♡ Some favorite lines from the Magnolia Parks Universe ♡
Magnolia Parks
“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.”
“She looked at me, really looked at me. “I like your face.” Parks doesn’t remember saying that. But I remember her saying it. It set me on a course for life. I was high as a fucking kite for the rest of that day. Probably been
chasing that feeling ever since. And sometimes I wish I could go back in time and tell little me to fucking run—that this girl is going to ruin you, she’ll be all you think of, all the time, she’s going to bake biscuits, grind up your heart and use it for sprinkles, she’ll hurt you and you’ll hurt her, and you’ll never, fucking ever, get past her. But I can’t”
“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?”
Daisy Haites
“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,”
“It’s a hard thing about relationships, isn’t it? Doesn’t matter what type it is, if it’s worth keeping, sometimes you have to say shit you don’t want to, pry it out of your own mouth and toss it over a fence your mate’s building now because that’s what people do when you hurt them—build fences, raise walls, dig ditches, pitfalls, etc.”
“Memories are funny, don’t you think? Creep up on you, break through the ground of your mind like a weed, even when they don’t have permission to be there.”
“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.”
The Long Way Home
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“In another life I reckon I could have loved you.” I tilt my head, looking up at him. “In another life I would have let you.”
“We're fated Woven into the tapestry of the universe, my name right next to hers. We're in the stars.”
“I think it means something. Or maybe it doesn't and I just want it to because that would give all our pain a purpose.”
The Great Undoing
“It's the great undoing of my heart as I know it.”
“She is the goddess in the Botticelli clam shell, her eyes are the waterlilies in Monet’s pond, she is the hand of God reaching down to mankind. Klimt’s kiss is a portrait of us and I’m gonna steal it. Take it, make it mine, make her mine too.”
“His face cracks into the best smile I've ever seen and will ever see, because his face is... fuck The Mona Lisa, screw The Last Supper, never think of Michelangelo's David again—they all pale compared to him in front of me.”
“I love her more than I’ve ever loved anything and I thought I might have been able to angle it, find a way for us to work. A life between where I can be who I am and love her how I do and it not be the death of her, but it’s not on the cards. I’d be the death of her, and I won’t be.”
"Best painting I’ve ever seen, too. Better than any woman anyone has ever painted in the history of time, a face I’d win battles for. A face I’d lose anything for. Even her.”
“Isn’t it funny how pain and sadness can be forgotten for fleeting moments? Your brain gets a tiny bit distracted and it offers you the briefest moment of reprieve. The problem with those reprieves is that they aren’t real, and reality comes hurtling back. And then you have to remember all over again"
“I love him. He’s all I want. He’s all I think about. Everything I didn’t want or believe about love, I want and believe in it with him. And loving him has undone me wide open. But if time has taught me anything it’s that loving anyone when my brother is who he is, is a mistake.”
“you can ask anyone and they’ll tell you for free (even though the lesson itself often comes at great cost)—love isn’t enough, and it will hardly ever set you free.”
Into the Dark
“What do I have to show for this life? Her. It’s her. Loving her. That’s all I’ve got, and he’s saying I’ve not even fucking done that well. Everyone has markers for their life. Ways they remember certain things and times. Stakes in the ground. She’s mine. My whole life, all dotted with and by things I remember about her. She’s how I frame the world.”
“But you see, the thing about stars is that in another galaxy, that star is also a sun. “If it wasn’t him, it would be you,” I tell him, for better and for worse. He blows some more air out of his mouth and catches my eye. “In another life, yeah?” I nod and offer him a weak smile. “I’ll meet you there.”
“I feel that it's important for you to know that even if I didn't love you in the sort of stupid, embarrassing way that I do; if I did, hypothetically, have a choice - I would choose you anyway.”
“It’s the worst realization I’ve ever come to: how many people you’re surrounded by has absolutely no correlation at all to how alone you really are.”
“How many loves do you get in a lifetime—” She gives me a quick smile. “That is a question I’ve pondered on for a lot of years now . . . And I’ve come up with varying degrees of the same answer. That there are lots of different kinds of love that life may afford you the chance to experience over the course of one’s life—some terrible, some misguided, some well-meaning,
some dangerous, some wonderful but benign, some painful, some—when you lose them—are agony.” She sniffs and swallows. “If you’re lucky, you might get a great one, and I know I’m the luckiest, because I got two.”