Parker S. Huntington Quotes

I knew myself well enough to know I didn’t survive books. They tore me to shreds. I’d never met an inanimate object as talented at breaking hearts as a book.

Suicide is a war of two fears—fear of death and fear of the thing that pushes you toward it. The stronger side always wins. And if you lose, the penalty is death.

Adolescent love is the greatest pain of all. It teaches you the power other people have to destroy you.

I wish I had cancer. Or some other grand battle. Dementia, stroke, organ failure. If I lose those fights, I’m brave. But the thing I’m battling is my mind. And if I lose, they’ll just call me weak.

Sometimes, when I read, I realized I was happiest in a world that wasn’t mine.

If I tell you anything worth learning, it’s this. Love is the most expensive thing you’ll ever own. You pay for it with grief, tears, and a piece of your soul, but in return, you receive happiness, memories, and life.

The existence of a word proves that someone in the history of humanity felt the same way I did and gave it a name. It means we’re not alone. If there’s a word for what we're feeling, we’re never alone.

She was broken. I was destroyed. This had disaster written all over it.

Pain is growth. Fear is risk. You can’t be happy if you’re not growing and taking risks.

Ya’aburnee is Arabic for you bury me. It is the hope that you will die before your one true love because you cannot bear to live without them.

Don’t shrink yourself to help others grow.

It was a promise I shouldn’t have made. One that defied the hardest lesson I’d ever learned. Love is expensive. Its currency is grief. And sometimes, it costs more than you can afford.

Tears are the language of grief. And grief is the language of love.

Everyone will hurt you. The key to happiness is finding someone worth enduring the pain.

Even if it means I’ll never be the man you give yourself to, I’ll always do anything to protect you.

If you had to change yourself to be accepted, you didn’t need that person in your life in the first place. Because it wasn’t you they wanted to be with. It was their version of you.

you are breathing, and it is beautiful, and i am so grateful for that

if we could just stay this way forever, maybe it wouldn't hurt to breathe

Perfection is unattainable. It’s stained by the suffering required to chase it. Perfect is something you think with your head. Lagom is something you feel with your heart.

You’re going to be a headache, aren’t you?” “A headache?” I cocked my head. “You kidnapped me, you psycho. I’m not gonna be a headache. I’m going to be, at the very least, a deadly brain tumor.

You’re my favorite plot twist.

Love is just being there for someone. It’s that simple.

Because that was what we were, essentially. Authors of our own stories.

They say love is ten percent falling and ninety percent picking yourself back up. What they never tell you is how quick that ten percent passes and how long that ninety percent lasts.

He taught me strength. Most importantly, he delivered the cruelest lesson of all—there’s beauty in every beast. Thorns in every rose. And a love story can blossom—even from the carcass of hate.

Books. Rain. Libraries. Driving alone at night with my favorite playlist in the background. Traveling—mainly for the food. But the historic stuff is decent, too.

Opportunity lasts a moment. Regret lasts a lifetime

People assume strength is loud. In reality, strength is silent. It is resilience, the will to never surrender your dignity. And sometimes, the only person who knows strength exists inside you is you.

She tasted like sweet venom. Warm and cottony and dreamlike. Deadly toxic. Gorgeously addictive.

Lucy: Why do you want me to stay? Asher: Because I like you. Lucy: Why do you want me to go? Asher: Because I like you.

Falling in love makes you feel immortal. Don’t you want that?

You’re rich. We get it.” She yawned. “The only billionaires I like are fictional.

I liked being too much because it meant I was never too little.

Storms will always rage. Don’t run from them. Face them. Some things in life can only be learned in a storm.

I wasn’t concerned about your sex life because you were a patient,” he said casually. “I’m concerned about it because I want to fuck your brains out until you lose the ability to walk straight. Unfortunately for me.

Falling in love with you is like diving blindly into a book, not knowing it’s destined to be my favorite. Whatever’s more than love, I feel it for you. I am only ever going to be in love with you.

I’d never met an inanimate object as talented at breaking hearts as a book.

Love is the most expensive thing you’ll ever own. You pay for it with grief, tears, and a piece of your soul, but in return, you receive happiness, memories, and life.

Don’t succumb to the fire. Be the bigger flame.

She uncurled my fingers one by one and pressed my palm to my heart. “Hatred comes from here. When you hate someone, a piece of them is lodged in your heart. If you don’t let the hate go, you live with that person inside you forever.

Beasts were never born—they were made.

What you're experiencing isn't a dry spell. It's a dust bowl. Tell me, do you find cob webs in there every time you get yourself off?

Grief is a side effect of love. It lasts as long as the love lasts. You get used to the pain until you’re reminded it’s there.

I lean against the door, watching my wife exist. Loudly. Messily. Unapologetically. Just the way a woman loved is meant to bloom.

Is this how Julia Roberts' character feels like in Pretty Woman? Two parts princess, one part whore?

