgia to dance and sends up her only prayer of the past four years: May they always come back to each other

What she means is that nice and kind are not the same thing. Plenty of people aren’t nice at all, but they’re kind. And that’s what matters.

There are things that don’t make sense about me. I don’t know if I belong here. How can that be possible, to feel estranged from a place where everyone loves you? To owe your life to a place and still want to run? I’ve been trying and trying to figure out what it is about me that makes me feel this way and why it feels so deep and so big that it must be most of me, the skin stretching between my knuckles and across my shoulders and then the bones under them too. Knowing that I couldn’t have you if I wanted to—that stings almost the same. It’s almost the same feeling. They’re right beside each other. What do they have in common?

Sometimes it feels like I'm gonna explode, like everything I'm feeling is the first time anyone's felt it, ever, in the history of the universe, and then I get so angry when people don't understand that I'm walking around feeling like this and still doing everything I'm supposed to do and making As and getting into NYU and putting up with all of the Willowgrove bullshit. I—I can't even explain how I feel, and it feels wrong to say it without the right words, so I don't say it at all, but then nobody knows, and I'm mad that nobody knows, even though I don't even want them to know.

What I want is... I want to fall in love. I want to have a big, dramatic, ridiculous love story, like a period piece, and my love interest is played by Saoirse Ronan and I get to wear a fancy corset. I want to write books about the way that feels. And I don't know if I'll ever have any of that here, but I know what I'll lose if I leave.

Oh my God,” Chloe says out loud. Her brain is overheating, probably. “I’m in love with a monster turducken.

Of course. Of course Shara gave her this instead of an explanation. Of course Shara cast herself as the main character of her own personal John Green novel.

The problem has always been this: When I look at you, I taste lime, and I see light on water.

Call me old-fashioned, but a man's place is in the basement, preparing vocal exercises for his more talented wife

Just because everyone here knows who you are, and everyone talks about everyone else’s business, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to be the person you know you are. There are things out there for you that you haven’t even thought of yet, that you don’t even know how to think of yet. Who you are here doesn’t have to be the same as who you are out there. And if the person you feel like you have to be in this town doesn’t feel right to you, you’re allowed to leave. You’re allowed to exist. Even if it means existing somewhere else.

She goes through the cards again and again, reading over Shara's handwriting, which she's come to know with a kind of intimacy that makes her want to lie down in the ditch behind her house and forget she even knew there were girls like Shara Wheeler.

Get a clarifying shampoo and suck it up, Kylo Ren.

Shara wirft Dinge nicht weg, weil sie ihr nichts bedeuten. Sie wirft sie weg, weil sie zu viel bedeuten.

What I want is... I want to fall in love. I want to have a big, dramatic, ridiculous love story, like a period piece, and my love interest is played by Saoirse Ronan and I get to wear a fancy corset.

From the moment I arrived at Willow Grove, I was confident I would spend the next 4 years of my high school career counting the days until I could escape this place, which has the spiritual aura of a Mountain Dew bottle filled with dip spit in the tour bus cup holder of a Christian Rock Lynyrd Skynyrd cover band.

When Shara looks at her like that, all airy and sly, it makes Chloe think of the first time her mama brought home an icebox pie. It was strawberries and cream, her mom’s favorite, and the whole thing seemed to be a feat of mechanical physics. It didn’t make sense how the strawberries held effortlessly together when you sliced it, or how the cloud of meringue sat weightless on top. She remembers studying the layers from the side and having the inexplicable thought, This is a Shara Wheeler kind of pretty. God. Shall I compare thee to an icebox pie? Couldn’t be gayer if she tried.

Or she's starting a new life with a man named Raoul. Or she left to get a nose job and is recuperating in a subterranean labyrinth beneath an opera house in France.

Call me old fashioned, but a man's place is in the basement, preparing vocal excercises for his more talented wife

Love God first, love Shara Wheeler second.

Shame is a way of life here. It’s stocked in the vending machines, stuck like gum under the desks, spoken in the morning devotionals. She knows now that there’s a bit of it in her.

I saw myself in the rearview mirror of a person I've loved since I was thirteen, and I felt endless. Like, Holy Spirit endless. Maybe that's what it means to feel like myself.

trying to avoid the fact that they were all chasing the same girl. It’s kind of surreal to realize she’s the only one still running.

Yeah, there’s a lot about this place that sucks, but it’s where I’m from. And honestly, sometimes I’m sick of you acting like you’re so much better than it, like your family’s not from here too.

