Magnolia Parks Quotes

He laughs and for some reason it sounds like I'm ringing the doorbell of the home I grew up in.

Painful things can still be beautiful things, in case you didn’t know.

Our eyes hold like our hands won’t. I love you, he blinks. Prove it, I sigh.

In another life I reckon I could have loved you,' I tell her. She gives me a little smile back. 'In another life I would have let you-' Never you mind that I already love her in this one.

Because she can only hate me how she hates me because she loves me how she loves me.

I think I understand for a fleeting moment why everything that’s bad and painful and sad is worth it if you love someone, because I’ll remember how he’s looking at me now forever.

Everything wonderful, everything magical, everything painful, everything beautiful and spectacular and wretched and defining that has happened to me happened with him. And I hate him for that.

how many loves do you get in a lifetime? I remember wondering that. How many people will look at me like he does, not just like I’m the sun but like I’m the whole god damn universe.

and I love her in the dark. I mean, fuck it—I down and out love her in all spectrums of light, even the absence of it.

Can you die from a broken heart, do you know? And if I did and they cut me wide open, would I bleed loving him? When they lift my heart out of my chest cavity to weigh it, does it weigh the same as his top lip? Is his name carved into my third rib to the left? Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. He's killing me. Loving him is killing me too, and I'm afraid because how many loves really, do you get in a lifetime? How many chances do you give it before you let it go?

He’s a time bomb for me, do you see now? That he’ll hurt me. He’ll always hurt me. I’ll never be safe with him, even if I’m always safe next to him.

What a mind fuck it is to comfort the person who just blew your whole heart open with a rifle.

Loving you was a good reason not to love anyone else.

I’ll wear it like a badge of honour forever that he loved me first, that he loved me at all.

If this is what being loved by him on accident feels like, I can't imagine what it'd feel like to be loved on purpose.

It's the great undoing of my heart as I know it.

Daisy’s that feeling you get when you’re floating on your back in a pool and there’s so much fucking noise around you until you put your ears under and it all goes quiet. That’s how she feels to me.

How many loves do you get in a lifetime? How many people do you get to call yours? There are all sorts of loves in this world, not all of them, but most of them are beautiful. Some are old, some noble, some brave. Others are dishonourable and weak and make you so by association. Some are a low whisper on a sombre night, some are maddening. Some you can’t ignore—they slow-burn inside of you, never quite going out completely but you’re too scared to dare try to fan that flame. Some loves you pretend you don’t feel, even when you can, even when you know you do, even if he’s the first thing you think of in the morning, even if he’s like a match in the darkened room of your heart—because loving something how you love him is a painful love that puts rocks in your pockets and melancholy in your eyeballs and if time has taught you anything it’s that it doesn’t matter. You’ll love him forever anyway.

You're Central Park at midnight.

The feel of him is my favourite feeling in the world, for all of history and all of time, write it down, ring the town bell and tell the scribes—I’ll wear it on my heart’s sleeve forever that I love him.

He laughs from the back of his throat and I love it when he laughs at the things I say, I want to make him laugh forever but I can’t because he broke forever and still I fight the urge to kiss him anyway.

How many loves do you get in a lifetime? For me it's just the one. I've had more but as I float away there's only one I'm thinking of. He is what I'm thinking of. Not how he hurt me, not what he did to me, not what we've done to each other. Just him.

I wonder if we’ll ever not be like magnets… not be these two things that drift home to each other no matter what. If there is a way to break the spell, I don’t want to know a fucking thing about it.

Let me be clear now then, Daisy—” Gives me a tall look. “I am fucked up in love with you.

I know that some love is beautiful, and some is freeing, some unravels you, some love poisons you, some blinds you, some betters you, and some loves break you in invisible ways that no one else knows about until you have to stand up and the weight of your love crushes your bones.

How's the weather over there Parks ?

Eternally sunny, then.” “Oh—” He grimaces. “Can’t promise that. Storms always come, they have to — brings balance.

Because if she loved herself more than she loves me, she’d have fucked off years ago. I don’t deserve all the chances she half-tries to give me.

maybe this is how we’ll always be—stuck together, drifting back to each other if we somehow pull apart. I hope that’s what we’ll be like. I hope we’ll always find our way back.

She pulls away from me and as she does, I slip my heart in her back pocket. That’s a lie. She already had it. But I give it to her again for good measure.

She could walk all over me, strangle me to death, and I wouldn’t notice. If the emerald eyes are out then I’m dying anyway.

I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias. We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.

How many loves do we get in a lifetime? I really don't know anymore—my heart's racing so fast now and the dam is building—and there are all sorts of love in this world and mine is killing me, I think.

What are we then?” I ask defiantly, putting some distance between us which he crosses with one step anyway. He kisses my cheek. “Each other’s.

Echoes through the ancient mountains around us and the Greek philosophers who waxed lyrical about true love and soulmates roll in their graves as I try for the billionth time to sever myself from mine.

And I wonder what love is like for other people… Is love for everyone wordless exchanges and a million memories that fuck you up to the bone?

Because loving him is the same thing as tossing the keys to my heart to a valet without a driver’s license. He’ll drive me off a cliff.