Here’s a life lesson I’d never wanted to learn. Our secrets are nothing but a string of memories we wish to forget.

The problem with books about suicide is they’re written by people who are alive.

there was something perpetually tragic about us. even in moments of peace. we were two empty planets, bound by grief and a gravitational pull neither of us could deny. destined to collide and end in a fiery death.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

i am infront of you, around you, in your head. and i'm here to stay

You're breathing, Charlie. You are breathing, and it is beautiful, and I am so grateful for that.

We may not be enemies anymore, Shortbread, but we will never be lovers.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. Winston Churchill

When I loved a book, I didn’t read it once. I read it over and over again—until the pages fell off, until I could anticipate the words before I read them, until they sunk into me and melted inside my bones in a way that never happened with books I’d only read once.

Tacenda originates from the Latin participle taceo for ‘I am silent’. Taceo is also the verb for ‘I am still or at rest’. Taceo reminds us silence isn’t a sign of weakness. It is a sign of rest, of certainty, of contentment. Silence is the best response to people who don’t deserve your words.

Love always wins. After every war, there’s a baby boom. After every storm, spring sweeps in and everything blooms. It’s always darkest before the dawn. Love is an effortlessly potent fuel. It is easier to maintain than hate. It doesn’t consume—it fuels.

He taught me darkness. He taught me strength. Most importantly, he delivered the cruelest lesson of all—there’s beauty in every beast. Thorns in every rose. And a love story can blossom—even from the carcass of hate.

It was difficult to reconcile the existence of fairness when Tate Marchetti had been born with an assault rifle for a cock. Thick, hard, and longer than should be legal.

It was the first moment I let myself admit I wanted to be fucked by Dr. Tatum Marchetti. Ruthlessly hard and mercilessly filthy.

The pendants unite two souls. Fate knows what we don’t.

You make my soul breathe fire, my beautiful dark desire.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. Lao Zi

Forgiving others is a myth. The only prisoner freed when you forgive someone is you.

I never really gave much thought to Fate, but every time I considered how hard the world must have worked to get our paths to intersect so many different ways, I became a believer.

Break me.” She stared at me like she wasn’t completely whole and didn’t entirely care. “Then put me back together, mismatched, scarred, and chaotic as this storm.

I'd been born with a spine, and I fully intended on using it. Flowers wilted. Girls didn't.

Bolt is a contronym—a word that is opposite itself. If you bolt something, you hold it together. If you bolt, you separate by fleeing. Bolt is a reminder that words were made by humans, and sometimes, humans make mistakes. Mistakes are powerful, not because they have the power to ruin your life, but because they possess the power to make you stronger.

I don’t want someone who holds an umbrella over my head when it rains. I want someone who doesn't even own an umbrella. Someone who watches me balter in the rain when they don’t know the word exists. Someone who stares at me instead of the stars in the sky.

Hiraeth is a homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was. It is the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past. I’ve always thought of it as the saddest entry in the dictionary.

If you keep staring at my cock with your mouth open like that, I’m going to take it as an invitation to enter.” My mouth watered. “Please, do.

You’re going to be my favorite mistake.

Balter?” “To dance—artlessly, with no grace, no skill, but always with enjoyment.

And, I realized, I love her. “Ask me the question, Tiger.” Her eyes fluttered open, not staring at me but into me. “Is this just lust?” “It's everything.

I feel like your soul and mine are made of the same stuff.

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. André Gide

People assume strength is loud. In reality, strength is silent. It is resilience, the will to never surrender your dignity.

querencia.

By the time we fell asleep, I’d planted flowers in Nash’s graveyard of haunted memories. Wilted ones, because those were me. And he watered them with stormwater, because that was him

Art is not stuff.” He put his hand over mine to stop me from tapping my knee. “It’s a person’s soul poured into material. Souls are priceless, Zach. Try to protect yours any way you can.

I do. Let’s cut the shit and stop pretending that we’re strangers. You never belonged with Reed, Little Tiger. He is domesticated. You are wild. To tame you would be a travesty. The sooner you get that, the sooner you can move on.

Finifugal originates from the Latin word fuga, for flight. It shows us that endings are fleeting. We may hate them. We may fear them. We may avoid them. But we don’t need to. Like sunsets, endings can be beautiful. The next morning, the sun always rises again, because there is no such thing as an ending, just a new beginning.

Ob-gyns don’t have the best dirty talk game in the world, huh?”My back was to Tate when he answered me. “Bet you all the pennies in your cheap little purse that I can make you drip cum on my face in less than ten seconds—before I even use my tongue or cock.

Dementia, stroke, organ failure. If I lose those fights, I’m brave. But the thing I’m battling is my mind. And if I lose, they’ll just call me weak.

When I sleep, I dream. When I wake, the nightmare begins.

I would let him ruin me as thoroughly and impressively as Elon Musk destroyed Twitter.

