Magnolia Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Magnolia. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Somewhere beyond the sink-hole, past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
I am convinced that most people do not grow up...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 innocent and shy as magnolias.
Maya Angelou (Letter to My Daughter)
To be beautiful means to be yourself.You don't need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself. When you are born a lotus flower, be a beautiful lotus flower, don't try to be a magnolia flower. If you crave acceptance and recognition and try to change yourself to fit what other people want you to be, you will suffer all your life. True happiness and true power lie in understanding yourself, accepting yourself, having confidence in yourself.
Thich Nhat Hanh (The Art of Power)
He laughs and for some reason it sounds like I'm ringing the doorbell of the home I grew up in.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home (Magnolia Parks Universe, #3))
Margaret's voice, with its raspy twang, reminded her of magnolias and whiskey.
Deborah Leblanc (Toe to Toe (Nonie Broussard Ghost Tracker Series))
Painful things can still be beautiful things, in case you didn’t know.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
Our eyes hold like our hands won’t. I love you, he blinks. Prove it, I sigh.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
Don’t quit, and don’t give up. The reward is just around the corner. And in times of doubt or times of joy, listen for that still, small voice. Know that God has been there from the beginning—and he will be there until . . . The End.
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
I feel in colour, strong tones that I hue down for the comfort of the pastelly inclined. Beige and magnolia and a hint of pink are what the well-decorated heart is wearing; who wants my blood red and vein-blue?
Jeanette Winterson (Gut Symmetries)
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.
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing (Magnolia Parks Universe, #4))
Scarlet O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skin-that skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
I would rather have thirty minutes of wonderful, than a lifetime of nothing special.
Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias)
I might cry later, at home, while watching Steel Magnolias and dressed like a homeless person. Sometimes I applied mascara before crying just to heighten the experience.
Penny Reid (Love Hacked (Knitting in the City, #3))
Because she can only hate me how she hates me because she loves me how she loves me.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites (Magnolia Parks Universe, #2))
I told myself that I was going to live the rest of my life as if it were Saturday.
Chip Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
Like the magnolia tree, She bends with the wind, Trials and tribulation may weather her, Yet, after the storm her beauty blooms, See her standing there, like steel, With her roots forever buried, Deep in her Southern soil.
Nancy B. Brewer (Letters from Lizzie)
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
I always thought that the “thriving” would come when everything was perfect, and what I learned is that it’s actually down in the mess that things get good.
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
No se me importa un pito que las mujeres tengan los senos como magnolias o como pasas de higo; un cutis de durazno o de papel de lija. Le doy una importancia igual a cero, al hecho de que amanezcan con un aliento afrodisíaco o con un aliento insecticida. Soy perfectamente capaz de sorportarles una nariz que sacaría el primer premio en una exposición de zanahorias; ¡pero eso sí! -y en esto soy irreductible- no les perdono, bajo ningún pretexto, que no sepan volar. Si no saben volar ¡pierden el tiempo las que pretendan seducirme!
Oliverio Girondo (Espantapájaros)
Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion." (Truvey Jones)
Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias)
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
It’s up to us to choose contentment and thankfulness now—and to stop imagining that we have to have everything perfect before we’ll be happy.
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air--moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh--felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orleans, in the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this quality of breath, although here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, due to fumes expelled by tourist buses, trucks delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Street, a mass-transit motor coach named Desire.
Tom Robbins (Jitterbug Perfume)
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.
Maya Angelou (Letter to My Daughter)
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?
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass –but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind.
Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
The claw / Of the magnolia, / Drunk on its own secrets, / Asks nothing of life.
Sylvia Plath
It was such a blessing to find myself thriving in the middle of the pain. Unless you find a way to do that, there's always going to be this fake illusion that once you get there--wherever "there" is for you--you'll be happy. But that's just not life. If you can't find happiness in the ugliness, you're not going to find it in beauty, either.