It was kind of about what his idea of beauty was. Especially women-- he always painted women sort of flowing through space. Girls with an effortless sort of elegance, like they're weightless and solid at the same time.

So," Benji says when Chloe finds Georgia next to him, "I know things have been crazy, but I just wanted to say, oh my god! Shara Wheeler is in love with you, and Georgia has been secretly dating a member of the Homecoming Court. Like, what is going on?? Also, when do I get a hot person??" "I saw you flirting with Ace," Chloe counters. "Yeah, he's, like, Dodge Truck Month level straight. I'm not wasting my time.

You get horny for books—” “Very reductive way to describe being interested in literature,

what’s the point of wanting and being wanted in return if the person they want isn’t truly you?

...the real world is where people who hate high school go to be happy.

Shara doesn’t throw things away because they mean nothing to her. She throws things away because they mean too much.

It’s fucked up how they make us feel about ourselves, and we put up with it because we don’t think there’s anything we can do about it. We put up with it for so long that we don’t even know who we are, only what they want us to be. And I don’t want to put up with it anymore.

A month ago, she stood like this outside Shara's house and refused to believe Shara was gone, because she knew the myth was a lie. That there was nothing extraordinary about Shara Wheeler. This is the real tragedy: Everything extraordinary about her is trapped behind the myth.

—Chloe, somos queer. No se nos dan bien las mates. —Por eso te necesitamos. Una vez en cada generación, nace una persona bisexual capaz de hacer cálculos matemáticos. Tú fuiste la elegida.

I learned that survival is heavy on so many of us. And on a personal level, I realized I’d gotten so used to that weight, I stopped noticing how much of myself I’d dedicated to carrying it.

You take care of yourself, and that’s important,” her mom says. “And you don’t hurt anyone.” “But I do hurt people,” Chloe insists. “Do you do it on purpose?” “No.” “Okay, then, you’re human.

I feel like there are two different sides of me, like I could be anyone and touch anyone and love like that kind of Holy Ghost love - everywhere and everyone. Most of my friends act like they know exactly who and what they are, like there's only one answer, but to me, that feels like putting a beginning and end on something that's not supposed to have either.

When Chloe tries to explain what she loves so much about high school theater, even though she'll probably never set foot on another stage after graduation, she always ends up at this: the chaos of backstage. Sitting on the dressing room floor in a sweaty wig cap eating a box of McNuggets someone's mom dropped off, accidentally catching a glimpse of a cute lead's underwear when they're quick-changing behind a towel in the wings, ranking the smelliest character shoes in the chorus, and the delirious, unsupervised hours between the morning and evening shows on a Saturday.

There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just you.” “I’m not a nice person,” she says. “Chloe,” her mom says, “your mama and I decided long before you were born that we would let you be whoever you are, no matter who that is.” “And if who you are is a snarling little Pomeranian with eyes like fire, then that’s who you are, darling,” her mama adds.

Chloe enters the choir room for lunch with a peanut butter sandwich in her lunch bag and murder in her heart.

No quería que nadie pensara que mi forma de amar a Dios es equivalente a la forma en la que otras personas de Willowgrove aman a Dios.

Dios mío. <<¿Puedo compararte con una tarta helada?>>. Buf, no podría ser más gay por mucho que lo intentase.

Saber que no podría tenerte aunque quisiera… me provoca una herida casi igual de punzante.

Ese es el problema. Estaba demasiado cerca de ti para darme cuenta de que eras especial. Tardé un montón en averiguar cómo llevarte hasta donde quiero que estés.

A veces, cuando entro en una iglesia, no estoy segura de si se supone que debería estar allí, aunque me siento como en casa. Mi casa no siempre ha sido un lugar acogedor para mí.

Quería que «alguien» me viera, y que ese alguien fueras «tú», porque creo que siempre he sabido que solo podías ser tú.

Ay, qué pena que esta alumna tan lista no pueda ser también una amable y educada jovencita heterosexual.

Lo único que quiero yo es una novia simpática y una casa de campo en la que tengamos conversaciones filosóficas sobre los bollitos o algo así.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up

Why is it so bad to want to feel special, or loved, or accpeted?

Yes,” she says, and for good measure adds, “sir.” Ew. Hated that.

Sorry I’m not motorboating an encyclopedia from 1927.