I can’t even look at him because I’m a flower and he’s the whole entire sun and he’ll wilt me away,

I remember it, like a physical punch in the gut, how much I loved him. Really loved him. To the bone, I loved him. Cut me and I'd bleed him. How much I needed him, still need him, would forever, always, never couldn't, even if I tried, needed him.

If it wasn’t him, it would be you,” I tell him, for better and for worse. He blows some more air out of his mouth and catches my eye. “In another life, yeah?” I nod and offer him a weak smile. “I’ll meet you there.

But I love you more than I’m angry at you, so I need to figure it out.

and there are all sorts of love in this world and mine is killing me, I think.

The most beautiful boy in every room, the great love of my life—how many loves do you get in a lifetime? I remember wondering that. How many people will look at me like he does, not just like I’m the sun but like I’m the whole god damn universe.

What am I to you?” I lean back into him, pursing my mouth at the question. “The oxygen mask”—I glance back at him—“that falls down from the ceiling of the planes.

But he can't promise he won't hurt me so I don't know how to promise I'll stay.

What am I to you?” “Oh, I don’t know—” I give her a little shrug, stare straight ahead. Take a long sip before I look over at her. “Like, just—everything.

I know your freckles too,” he tells me.

If you keep pushing someone away, eventually they’ll stay there.

Will you walk me down the aisle?” I ask him. “At the wedding?” He looks down at me and smiles a bit. “Honour of a lifetime.

You’re all here to bury the smartest girl, the sharpest shooter in the whole wide world. But I’m burying my guiding light.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it’s not proud. It doesn’t dishonour others, it’s not self-seeking, it’s not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But it’s shit. It’s all a lie.

I think fragrances are important. They leave a mark on your mind in a way other things can’t.

Loving him will be my magnum opus.

A love like ours—? Are you joking?” I give her the magic smile. “We’re what the poems are about

His face cracks into the best smile I've ever seen and will ever see, because his face is... fuck The Mona Lisa, screw The Last Supper, never think of Michelangelo's David again—they all pale compared to him in front of me.

Memories are funny, don’t you think? Creep up on you, break through the ground of your mind like a weed, even when they don’t have permission to be there.

There's not much I wouldn't give just to have her next to me in it all, anything, really. Just not her life, and I'm pretty sure that's the going rate.

How many loves do you get in a lifetime? That’s a question I’ve wondered before … If you ask The Sun, I’ve had far too many, and in some ways that’s true, I have. But actually, I’ve only had two great ones.

What do I have to show for this life? Her. It’s her. Loving her. That’s all I’ve got, and he’s saying I’ve not even fucking done that well. Everyone has markers for their life. Ways they remember certain things and times. Stakes in the ground. She’s mine. My whole life, all dotted with and by things I remember about her. She’s how I frame the world.

Edith Whisker’s version of “Home” starts playing

What?” Henry shrugs. “Like, it’s ironic. Because BJ went home with the Anti-Parks, and Parks went home with the BJ deluxe.

Marsaili used to say something about how love can go sour like milk and then it turns to hate. Maybe we left our love out.

Touching Parks is like touching no one else. It’s like coming home.

Wherever she is, it’s good. I know it is.” “How?” I ask. He shrugs like it’s easy. “Because she’s there.

we keep losing each other, and it doesn’t seem to matter that we love each other how we do, which is with a fullness—kind of like those animals that will eat themselves to death if they’re left to their own devices. I’ll love him ’til I die, love him ’til it consumes me whole and kills me dead—so maybe love doesn’t conquer all but just some.

You can love someone and not have it rule you, not have it dictate your every waking thought and decision. You can love someone and still retain your power and autonomy. You can love someone and have it just be there, a part of you, and still have a completely functional life. Even if it's a life without them. Doesn't sound much like any life I'm interested in, actually.

Then the world goes to black. We lock eyes. And this sheet of impenetrable glass slides up from the ground between us. We can’t touch and we can’t talk and there’s nothing to say anyway besides him screaming through the glass that he misses me and me screaming back that I miss him too and him screaming that he’s sorry and me screaming that it’s not enough. Our faces are frozen in what feels like hopeless love but couldn’t be, because I don’t love him anymore. I cannot.

Mum used to say to me—when you pick who you want to be with, you have to imagine every part of life, every scenario. Good, bad, happy, sad, painful, beautiful—not just the person you want to do road trips with, but the person you want to be stuck in gridlock traffic with. Not just the person you want to have babies with, but the person you want to grieve with, the person you want next to you on the worst day of your life, at the funeral of someone you love, who's next to you? You don't need a fair-weather lover, you need the person that's going to stand next to you in their wellies, staring down the barrel of the storm.

The problem with me and Parks is, I think we love each other more than ourselves. Again, that sounds romantic but it’s not— Because if she loved herself more than she loves me, she’d have fucked off years ago.

I rolled my eyes, trying not to smile too much, trying not to mount him on the spot, trying not to melt into loving him accidentally.

I just never saw her coming, I couldn't have picked loving her out of a lineup

He's the moon, and I'm the tides.

She catches my eye from across the room, holding like our hands can’t.