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
April ended and May came along, but May was even worse than April. In the deepening spring of May, I had no choice but to recognize the trembling of my heart. It usually happened as the sun was going down. In the pale evening gloom, when the soft fragrance of magnolias hung in the air, my heart would swell without warning, and tremble, and lurch with a stab of pain. I would try clamping my eyes shut and gritting my teeth, and wait for it to pass. And it would pass....but slowly, taking its own time, and leaving a dull ache behind. At those times I would write to Naoko. In my letters to her, I would describe only things that were touching or pleasant or beautiful: the fragrance of grasses, the caress of a spring breeze, the light of the moon, a movie I'd seen, a song I liked, a book that had moved me. I myself would be comforted by letters like this when I would reread what I had written. And I would feel that the world I lived in was a wonderful one. I wrote any number of letters like this, but from Naoko or Reiko I heart nothing.
Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood)
Sometimes worrying about something is much worse than the actual thing you’re worrying about. So really, what’s the point in worrying?
Chip Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
Loving you was a good reason not to love anyone else.
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites (Magnolia Parks Universe, #2))
What a mind fuck it is to comfort the person who just blew your whole heart open with a rifle.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
If you can’t find happiness in the ugliness, you’re not going to find it in the beauty, either.
Chip Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
smile, It increases your face value
Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias)
Kill your television!
Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia: The Shooting Script)
I’ll wear it like a badge of honour forever that he loved me first, that he loved me at all.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home (Magnolia Parks Universe, #3))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing (Magnolia Parks Universe, #4))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites (Magnolia Parks Universe, #2))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites (Magnolia Parks Universe, #2))
Louie brought his new girlfriend over, and the nicest thing I can say about her is all her tattoos are spelled correctly.
Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias)
It's the great undoing of my heart as I know it.
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing (Magnolia Parks Universe, #4))
The only difference between us and the animals is our ability to accessorize!
Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias)
You're Central Park at midnight.
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing (Magnolia Parks Universe, #4))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
I want it to smell of magnolias instead of peanuts and I want my shoes to crunch on the same gravel that Lee's boots crunched on. There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses--bound for dust--mortal--
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Beautiful and Damned)
Have you ever looked at the bud of a magnolia flower? It’s a tight little pod that stays closed up for a long time on the end of its branch until one day, out of nowhere, it finally bursts open into this gigantic, gorgeous, fragrant flower that’s ten times bigger than the bud itself. It’s impossible to imagine that such a big beautiful thing could pop out of that tiny little bud. But it does.
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
I always said, “When things come against us we can either turn on each other, or we can come together and turn on it.” -Chip Gaines
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
You are ice and fire, The touch of you burns my hands like snow. You are cold and flame. You are the crimson of amaryllis, The silver of moon-touched magnolias. When I am with you, My heart is a frozen pond Gleaming with agitated torches.
Amy Lowell
I finally believed it was actually a beautiful thing to be unique and to be different.
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
Eternally sunny, then.” “Oh—” He grimaces. “Can’t promise that. Storms always come, they have to — brings balance.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home (Magnolia Parks Universe, #3))
Let me be clear now then, Daisy—” Gives me a tall look. “I am fucked up in love with you.
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing (Magnolia Parks Universe, #4))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home (Magnolia Parks Universe, #3))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home (Magnolia Parks Universe, #3))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites (Magnolia Parks Universe, #2))
How's the weather over there Parks ?
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home (Magnolia Parks Universe, #3))
I realized that my determination to make things perfect meant I was chasing an empty obsession all day long. Nothing was ever going to be perfect the way I had envisioned it in the past. Did I want to keep spending my energy on that effort, or did I want to step out of that obsession and to enjoy my kids, maybe allowing myself to get messy right along with them in the process? I chose the latter - and that made all the difference.
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
Colton’s grin made his dark eyes sparkle, and a flock of butterflies went off in her belly. This guy could be trouble. And she’d sworn off that.