Call me old-fashioned, but a man’s place is in the basement, preparing vocal exercises for his more talented wife.

nice and kind are not the same thing. Plenty of people aren’t nice at all, but they’re kind. And that’s what matters.

She hands over Chloe’s usual Starbucks order: iced matcha latte with two pumps of brown sugar syrup and one pump of vanilla

Oh my God. I'm in love with a monster turducken.

Oh my God. I’m so mad I missed that. Did you average the results at the end? Who won?” “Chloe, we’re gay. We can’t do math.” “Okay, well, next time I’ll come and make a spreadsheet.

You really think you can be happy here? Do you want to ask my mom how that's going for her?' 'I know she left. A lot of people do. And that's okay! I get it! Everybody has to do what they have to do. But if everyone like us leaves False Beach, it's never going to change. Someone has to stay.' 'But why does it have to be you?' Georgie finally lifts her eyes. 'Because I can take it.

The loudest Christians I’ve ever met were the worst ones. I don’t believe doing something in front of everybody makes it more meaningful, anyway. If anything, it makes it stop belonging to you.

Like what do hot guys with long dark hair even have to be that upset about? Get a clarifying shampoo and suck it up, Kylo Ren. So your rich parents sent you to magic camp and you didn't make any friends. Big deal.

the kind of beautiful most people never even see in real life, the kind of gorgeous it almost hurts to look at—it’s like shimmering into new skin. Like being beamed into space and all her particles reassembling into someone who technically looks the same but is one version ahead of the last. She’s a scrappy galactic rebel, and Shara is a star, and she’s loading up a big-ass plasma cannon and leveling it right at Shara’s heart.

Smith, I met you right here, under the bleachers, and I kissed you. On the drive home, you looked out through the rain at a red light and told me it was the first time in a long time that it felt right. It's so stupid how my dad makes students work for free at the concession stand as a form of detention, isn't it, Rory? You looked miserable, and that was before you even saw me kiss Smith right in front of you. I know you saw, because I knew you were there, watching the same way you watch from your bedroom window, turning away every time somebody looks. Jealousy is a funny thing. We spend so much of high school consumed by it, hating that another person has something we don't, wishing we could taste what it's like to be them. To take that feeling out of your hands for a second and pass it to someone else in relief. So, I guess that's why it felt like I meant it.

Maybe they had the right idea, as far as secrecy goes. The loudest Christians I’ve ever met were the worst ones. I don’t believe doing something in front of everybody makes it more meaningful, anyway. If anything, it makes it stop belonging to you.

Habría podido besarte en la biblioteca. Habría podido romperte el corazón de un modo exquisito, hasta que se te olvidara lo mucho que te importaba ser la mejor de la promoción. Siempre ha sido tan fácil lograr que la gente me ame... Podía hacer lo mismo contigo.

¡Como si nuestras manos, nuestros costados, nuestras voces y nuestras almas hubiesen estado incorporadas! Así crecimos juntas, semejantes a dos cerezas mellizas que se diría que están separadas, pero que un lado común las une; dos lindas bayas modeladas sobre el mismo tallo.

I look at myself in the mirror and find something to fix. Like I’m the gardeners at the front of the club trimming rose bushes into the right shape. I moisturize my face and I condition my hair and I think about what I can say to exactly which person tomorrow to make them believe what I want them to about me. But you—you march into school every day like you know everything and you’re better than everyone, and that’s how I know you’re terrified. You have to decide that you’re so certain about everything, because uncertainty scares the shit out of you.

Chloe: Te prometo que te dejaré ir a donde quieras mientras te haga feliz. Te prometo que te defenderé ante cualquiera que intente ningunearte, pero solo si me lo pides. Sé que prefieres cuidarte sola y creo que puedes hacerlo. Demuestras que de ti no se ríe nadie. Con todo mi amor, Mamá.

Chloe: Te prometo que te dejaré ir a donde quieras mientras te haga feliz. Te prometo que te defenderé ante cualquiera que intente ningunearte, pero solo si me lo pides. Sé que prefieres cuidarte sola y creo que puedes hacerlo. Demuéstrales que de ti no se ríe nadie. Con todo mi amor, Mamá.

Siempre tenía la esperanza de que, no sé, se daría cuenta de que estaba mirando su contacto en la pantalla y sentiría una urgencia irracional de mandarme un mensaje. Y entonces hablaríamos y nos enamoraríamos y nos iríamos a vivir juntas a la montaña y aprenderíamos a criar ovejas o algo así.