She's my Mecca.

No guns at the dinner table. That's my one rule

He lets out my favourite laugh that feels like a cup of tea on a rainy day, and his face looks the kind of happy I always want it to with a smile that touches his eyes.

I’ve never felt like this and it’s now, right now, this exact second that I realise I am in love with Daisy Haites. And then it is immediately after, in that exact second, that I realise I’ve lost her.

She's on the back foot here. All girls are on the back foot when it comes to me and Parks.

And then I start laughing and she starts laughing, even though it’s not that funny because she hates it, so I hate it, but she dates and I fuck and this is what we do, so we laugh.

He is the drain in the centre of me where all the happy things fall through and that I feel his absence in everything.

I think it means something. Or maybe it doesn't and I just want it to because that would give all our pain a purpose.

WHAT ARE YOU SMILING ABOUT YOUR JEANS ARE FROM H&M FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

This is me tossing my hat in the ring,” he tells me. “Just so you know.

She doesn’t know that I’m a wolf and Parks is the moon whose name I’ve howled since I was fifteen.

Rummage through the drawer in my mind as fast as I can to find the words to tell her that I’m coming for her, I’m on my way back, that this is just the long way home.

Is it horrible or miraculous that you can feel that feeling so many times throughout your life? Miraculous you survive, horrible you live to feel the world slipping out from under you again.

I feel that it's important for you to know that even if I didn't love you in the sort of stupid, embarrassing way that I do; if I did, hypothetically, have a choice - I would choose you anyway.

I think if we all could have peeked behind heaven’s curtains at that moment we’d have seen those old Fates knotting our threads together, me and Beej, in this pure, sunny, inexorable, undoable way. I said knotted, not tied. Because I don’t know whether we’ll ever come undone. Not easily, anyway.

I'll miss him on my rainy days.

Trouble is, I reckon she’d let him. She’s always been a sucker for boys who look like the blonde one from Fast & Furious, and that’s this lad to a tee.

She is the goddess in the Botticelli clam shell, her eyes are the waterlilies in Monet’s pond, she is the hand of God reaching down to mankind. Klimt’s kiss is a portrait of us and I’m gonna steal it. Take it, make it mine, make her mine too.

Terrible days are sneaks, aren’t they? They love to lull you into a false sense of safety. Dress themselves up in the terrible mundane, make you think that everything’s okay when actually, nothing is.

You want a metaphor for it? Alright, here goes. I come from a good family, everyone knows that. My parents were great, roof over my head. I never wanted for much, really, and still. She’s the only home I’ve ever been interested in having. Her body is the walls, heart’s the ceiling. I’ll live here forever.

Over the mantelpiece she hung her own portrait up herself, that little minx. Best painting I've ever seen, too. Better than any woman anyone has ever painted in the history of time, a face I'd win battles for. A face I'd lose anything for. Even her. It's time.

There are all sorts of loves in this world, I know that now. I don’t know it completely—it’s not a full moon of knowing just yet, maybe at best I’m at the waxing crescent of understanding what I can about love. They say it conquers all, but does it? Can it even? All is so vast.

She knows. She always knows me, and I always know her, and it’s probably unhealthy and it’s probably fucked up because it’s not just that I can’t move past her, it’s that even if I could figure out how to do it—I wouldn’t anyway.

Isn’t it funny how pain and sadness can be forgotten for fleeting moments? Your brain gets a tiny bit distracted and it offers you the briefest moment of reprieve. The problem with those reprieves is that they aren’t real, and reality comes hurtling back. And then you have to remember all over again that your dad is dead

And he’s all surprised that I know his face, but what he doesn’t know is that how he looks in the morning time is burned into my memory and one day, when all this is over and we’re not hooking up anymore and he’s with someone else and I’ve figured out how to move on and past him and we’re not together anymore55 because I don’t think he has room in his heart to see me like that when all he can see is her, even if sometimes now it feels like maybe56 he could—even then, I will see his face when I close my eyes.

The universe, actually, is ablaze. The planets lose track of their orbits, the birds are poets now and all the songs written before this and all the ones that’ll come after this are about this moment; about how when we’re standing my ear rests right where his heart is, how one hand of his swallows a whole half of my waist. The beautiful nothingness of this, the most intimate moment of my life to date, a life that, actually, has been dotted with much intimacy and I think nothing will ever beat him resting his chin on top of my head.

Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally believed to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petrie dish of melodrama and distortion. I remember well, for instance, the blind animal terror which ensued when some townie set off the civil defense sirens as a joke. Someone said it was a nuclear attack; TV and radio reception, never good there in the mountains, happened to be particularly bad that night, and in the ensuing stampede for the telephones the switchboard shorted out, plunging the school into a violent and almost unimaginable panic. Cars collided in the parking lot. People sceamed, wept, gave away t heir possessions, huddled in small groups for comfort and warmth. Some hippies barricaded themselves in the Science Building, in the lone bomb shelter, and refused to let anyone in who didn't know the world to "Sugar Magnolia." Factions formed, leaders rose from the chaos. Though the world, in fact, was not destroyed, everyone had a marvelous time and people spoke fondly of the event for years afterward.