Lisa Kessler (Magnolia Mystic (Sentinels of Savannah, #1))
I'd rather have 30 minutes of wonderful than a lifetime of nothing special
Julia Robers in Steel Magnolias
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home (Magnolia Parks Universe, #3))
She knows what she wants but won't compromise herself to get it. But she's feminine, like "Steel Magnolia" -- flowery on the outside, steel on the inside. She uses this very femininity to her own advantage. It isn't that she takes undue advantage of men, because she plays fair. She has one thing the nice girl doesn't: a presence of mind because she isn't swept away by a romantic fantasy. This presence of mind enables her to wield her power when it is necessary.
Sherry Argov (Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl―A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship)
At deception he means. Perhaps I am better than some, but every woman has a great deal of experience presenting herself as someone other than who she is, since no girl is ever everything the world wants her to be.
Sherry Thomas (The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan)
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
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,
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites (Magnolia Parks Universe, #2))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
I came to think of God as more of a gracious friend who was accompanying me on this journey, a friend who wanted to carry my burdens and speak into my life and shape me into who I really was and who I would become. When
Chip Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
I just sat there. I just held Shelby's hand. There was no noise, no tremble, just peace. Oh god. I realize as a woman how lucky I am. I was there when that wonderful creature drifted into my life and I was there when she drifted out. It was the most precious moment of my life.
Robert Harling (Steel Magnolias)
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
The peace of Manderley. The quietude and the grace. Whoever lived within its walls, whatever trouble there was and strife, however much uneasiness and pain, no matter what tears were shed, what sorrows borne, the peace of Manderley could not be broken or the loveliness destroyed. The flowers that died would bloom again another year, the same birds build their nests, the same trees blossom. That old quiet moss smell would linger in the air, and the bees would come, and crickets, the herons build their nests in the deep dark woods. The butterflies would dance their merry jug across the lawns, and spiders spin foggy webs, and small startled rabbits who had no business to come trespassing poke their faces through the crowded shrubs. There would be lilac, and honeysuckle still, and the white magnolia buds unfolding slow and tight beneath the dining-room window. No one would ever hurt Manderley. It would lie always in its hollow like an enchanted thing, guarded by the woods, safe, secure, while the sea broke and ran and came again in the little shingle bays below.
Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca)
If you can't put magnolia on a wall then there are always a million other colors you can use, if you can't pay your phone bill then just write letters telling them. I'm not playing down the importance of these things, yes you need money for food, yes you need food to survive, but you also need sleep to have energy, to smile to be happy, and to be happy so you can laugh, just so you don't keel over with a heart attack. People forget they have options. And they forget that those things really don't matter. They should concentrate on what they have and not what they don't have. And by the way, wishing and dreaming doesn't mean concentrating on what you don't have, it's positive thinking that encourages hoping and believing, not whining and moaning.
Cecelia Ahern (If You Could See Me Now)
I came to think of God as more of a gracious friend who was accompanying me on this journey, a friend who wanted to carry my burdens and speak into my life and shape me into who I really was and who I would become.
Joanna Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
I am merely at the midway point in the novel of my own life. On around page 250 of a 500-page tale and, given future medical advances, maybe even 200. There’s no reason why the next 250, 300, or even 350 pages will not be far more exciting than the first half.
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
How had his life changed so much in one day? He tipped his head to see her face. She’d changed everything. She’d said tonight was just sex, but he’d had that countless times over his long existence. Enough to know what they’d just shared was something new. And he suspected he’d never get enough.
Lisa Kessler (Magnolia Mystic (Sentinels of Savannah, #1))
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks: The Long Way Home (Magnolia Parks Universe, #3))
Keegan rested his forearm on the wheel. “If the spell is fading, you could’ve grown old with this woman. She never had to know you were the Quartermaster on the Sea Dog when it sank in 1795.” “All true.” Colton glanced over his shoulder toward the bow. “But every man she’s ever known has lied to her. I didn’t want to be another one.