Still, she’s gaining around. She’s got all these clues, these secrets. She knows she’s closing in. If Shara were an SAT question, she’d be one of those confusing logic puzzles. Critical reasoning with no obvious answers to rule out. Simple, straightforward words arranged in a strange, winding order, something to get lost inside until you realize you’re way behind on time and you’re going to have to bubble in C for the last four problems. If Shara leaves town on the highway traveling west at sixty miles per hour, and Chloe spends the next three weeks chasing after her, at what speed will Shara be traveling when they collide?

The loudest Christians I’ve ever met were the worst ones. I don’t believe doing something in front of everybody makes it more meaningful, anyway. If anything, it makes it stop belonging to you. Sometimes, when I walk into a church, I’m not sure I’m supposed to be there, even though it feels like home. Home hasn’t always been a good place for me to be.

There are things out there for you that you haven’t even thought of yet, that you don’t even know how to think of yet. Who you are here doesn’t have to be the same as who you are out there. And if the person you feel like you have to be in this town doesn’t feel right to you, you’re allowed to leave. You’re allowed to exist. Even if it means existing somewhere else.

Lo que quiero es…, lo que quiero es enamorarme. Quiero vivir una historia de amor intensa, dramática y ridícula, en plan dramón de época, y el objeto de mi amor será interpretado por Saoirse Ronan y yo me pondré un corsé superelegante. Quiero escribir libros sobre lo que se siente con un amor así. Y no sé si conseguiré algo de todo eso aquí, pero sé que lo perderé si me voy.

If the girl’s going to end up with a dude who’s a monster,” Chloe says, “it needs to be—” “Phantom,” Georgia finishes for her as they head outside, because she’s heard it five hundred thousand times. “Monster on the outside, but on the inside, he cares about her career goals!” Chloe says. “Call me old-fashioned, but a man’s place is in the basement, preparing vocal exercises for his more talented wife.

Sometimes it feels like I’m gonna explode, like everything I’m feeling is the first time anyone’s felt it, ever, in the history of the universe, and then I get so angry when people don’t understand that I’m walking around feeling like this and still doing everything I’m supposed to do and making As and getting into NYU and putting up with all of the Willowgrove bullshit. I—I can’t even explain how I feel, and it feels wrong to say it without the right words, so I don’t say it at all, but then nobody knows, and I’m mad that nobody knows, even though I don’t even want them to know.

You know what I do? When I’m scared?” Shara asks. “I look at myself in the mirror and find something to fix. Like I’m the gardeners at the front of the club trimming rose bushes into the right shape. I moisturize my face and I condition my hair and I think about what I can say to exactly which person tomorrow to make them believe what I want them to about me. But you—you march into school every day like you know everything and you’re better than everyone, and that’s how I know you’re terrified. You have to decide that you’re so certain about everything, because uncertainty scares the shit out of you.

Hay una chica de ojos castaños que me recuerda el primer libro que me encantó. Cuando la miro, siento que dentro de ella podría haber otro universo. Me la imagino en una estantería demasiado alta para que la alcance, asomando por la mochila de otra persona o al final de una cola larga de reservas en la biblioteca. Sé que hay otros libros que sería más fácil tener en mis manos, pero ninguno es ni la mitad de bueno que ella. Cada parte de ella parece tener un propósito, un significado concreto, una razón exacta para ser tal cual es y estar donde está. Así pues, la palabra que elegiría para describirla sería «deliberada».

The way Willowgrove has always worked, from what Chloe has seen and heard, is that there are enough students comfortable with the way things are to create the feeling that you're the only one who doesn't belong. It can be hard, when all the rules claim to be good and moral and godly, to feel like you can challenge them without admitting something bad and wrong about yourself. And if you can get past that, it's a free-fall into small-town gossip, and you never come out the other side with all your best intentions intact. But that's a world where Willowgrove royalty doesn't call you on the phone to say you're not the only one, after all.

I think that’s where this started to go wrong for me. There are things that don’t make sense about me. I don’t know if I belong here. How can that be possible, to feel estranged from a place where everyone loves you? To owe your life to a place and still want to run? I’ve been trying and trying to figure out what it is about me that makes me feel this way and why it feels so deep and so big that it must be most of me, the skin stretching between my knuckles and across my shoulders and then the bones under them too. Knowing that I couldn’t have you if I wanted to-that stings almost the same. It’s almost the same feeling. They’re right beside each other. What do they have in common?