Emery Lord Quotes

It was easy for me to be honest with him because there was nothing to lose.

Hasn't Daybreak shown me, day after day, that people can outlast unbelievable pain? That human hearts are like noble little ants, able to carry so much more weight than you'd expect.

Stop documenting the moment for a second, he told me. Just be in it.

Dee says that phrases in songs are like beads in a necklace – they should stand on their own, but they make the most sense together.

I'm looking for somekind of permanence, so my mark will linger on the world once I'm gone, in the places where I found joy.." -Page 81

I know this feeling of being a ghost in your own life - no one sees you, no one feels you, so you stay still as if you could actually disappear at any moment.

I don't remember that." He shook his head. "Of course you don't. You were in another world, completely occupied with whatever you were reading.

I was too tired, too sad, too much of everything.

But my mom says the best revenge is living well, and I believe her.

I'm going to spend my whole summer changing the expressions on Jonah Daniels's face.

I don't appreciate how often people hide their scars and doubts. Really, it's not fair to people who are struggling, to go on believing that everyone else just has it totally together and never has one bad thought in their lives. Like, I know you people sometimes lie awake at night torturing yourself over the atrocities in this world and morality and meaning. I know you're not just dreaming about riding a pink pony to your job as a cupcake taster.

Straining to hear, I can make out something acoustic. Coming from...the backyard?

I glance down from my bedroom window and feel my jaw fall open. Matt Finch is standing below my window, guitar strapped across his chest. I pull my window up, and I expect the song from that old movie - the one about a guy with a trench coat and the big radio and his heart on his sleeve.

But it's not that. It's not anything I recognise, and I strain to make out the lyrics: Stop being ridiculous, stop being ridiculous, Reagan.

What an asshole.

The mesh screen and two floors between us don't seem like enough to protect him from my anger.

"Nice apology," I call down to him.
"I've apologised thirteen times," he yells back, "and so far you haven't called me back."

I open my mouth to say it doesn't matter, but he's already redirecting the song.

"Now I'm gonna stand here until you forgive me," he sings loudly, "or at least until you hear me out, la-la, oh-la-la. I drove seven hours overnight, and I won't leave until you come out here."

(...) "This is private property!" My throat feel coarse from how loudly I'm yelling. "And that doesn't even rhyme!"

The guitar chord continues as he sings, "Then call the cops, call the cops, call the cops..."

I storm downstairs, my feet pounding against the staircase. When I turn the corner, my dad looks almost amused from his seat in the recliner. Noticing

Howidoono?" Dee tries to ask, but there's a mound of Brown Butter Almond Brittle ice cream on her tongue. "How did you know I needed this?" He gives her an "oh please" look. "I have a sister and a girl best friend. This is not amateur hour.

Matt's low voice, and Dee's hoarse giggling make a summer soundtrack I'll replay even when the tour is over.

You can ache for where you come from, and it's homesickness. A relationship, and it's heartbreak. But is there a word for missing your friends like that?

I'm not sure why I feel lonely instead of just alone.

Matt's still watching my face closely, as if nerdy glasses are going to manifest on my face.

This past year has been a lesson in letting go and holding on, and I don't know what to make of it. I guess I do know this: find a best friend, and hang on tight.

After all, once there was a girl named Lucy who loved her family, old and new.
It's not the type of love that ends.

Knowing what happens is different from knowing how it happens. And the getting there is the best part.

And I say a final last prayer, this one in gratitude that there are people in the world who will protect kids with a fire that makes them sprint after cars, fight systems, curse with rage. It's enough to make you believe. Maybe not in symbols; maybe not in gods. But certainly in people.

But the point is that trying to make things better sometimes makes us better, too. The point is I'm trying to create good things in the midst of the bad. Grief or no grief. And in my case, it's still somewhere in between.

I see it all through the lens of my camera - the flurry of movement, the venue staff in black T-shirts, giving orders into their headsets. As I take it all in, my mind weighs the texture, the composition, the possibility of each changing scene, and I struggle to hold back, to keep my finger from pressing too soon. That's my biggest flaw as a photographer. I'm impatient - trigger-happy. I want the shot now, now, now, click, click, click, and if I could just wait a second more, the moment would really flourish.