Lisa Kessler (Magnolia Mystic (Sentinels of Savannah, #1))
and find what it is that inspires you, go and find what it is that you love, and go do that until it hurts. Don’t quit, and don’t give up. The reward is just around the corner. And in times of doubt or times of joy, listen for that still, small voice. Know that God has been there from the beginning—and he will be there until
Chip Gaines (The Magnolia Story)
A hundred years from now, folks will look back at this time period and think, Wow, what an incredible moment it must’ve been to be alive. Syrian refugees, human trafficking, climate change—the whole world is out there waiting to be saved. And you’ll have a grand adventure doing it, even if only in what you consider a small, locally based way. You know, you already have as a teacher.
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
He took her hand again, enjoying the spark of fire that lit through his bloodstream and led her through the fog toward River Street. Seeing the usually bustling area empty was equally beautiful and haunting. It brought back memories of earlier days. Centuries before cell phones and email. Back when his crew would drop anchor in the cloak of night and shanghai new crew members out of the pubs. Lifetimes ago.
Lisa Kessler (Magnolia Mystic (Sentinels of Savannah, #1))
She clung to the ropes. “I should go back. This was a stupid idea.” “Wait until you see Savannah from up here.” He clasped her other wrist, too. “Let go, Skye. I won’t let you fall.” She looked up into his eyes. “Putting my life in your hands is more trust than I intended on a first date.” His lips twitched into a tentative smile. “Didn’t know we were on a date.
Lisa Kessler (Magnolia Mystic (Sentinels of Savannah, #1))
Because my division watches immortals like your crew. It’s in the government’s best interest to keep tabs on people who could potentially be assets someday. Which is why I’m here.” He turned to Colton again. “I can use my contacts to locate the group holding the Holy Grail, but the American government can’t be tied to the recovery effort in any way.” “So what are you sayin’?” Colton held his breath. “I’m saying who better to steal it back than a band of pirates?
Lisa Kessler (Magnolia Mystic (Sentinels of Savannah, #1))
Paralytic It happens. Will it go on? ---- My mind a rock, No fingers to grip, no tongue, My god the iron lung That loves me, pumps My two Dust bags in and out, Will not Let me relapse While the day outside glides by like ticker tape. The night brings violets, Tapestries of eyes, Lights, The soft anonymous Talkers: 'You all right?' The starched, inaccessible breast. Dead egg, I lie Whole On a whole world I cannot touch, At the white, tight Drum of my sleeping couch Photographs visit me ---- My wife, dead and flat, in 1920 furs, Mouth full of pearls, Two girls As flat as she, who whisper 'We're your daughters.' The still waters Wrap my lips, Eyes, nose and ears, A clear Cellophane I cannot crack. On my bare back I smile, a buddha, all Wants, desire Falling from me like rings Hugging their lights. The claw Of the magnolia, Drunk on its own scents, Asks nothing of life.
Sylvia Plath (Ariel)
Most people didn’t see the beauty behind the everyday, didn’t enjoy the simple pleasures in life, didn’t stop and smell the roses … and just because these phrases were considered platitudes didn’t make them any less true. For you could belittle truth, lambaste it, deny its existence, but truth would always still be there, as unconcerned as the inexorably flowing Mississippi.
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
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.
Jessa Hastings (Magnolia Parks (Magnolia Parks Universe, #1))
meander, v. "...because when it all comes down to it, there's no such thing as a two-hit wonder. So it's better just to have that one song that everyone knows, instead of diluting it with a follow-up that only half succeeds. I mean, who really cares what Soft Cell's next single was, as long as we have 'Tainted Love'?" I stop. You're still listening. "Wait," I say. "What was I talking about? How did we get to 'Tainted Love'?" "Let's see," you say, "I believe we started roughly at the Democratic gains in the South, then jumped back to the election of 1948, dipping briefly into northern constructions of the South, vis-a-vis Steel Magnolias, Birth of a Nation, Johnny Cash, and Fried Green Tomatoes. Which landed you on To Kill a Mockingbird, and how it is both Southern and universal, which -- correct me if I'm wrong -- got us to Harper Lee and her lack of a follow-up novel, intersected with the theory, probably wrong, that Truman Capote wrote the novel, then hopping over to literary one-hit wonders, and using musical one-hit wonders to make a point about their special place in our culture. I think." "Thank you," I say. "That's wonderful.
