70 Quotes by Grace Curley

What do you want?”The question stunned him. He could say he wanted nothing, that he felt like nothing, that he counted the days until darkness. Hecould say: Happiness beyond all worlds! A life of peace and love, entire and whole! He could say he wanted everything and nothing all at once. He thought for a moment, as the birds sang in the trees, of how often he felt like this.

Imperfect. Beautiful. The most extraordinary thought of all.

Her smile cut sharper than a knife’s edge.

The words would circulate through the wintry air, and not even a little bit of time would pass before he would awaken again, in the morning, with his hands clutched to his chest and his throat stinging of pure joy.

Either way, his dreams were filled with bronzed faces and heavenly wings, hallucinating millions of eyes and Angels staggering on tenement rooftops, screaming unworldly oaths over the tops of cities, and drowning in their imagination.

But there would also be a time when these fears would slowly ease—when the need to constantly lock and hide and protect would soften, and she would no longer startle at the gentle passing of fingertips on her back in the morning, or a playful jostle of her shoulder by a laughing girl. These things she hoped for, and knew would come. These things she held closest to her heart, like the first peak of sun over a mountain that whispered: You can have this. You can keep this. You deserve this. 

And once and for all; Lincoln knew to his sorrow, further and further, what it meant to love against reason, against hope, against duty, against moral, against promise, against expectation, against any obstacle that could be.

You cannot find peace by avoiding life, you know.” His mother smiled at him and sat across the table, spreading her papers around as if they were a tablecloth made of silken letters.

Their gazes locked, and together they saw the squandered mirages slain beneath their feet, cemeteries of lonesome dreamers who gave up their wings under the name of love, salt-soaked kisses half-forgotten and twice-remembered.