If you want to push someone away, I strongly recommend rambling about death and theology. That oughta do it.

In friendship we are all debtors. We all owe each other for a thousand small kindnesses, for little moments of grace in the chaos.

We stare down at the festival below us. I can hear the low pulse of a local band playing cover songs, the rustle of in the lake nearby, and the carrying laughter of kids our age eating cotton candy and flirting with summer loves. The sun has melted down to the horizon line, leaving trails of orange and pink in it's wake. In the distance, our hotel's roof peeks over the tree line.

I believe in nature, in science, in jazz, in dancing. And I believe in people. In their resilience, in their goodness. This is my credo; this is my hymn. Maybe it's not enough for heaven, and maybe I'm even wrong. But if I can walk through the fire and, with blistered skin, still have faith in better days? I have to believe that's good enough.

The point is that we already know it doesn't work out, but we reread them anyway, because the good stuff that comes before the ending is worth it." This

Seattle. It rains there a lot." Well, this is going great. Conversationalist of the Year. I'll just continue to recite basic facts about US cities until she wants to go out with me.

Some of the guys I've been with, they've tried to pin me down. They wanted to box me into the details, the wheres and whens and hows of our togetherness, and it always pinched my nerves that they needed to map out a plan for feelings. Other guys, they seemed totally content to let me prance in and out of their lives, relieved that they didn't have to agree to future plans, no concert tickets for a show later that summer, no prom tickets months in advance.

Love extra, even if it means you hurt extra,too

Whose empire did you just overthrow?" My own.

I wanted him for myself, but I want adventure for him, too - and for me.

I can't surround myself with people who are hiding their pain beneath swagger and a grin.

I vaguely remember a story about a woman who looked back while fleeing a broken city. She turned into a pillar of salt. A harsh fate, but I got the point. You can't look back when you're escaping disaster. You can't hope that someone will come after you, either.

So why do I wish I wish I wish I could take a picture of me and Jonah and send it to Ruby and Amala and say this is falling in love with someone GOOD and it is so good.

Because it's all so fleeting, isn't it? The ocean existed so long before us and will stay long after us - most trees, too, and some animals. Isn't that crazy?

I want to reach back into my history with a grade-school pink eraser, scrubbing away my decisions like mistakes on a math test. To bad I drew my mistakes in ink.

... you know that Sunday-night feeling, where the dread of reality sinks in, that you've mismanaged your time and now the anxiety of homework and the wasteland of early mornings and school stretches ahead of you? Well, I hope he has that feeling every minute of every day of his entire life.

Give your family kisses from me, will you? I think I fell for all seven of you a little more every day. But mostly you, Jonah. Mostly, madly, beautifully you.

Maybe in my next life, I'll be a wave in the ocean, and you'll be a mountain, and we'll spend years and years brushing up against each other. You'll shift so painfully slowly, and some days I'll crash right into you and other days I'll approach gently, licking your sides. That sounds like us, doesn't it?

I'm just so tired. I'm so, so tired all the time.' A tear slips down her face, all the way down till it drops off her chin, and she doesn't brush its trail away.
And I remember being in that jungle, lost in the darkest, wildest part of it, where fearsome beasts and carnivorous plants lurk between every tree. All I could do was lie down on the wet leaves. Bugs crawled up my legs, and I couldn't care enough to brush them off.

I don't mind being introduced to people's skeletons firsthand, in person. I more than don't mind it. I prefer to reach right into the closet and shake their bony hands and say hello for myself.

It's an understandable impulse, to be on the floor when everything is falling apart, like you just want to feel the solid ground beneath you. When you're on the floor, there's nowhere farther to fall.

I would crawl to wherever you were, emotionally, so that you wouldn't feel alone.

I close my eyes, trying to decipher how it feels.

I think I've loved you since that first day.

Dee's natural colouring looks like an American landscape - country-sky-blue eyes and hair the colour of Tennessee wheat fields, golden strands with darker undertones. My hair is nearly black, and I have jealous green eyes.

