Malibu Rising Quotes

Nina understood, maybe for the first time, that letting people love you and care for you is part of how you love and care for them.

How were you supposed to change- in ways both big and small- when your family was always there to remind you of exactly the person you apparently signed an ironclad contract to be?

Family is found...whether it be blood or circumstance or choice, what binds us does not matter. All that matters is that we are bound.

Our family histories are simply stories. They are myths we create about the people who came before us, in order to make sense of ourselves.

Just because it is in Malibu's nature to burn, so was it in one particular person's nature to set fire and walk away.

Must be nice. To be able to be weak. I wouldn’t know.

She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.

She was a woman, after all. Living in a world created by men. And she had long known that assholes protect their own. They are faithful to no one but surprisingly protective of each other.

There’s no room for you in my life anymore. And I don’t owe it to you to make any space.

Alcoholism is a disease with many faces, and some of them look beautiful.

There was finally enough air within her for a fire to ignite.

But a good life is knowing people care about you, knowing you can take care of the people that count on you.

Too much self-sufficiency was sort of mean to the people who loved you, Kit thought. You robbed them of how good it feels to give, of their sense of value.

Maybe our parents' lives are imprinted within us, maybe the only fate there is is the temptation of reliving their mistakes. Maybe, try as we might, we will never be able to outrun the blood that runs through our veins. Or. Or maybe we are free the moment we are born. Maybe everything we've even done is by our own hands.

Nina didn’t hate Carrie Soto for stealing her husband because husbands can’t be stolen. Carrie Soto wasn’t a thief; Brandon Randall was a traitor.

Our parents live inside us, whether they stick around or not... They express themselves through us in the way we hold a pen or shrug our shoulders, in the way we raise our eyebrow. Our heritage lingers in our blood.

Small boundaries broken, snapped like tiny twigs, so many that June barely noticed he was coming for the whole tree.

But they were in love, the kind of love that hurts. They hit highs so high neither of them could quite stand it, and lows so low they weren't sure they'd survive them.

That is the thing about the water, it is not yours to control. You are at the mercy of nature. That’s what makes surfing feel like more than sport: It requires destiny to be on your side, the ocean must favor you.

She was a woman, after all. Living in a world created by men.

She knew it was up to her to say what had to be said. To do what had to be done. When there is only you, you do not get to choose which jobs you want, you do not get to decide you are incapable of anything. There is no room for distaste or weakness. You must do it all. All of the ugliness, the sadness, the things most people can't stand to even think about, all must live inside of you. You must be capable of everything.

Your whole world can be falling apart, she thought, but then Springsteen will start playing on the radio.

What a gift it was to know so clearly what you were not, who you did not want to be. Nina wasn’t sure she’d ever asked herself that question.

Accept accept accept. For so long, Nina had believed it was her greatest strength—that she could withstand, that she could endure, that she would accept it all and keep going. It was so foreign to her, the idea of declaring that something was unacceptable.

She missed the parents who had never truly understood her, missed the man who had never truly loved her, missed the future she thought she had been building for herself, missed the young girl she used to be.

Why take a chance on another book when I already know I like this one?

And I’ve been really sad,” Nina added. “That I…that I meant so little to someone who had made me believe I meant so much.

Hud would love his child the way his mother had loved him: actively, every day, and without ambiguity.

It was as if June had given her a box—as if every parent gives their children a box—full of the things they carried. June had given her children this box packed to the brim with her own experiences, her own treasures and heartbreaks. Her own guilts and pleasures, triumphs and losses, values and biases, duties and sorrows. And Nina had been carrying around this box her whole life, feeling the full weight of it. But it was not, Nina saw just then, her job to carry the full box. Her job was to sort through the box. To decide what to keep, and to put the rest down. She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.

Instead, Nina Riva stood on the edge of the cliff she'd never wanted, and looked out onto the water she wished was closer, and for the first time in her quiet life, screamed into the wind.

It was inevitable, wasn’t it? The small mistakes and heartbreaks of guiding a life?

Kit regretted every single choice she'd made that had brought her to this moment. This is what she had always wanted to avoid, being forced to pretend men were interesting.