David Levithan (The Lover's Dictionary)
John knew the best love stories were the ones that were never told. For no medium—no book, no poem, no play or movie—could ever tell a love story in its entirety, its full span and depth, from the exhilarating beginning to the tragic ending of all love stories. He didn’t mind if his life was forgotten—it had never occurred to him to want to be remembered—as long as he had truly lived, and to live life without experiencing one great love story was to not live at all.
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
Inside her mind, she felt increasingly adrift, as if their lovemaking had reached a realm that transcended the physical body. She saw herself float above her body, past her ceiling, through her roof, and higher and higher, the entire world pulsating and alive with sensations. Even these receded as she floated above her town, the pinpoints of the shop windows and car headlights downtown, then she was even higher, above the mighty Mississippi.
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
Except those images weren’t exact captures of reality. No, the Camera Eye was also suffused with what photographers called the Golden Hour—the gilt-tinted hour following sunrise and preceding sunset, when the world was awash with russet rays and even the meanest streets were aglow as if in an Arthurian legend. Every moment spent with John was like that, reality beyond reality. Richer, realer, rawer than reality. These were the moments she remembered most.
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
As she drove, she surprised herself with a sudden laugh. How blind, infinitely blind, she had been to think that men’s inability to see her forty-eight-year-old self was a regret or, worse, a failing on her own part. No, what it really was was a blessing, for that inability had separated the wheat from the chaff. The spotlight was indeed always there but only for someone perceptive enough, brave enough, mature enough to see it still shining above her head.
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
This has been her life for the past fifty years, this striving to help save the world a little bit, to push it just a bit farther into the right. This action was the only thing that sustained her during the hard times [when] only her purposeful life propped her up from total collapse, and she thought how strange that she had taught the morality play Everyman all those years but didn’t fully understand its central lesson or how true it was: We are our good deeds, and they alone will come with us into the afterlife.
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
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.
Jessa Hastings (Daisy Haites: The Great Undoing (Magnolia Parks Universe, #4))
I’m in love, aren’t I? She thought she knew the answer by how much she wanted to be there. Wouldn’t have traded being there for any other location in the world. Wouldn’t have traded it for all the exotic destinations flaunted in Pan Am travel brochures. Not Tahiti, not Monte Carlo, not Hong Kong. No, she wanted to be here, in this ramshackle market not a ten-minute drive from her humdrum house and life. Except it wasn’t a humdrum life anymore, was it? No, I’m at the most exciting place on Earth. The center of the world. The Roman Forum during the reign of Augustus Caesar.
Ray Smith (The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen)
Checking the address, he knocked on the door. The door opened a crack. “We’re closed.” He recognized those violet eyes. His throat went dry. “Oh. You again.” Her eyes narrowed as she chuckled. “You must have women throwing themselves at you with lines like that. What are you doing here?” “I came to see if Flynn Enterprises has made an offer to buy your property.” His gaze wandered against his better judgement. On his ship, she’d been wearing jeans and a t-shirt. Now her curves were covered by a quality replica of a pirate’s frock coat, complete with deck boots, a bandana covering her hair, and a single hoop earring. “Didn’t take you for a pirate earlier today.” “You seriously came over here to talk to a stranger about private financial information, and then you have the balls to comment on her work attire?” She raised a brow. “We’re hardly strangers.” He struggled to hold back a smile and offered his hand. “I don’t think I introduced myself earlier. I’m Colton. Colton Hayes.” She looked at his hand and finally opened the door. “Skye Olson. And apparently I’m a glutton for punishment.
Lisa Kessler (Magnolia Mystic (Sentinels of Savannah, #1))