In a fairytale she'd play the good fairy. I'd be the evil witch's screwup second cousin.

I wasn't even looking for him, so why do I feel found?

Strawberry milk," I say, eyeing him as we head toward the counter. "Really."
He turns to me. "Do you have something to say about my snack selections?"
"Nope." I fall into line behind him. "I just didn't realize you were a middle-school girl going to a slumber party."
"And I," he says, plunking his strawberry-fest down on the counter, "didn't realize you were a soccer mom justifying her chocolate craving with the fact that raisins are a fruit.

It takes a long time to learn someone. It takes a long time to see a person as a whole spectrum, from worst to best - from the mismanaged heartache that lands them in AA to the pancake dinners, from the hurtful things shouted in a dressing room to the huge-hearted strength that only a best friend can understand. Once you get there, it's forever.

I watch the waves swell and break down the coastline, swell and break. My chest threatens to crack on the left side.
The heart is such a strange little beast - a lump of thick muscle with pipes sticking out. Sometimes I think my heart is made of rubber, and the world stretches it and twists so that it writhes in my chest and aches. This is why I have spent most of my time on this planet here but hurting. Sometimes I think a hear of porcelain would be easier. Let it drop out of my rib cage and break on the floor, no heartbeat, the end. Instead, I get a bouncy heart that bleeds when the world claws at it but keeps beating though the pain.

This is because she doesn't know about me picking a fight with Shruggy Jesus or rolling around topless with Lukas. My soul has already put on a blinker for the Hell exit, and now I live at hippie camp. That's like sending me into the express lane.

He said the measure of the man is in those decisions. Do you keep yourself and your family safe in harbor, always? Or do you move forward and brave the storms?

To the deepest, most cellular level of my being, I resent people who believe that depression is the same as weakness, that "sad" people must be coddled like helpless toddlers.

But life is not evens and odds and solving for x. And sadness? Sadness is an equation made of all variables.

There should be a word for this feeling: spectacularity or burstsomeness.

When his eyes land on me, something about his expression changes - like he recognizes me from somewhere, too. I look back, appraising him quickly. He's kind of beautiful, in an understated, comfortable-looking way - the kind of guy who doesn't mind seeing a rom-com with you and gives you his hoodie when you're cold.

And one more thing. You can cal them cute little songs, but that doesn't mean they're not honest. Those cute little songs are my way of dealing with everything you won't let me say to you. I have to be around you every single day, but I can't do anything about it. If I didn't channel it into somewhere, I'd be going crazy, alone on my tour bus thinking about you. And another thing...

Sometimes we get it wrong the first time. But you only have to get it right once.

Not even Dee's good influence could keep me from trying to hurt my parents the way they hurt me. At least that's what my court-appointed therapist thinks, and I hate to admit that she's probably right.

I also hate to admit that she's court-appointed.

Viv, I just made you wild-caught Alaskan salmon baked with mango chutney, on a bed of garlic red potatoes and arugula. While talking about an Audrey Hepburn movie. I think you are maybe falling in love with me.

Younger girls stand with their moms alongside countless girls our age in matching outfits - blazers and horseshoe necklaces and ballet flats.

I'd like to see everything for myself, doctor. The whole world.

We know there are three little words branded inside my heart: Jonah was here.

Every once in a while, her temper flashes. It's like she's exhausted from beating down her demons.

I also know that emotions come from the brain. So why do people feel real aches in their chests? Why does it feel like we carry every feeling in our cores?

Oh, you know I'm only human;
I bend and fall and break
You cut me and I bleed
I'm a mess for you to make
So forget the words and give me deeds
My heart was yours to take.

I'm a basket case, I thought. Who gets emotional over two letters?
But then I remembered that "no" also only has two letters.
Almost everyone in the world has cried over those.

I dig the toe of my shoe into the dirt. "It's complicated."
"Is it? Most complicated things in life are actually pretty simple at the core. We put so much extra nonsense in the middle that we can't even see how easy it really is.

Shit. I want that stupid song to be about me.

Do you want me to beg you? Do you want me to say please? Then this song is the rest of my pride, girl. This song is me down on my knees.