Waves that beautiful are rare. That is the thing about the water, it is not yours to control, you are at the mercy of nature.

She knew that she could not sustain her life fueled only by the memories of those she once loved. Loss would not propel her forward. She had to go out and live. She had to find new people.

It was the beginning of a lesson her children would learn by heart: Alcoholism is a disease with many faces, and some of them look beautiful.

When there is only you, you do not get to choose which jobs you want, you do not get to decide you are incapable of anything. There is no room for distaste or weakness. You must do it all. All of the ugliness, the sadness, the things most people can’t stand to even think about, all must live inside of you. You must be capable of everything.

Men were bullshit - people were bullshit - and Nina was not going to live through bullshit white wearing high heels a single second longer.

Kit, particularly, grieved the way some people drink, which is to say: rarely but always alone and to excess.

She thought of her children like the magic grow capsules you got at gift shops at the science museum. These tiny little nothings that you drop into water and then watch as they slowly reveal what they were always destined to be. This one a Stegosaurus, this one a T. Rex. Except, instead, it was watching them become dependable, or talented, or kind, or daring.

Someone should tell them all, Nina thought, paradise doesn’t exist.

She was pretty sure she did not want to kiss any guy at all

Children who grow up with money have no idea it exists. But children who don’t understand that it powers everything.

I think the problem, Dad," she said, with an unexpected warmth in her voice, "is that your love doesn’t mean very much.

What did it take? To say exactly what you meant? To feel comfortable in the middle of causing discomfort? To not feel—so intrinsically as to be as vital to yourself as your blood—that it was your responsibility to make things smooth and pleasant for everyone?

You were born a piece of shit and you’ll die a piece of shit just like every other piece of shit on this planet!

She could see her mother in her body, could feel her in her heart, could sense her in everything she did, sometimes. The older she got, the more obvious it became.

What broken family—no matter how shattered be reunited? What child, no matter how lost or abandoned, does not ache to be loved?

We were born with magic in our hearts.

Every minute of your lives you were loved", he said as his chin started to quake. He put his hands together in a prayer motion and put them to his chest and said, "If I exist on this earth, someone loves you".

Our parents live inside us, whether they stick around or not, Hud thought. They express themselves through us in the way we hold a pen or shrug our shoulders, in the way we raise our eyebrow. Our heritage lingers in our blood. The idea of it scared the shit out of him.

The good thing about getting dumped by a dickhead is that you don’t have to deal with the dickhead anymore.

just as it is in Malibu’s nature to burn, so was it in one particular person’s nature to set fire and walk away.

I’ll always love you,” she said. “No matter who you are or what sort of life you want.

How were you supposed to change—in ways both big and small—when your family was always there to remind you of exactly the person you apparently signed an ironclad contract to be?

Mick married again, shortly after he divorced Veronica. The biggest star in Hollywood. It was a huge scandal, the talk of the town when they had it annulled the next day.

I’m just saying…I don’t come from any money at all. But I don’t think what you’re born into says anything about where you’re headed.

But I don't think what you're born into says anything about where you're headed.

Every day of your life feels like you’re climbing up the mountain. And then you get there and you stay for a bit. And it’s nice at the top. But then you start sliding down the other side.

If June didn't want her mother's life, then she couldn't take her mother's advice. Plain and simple.

As with most of their disagreements, they found the anger dissipated as soon as they forgot to hold on to it.

Letting people love you and care for you is part of how you love and care for them.

Dolphins had been swimming along the shore in Malibu well before she was born and they would be swimming along the shore here in Malibu well after she left, and she took comfort in that.

But when the lights went out that night, and all of them lay in their separate beds, staring at the ceiling, June knew that she, and Nina, and Jay, and Hudson all had lost something. They were now living with a different-sized hole in each one of their four hearts.

What a gift it was to know so clearly what you were not, who you did not want to be.

After all, her family had grown up. And wasn’t this the day you always looked toward? When the kids were grown and your life was yours to take.

Do you know how much a body can weigh when it falls into your arms, helpless? Multiply it by three. Nina carried it all. All of the weight, in her arms, on her back.