I like my things mine. Concealed from view. For my own private entertainment.

No, my precious Shortbread. That once broken, a heart can never mend. Function—yes. But you cannot repair something that is already in pieces.

Cages aren’t made of bars. They’re made of thoughts, expectations, and fear.

Thus with a kiss I die.

They say time dulls the pain. They lie.

If I had to boycott assholes out of my artistic menu, I’d be starved for movies, books, and songs.

Even the devil needs a friend.

her presence soothed me where i normally burned

I fell down on my knees. My hands hit the concrete, and I felt something. I picked it up, squeezing it in my hand. A penny. He’d left me a gift. His very own version of goodbye.

People are hardwired to believe charity is selfless. In reality, charity is giving to yourself by giving to others. That’s not selfless. That’s penance.

Nash reminded me of a favorite song. One you play so often you think you can't stand anymore. But in the silence, when the world is quiet and your brain is pliant, the chords repeat in your mind, and you remember it’s your favorite melody.

Moira is the idea that each person possesses a predetermined course of events that shapes his or her life. It is the idea that some events are inevitable—a person’s fate (every decision leading to the present) and their destiny (the future) is not always in his or her control.

Bolt is a contronym—a word that is opposite itself. If you bolt something, you hold it together. If you bolt, you separate by fleeing. Bolt is a reminder that words were made by humans, and sometimes, humans make mistakes. Mistakes are powerful, not because they have the power to ruin your life, but because they possess the power to make you stronger. The worst mistakes make the greatest lessons, and those who learn them… bolt. It’s your journey to figure out which bolt.

I love words, because they're mine. Utterly, completely mine. I can share them with others. I can keep them to myself. I can use them over and over again. No matter what I do, they’ll always be mine. No one can take them from me. Want to know what the best part is?” “I’m sure you’ll tell me.” “The existence of a word proves that someone in the history of humanity felt the same way I did and gave it a name. It means we’re not alone. If there’s a word for what we're feeling, we’re never alone.” “Tell

She was too narcoleptic to speak. Or move. How long had this been going on? Was she like this yesterday? Had I missed her illness in my quest to prove to my brain that my dick wasn’t the one behind this train wreck’s wheel? I touched her forehead again. It sizzled. “Sweetheart.” “Please get out.” The words clawed past her throat. “Someone needs to take care of you.” “That someone definitely isn’t you. You made that clear these past couple days.” I said nothing. She was right. I hadn’t bothered to check on her. Perhaps I’d wished she’d check on me. In truth, she’d already gone beyond any expectations in trying to make whatever it was between us work. Meanwhile, I’d shut her down. Repeatedly. “Shortbread, let me get you some medicine and tea.” “I don’t want you to nurse me to health. Do you hear me?” She must have hated that I’d seen her like this. Weak and ill. “Call Momma and Frankie. It’s them I want by my side.” I swallowed but didn’t argue. I understood she didn’t want to feel humiliated. To be taken care of by the man who ensured she understood her insignificance to him. How did her bullshit meter not fry? How could she think I really felt nothing toward her? “First, I’ll get you medicine, tea, and water. Then I’ll call for Hettie to stay with you. Then I’ll notify your mother.” I tugged her comforter up to her chin. “No arguments.” She tried to wave me out, groaning at the slightest movement. “Whatever. Just go. I don’t want to see your face.” I gave her what she wanted, though as always, not in the way she expected. The sequence of actions didn’t proceed as promised. First, I contacted Cara to dispatch the private jet to Georgia. Then I called my mother-in-law and Franklin—separately—demanding their presence. Only then did I enter the kitchen to grab water, tea, and ibuprofen for Shortbread’s fever. Naturally, like the chronic idler he often proved to be, Oliver still sat at the island, now enjoying an extra-large slice of red velvet cake I was pretty sure was meant to be consumed by Dallas. “What are you still doing here?” I demanded, collecting the things I needed for her. He scratched his temple with the handle of his fork, brows pulled together. “You invited me here. You wanted to watch a soccer game, remember?” I did not remember. I didn’t even remember my own address right now. “Get out.” “What about the—” I snatched the plate from his fingers, admitting to myself that I’d treaded into feral grounds. “This cake wasn’t for you to eat.” “You’ve gone insane in the ten minutes you were gone.” Oliver gawked at me, wide-eyed. “What happened to you? Did Durban not get her hands on the latest Henry Plotkin book and take her anger out on you?” Shit. The Henry Plotkin book. I shoved Oliver out with a fork still clutched in his grimy fist, dialing Hettie with my free hand. She half-yawned, half-spoke. “Yes?” “Dallas is ill. You need to come here and take care of her until my in-laws arrive in about two hours.” “Oh, yeah?” Her energy returned tenfold. “And what the hell are you gonna do during this time?” “Freeze my balls off.”(Chapter 58)