My eyes fill, hot with tears. Because, apparently, casual crying is just something that I do now.

He's the 'him' in every sentence that really matters; he's the 'he' in every song.

I wondered how we looked to the rest of the world. Young and silly, probably. I often had the distinct feeling that strangers watched us with annoyance, teenage girls with cotton candy lives. They could think that - that we were frothy and carefree. Would they ever guess how strong we were from carrying each other?

I struggle to maintain a facade of only mild interest in him.

So maybe I don't know what'll happen. But it's nice to have someone to not know with you.

I think I might love you too.

Oh, please. You do.

I'm a taped-together girl, but I can carry my own baggage.

He grinned. "I knew you loved me, Tessa."

Tessa's cheeks reddened. "One more word, and I WILL have Morgan give you the consent lecture.

I felt so sad that it felt like my rib cage was collapsing in on itself.

This is the currency of friendship, traded over years and miles, and I hope it's an even exchange someday. For now, I do what all best friends do when there's nothing left to say. We lie together in all the darkness, shoulder to shoulder, and wait for the worst to be over.

But what I really need is to fucking SCREAM because this feels like a war that I got thrown into, and I don't know how I can be so tired and mad at the same time.

More of my life has been affected by his absence than his presence, and that's a strange thing to deal with.

Because I've been having a hard time since before the day we met. She never walked away from me because of it. Her feelings for me weren't contingent on how easy or hard it was to be in my life. She doesn't have to be sunny for me. That's not how it works.

Should have, should have, should have. I'm sick of those words biting at my ankles no matter where I walk.

Like you had been drowning, and the book was air.

After all, the night sky is a mess of stars -- a million fireflies crammed into infinity. But the mess becomes a map once you know how to use it.

I want to find her in this sadness the way she did for me.
...
I have the overpowering urge to make comfort food for her. This is a legacy my dad left me. The hardwired impulse to feed people.

It's been the longest time
Since I've been in this place,
Where I spend my whole day
Hoping I'll see your face.
Then I script things to say,
And maybe what you'd say back.
You don't know it yet,
But, girl, it's a fact

That I can see us
Staying up late,
Talking all night,
But I guess I'll have to wait.
'Cause it's brand-new,
Yeah, I know we just met.
I want to be there with you,
But not just yet.

Girl, you've got that look,
Like you're hard to impress.
So I'm bumbling with words,
'Cause my mind is a mess.
You were out of the blue
And you caught me by surprise,
With a slight smile, that long stare,
And a challenge in your eyes

I could feel all this
In that single look,
Like you could see my soul.
You could read me like a book,
And I think it's something.
Though I know we just met,
I'm gonna get there with you.
You just don't know it ... yet.

I almost try to explain another untranslatable word--sunyata--to Jonas. The idea has Buddhist roots and several meanings, depending on context. I think emptiness is the closest word, but, in English, we infer emptiness as a void, a lack. Sunyata is open with possibility, a meditative space.

Laughter feels like our flotation device -- it won't pull us out of the storm, but it might carry us through, if we can just hang on.

And just like that, we're on our way to everywhere

I always think I don't believe in God because I don't go to church and I don't care what people do as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. But if that's true, then why do I mumble to a higher being sometimes? Please help me, I ask sometimes.

Later in my room, I lift up my dress and twist to see the rainbow splotch of lotus on my side. And it occurs to me, what if I stopped hating it? What if the tattoo and the scar and this summer's freckles are my patina? Wabi-Sabi says rust and faded paint hold beauty. So what if I let these marks be passport stamps from where I've been - one's that don't determine a damn thing about where I'm going next?

Everything else will fall into place. Just live your life.

It's too damn hard to watch someone else get what you want.

I think about boats, how they're powerful but so delicate compared to the fickle sea. I think about lighthouses, about safe mooring and how easy it is to crash.

It's like being at an animal shelter, where I want to be the one the most skittish dog takes a liking to.

Because I've recently learned, in a very painful way, that life is short. And I don't want to waste my time with anyone who would make me feel...happy enough." He pauses,searching my face. "I'd rather duke it out with someone who makes me feel everything.