Small boundaries broken, snapped like tiny twigs, so many that June barely noticed he was coming for the whole tree. With every move Mick made, as he held her, as he kissed her, June lost sight of the exact moment to speak up and then resigned herself to the pain of having never spoken up at all.

And she had long known that assholes protect their own.

They had taught her that family is found, that whether it be blood or circumstance or choice, what binds us does not matter. All that matters is that we are bound.

There was no end to the stories people would tell about what happened at the Riva party, some of which Nina wasn't even sure were true.

It was inevitable wasn't it? The small mistakes and heartbreaks of guiding a life. His mother had screwed up as much as she'd succeeded.

Why were all of her mistakes that had been so hidden from her as she was making them so clear to her now?

People that are cool don't really need to play cool, do they?

She knew that childhood is made up of days magnificent and mundane. And this had been a magnificent day for all of them.

Nina, her entire life, had been programmed to accept. Accept that your father left. Accept that your mother was gone. Accept that you must take care of your siblings. Accept that the world wants to lust after you. Accept Accept Accept.

This boy needed someone to love him. And she could do that. That would be a very easy thing for her to do. She pulled him close to her, as close as she could, as close as she’d held her own babies the days they were born. She held him tight and she put her cheek to his head and she could feel him start to calm. And then, even before he was silent, June had already made up her mind. “I will love you,” June told him. And she did.

She didn’t have to do any of this. The victimization, the acceptance of bullshit, the leaving your heart in the hands of an asshole yet again. She could just decide not to.

They will not know what the future holds or if their paths will ever cross again. But they will feel that - for one night at least - someone has seen them as they have always wanted to be seen. And that will be enough.

To do what had to be done. When there is only you, you do not get to choose which jobs you want, you do not get to decide you are incapable of anything. There is no room for distaste or weakness. You must do it all. All of the ugliness, the sadness, the things most people can’t stand to even think about, all must live inside of you. You must be capable of everything.

But let’s be clear about one thing, you are not anybody’s father.” Kit looked at Nina, trying to catch her eye. But Nina would not break her gaze. She stared only at Mick. It would not be her that bent and broke anymore.

It was not easy being a parent. It was not easy raising your four children on your own. But what made June the most frustrated at her husband - her twice ex-husband - was that she had no one to swoon over her children with.

There should be a way to undo your fuckups. Not just redeem yourself for them but actually undo them, make them so that they never happened.

She just knew that, somehow, after everything that had happened in her life, she had ended up all alone on the front stoop, left behind by a man she had dared to trust.

June was gone. Yet here she was, living on through her children.

Family histories repeat, Nina thought. For a moment, she wondered if it was pointless to try to escape it. Maybe our parents’ lives are imprinted within us, maybe the only fate there is is the temptation of reliving their mistakes. Maybe, try as we might, we will never be able to outrun the blood that runs through our veins.

But she would welcome a certain type of man in particular: a good man, who was a nice guy, who didn’t play games and understood that her career was important to her, that she could never quit the business, that she was living her dream. A man that could give her an orgasm every night and not expect her to make breakfast in the morning.

What did it take? To say exactly what you meant? To feel comfortable in the middle of causing discomfort? To not feel(...) that it was your responsibility to make things smooth and pleasant for everyone?

Tarine could be completely and utterly obnoxious. But Nina simply didn't mind. She admired the way Tarine never pretended to be anything she wasn't, the way she was so confident in exactly who she had chosen to be, as if there were never any other option.

When there's only you, you do not get to choose which jobs you want, you do not get to decide you are incapable of anything. There is no room for distance or weakness. You must do it all. All of the ugliness, the sadness, the things most people can't stand to even think about, all must live inside you. You must be capable of anything.

You…you have done nothing despite how capable you probably could have been if you gave half a shit. But because you weren’t here, we learned how to go on without you.

It had brought destruction. It would also bring renewal, rising from the ashes. The story of fire.

She was overworked and overtired and lonely. She missed the parents who had never truly understood her, missed the man who had never truly loved her, missed the future she thought she had been building for herself, missed the young girl she used to be.

Nina was in it with all of her heart now, as only those who have been hurt and learned to trust again truly can be. It is as if once your heart has been broken you will learn the deepest reserves it carries. And she had given up her reserves as well this time.

Nina continued staring at Carrie but didn’t say anything. How was it that this woman could shout out every thought running through her head? Why was it that Carrie Soto felt so entitled to scream? In that moment, Nina was not mad or jealous or embarrassed or anything else she might have expected. Nina was sad. Sad that she’d never lived a fraction of a second like Carrie Soto. What a world she must live in, Nina thought, where you can piss and moan and stomp your feet and cry in public and yell at the people who hurt you. That you can dictate what you will and will not accept. Nina, her entire life, had been programmed to accept. Accept that your father left. Accept that your mother is gone. Accept that you must take care of your siblings. Accept that the world wants to lust after you. Accept accept accept. For so long, Nina believed it was her greatest strength - that she could withstand, that she could endure, that she would accept it all and keep going. It was so foreign to her, the idea of declaring that something was unacceptable. Nina thought of herself driving to someone else’s house to scream on their front lawn while a whole party’s worth of people watched. It was so impossible that she couldn’t even summon a mental picture. But Carrie had this fire within her. Where was Nina’s fire? Had it ever been there? And if so, when did it go out? Her husband had slept with Carrie last night and then Nina had taken him back this evening. What was wrong with her? Was she just going to accept it all? Just accept every piece of bullshit thrown at her for the rest of her life?

If they’d been at an out-of-control party in Compton, they would not have knocked. Leimert Park, Inglewood, Downtown, Koreatown, East L.A., Van Nuys, they would have walked right in. But this was Malibu, where the rich white people live. And rich white people get the benefit of the doubt and all of its many benefits.

The time came to put Iris Duarte back on the plane. It was a morning flight which made it difficult. I was used to rising at noon; it was a fine cure for hangovers and would add 5 years to my life. I felt no sadness while driving her to L.A. International. The sex had been fine; there had been laughter. I could hardly remember a more civilized time, neither of us making any demands, yet there had been warmth, it had not been without feeling, dead meat coupled with dead meat. I detested that type of swinging, the Los Angeles, Hollywood, Bel Air, Malibu, Laguna Beach kind of sex. Strangers when you meet, strangers when you part—a gymnasium of bodies namelessly masturbating each other. People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or to love. So they became swingers. The dead fucking the dead. There was no gamble or humor in their game—it was corpse fucking corpse. Morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience down through the centuries. Some morals tended to keep people slaves in factories, in churches and true to the State. Other morals simply made good sense. It was like a garden filled with poisoned fruit and good fruit. You had to know which to pick and eat, which to leave alone.

But it was not, Nina saw just then, her job to carry the full box. Her job was to sort through the box. To decide what to keep, and to put the rest down. She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.

Carrie knew, that in a few years, the memories would begin to fade. She might forget whether her father had spilled mustard or ketchup. She might lose the ability to recall the exact smell of Wind Song. She might even forget about the reading glasses altogether after a while, as much as it pained her to admit it. She knew that she could not sustain her life fuelled only by the memories of those she once loved. Loss would not propel her forward. She had to go out and live. She had to find new people.

And because June had not shrugged off his arm, Mick felt confident enough to kiss her neck. And because she had not shrugged off the small request, she did not know how to shrug off the larger one. And on and on it went. Small boundaries broken, snapped like tiny twigs so many that June barely noticed he was coming for the whole tree. With every move Mick made, as he held her, as he kissed her, June lost sight of the exact moment to speak up and then resigned herself to the pain of having never spoken up at all.

She cried until the sun started to set, until the birds settled into their trees. She’d have to tell her siblings he was gone. She felt embarrassed, thinking of how excited she’d been to take them to Bora-Bora. She grew cold, sitting outside in Brandon’s underwear. And then she stood up and dried her eyes. And she thought of June. She’d lived this all before, of course. Watching her mother go through it. Family histories repeat, Nina thought. For a moment, she wondered if it was pointless to try to escape it. Maybe our parents’ lives are imprinted within us, maybe the only fate there is is the temptation of reliving their mistakes. Maybe, try as we might, we will never be able to outrun the blood that runs through our veins. Or. Or maybe we are free the moment we’re born. Maybe everything we’ve ever done is by our own hands.