Rainbow Rowell quotes:

I'm not complaining about my cell phone - all my friends are in there, and all my favorite songs and all my favorite Benedict Cumberbatch GIFs; I don't want to give it up. But cell phones are the worst for talking on the phone.

In some cases, she was actively trying not to make friends, though she usually stopped short of being rude. (Uptight, tense, and mildly misanthropic? Yes. Rude? No.)

A landline is an anchor - busy signals, long distance bills, missed connections and all.

I like science fiction, I like fantasy, I like time travel, so I had this idea: What if you had a phone that could call into the past?

I find love stories satisfying when you can see the work - when you can really watch people find each other and fall in love, a little bit at a time. I like slow burns. Falling in love is so good; why would you want to rush it?

I can't seem to help writing love stories. I definitely crave romance. When I was young, I craved romance in books, but I didn't want to read just romance - love plays such a big part in our lives, it shouldn't be cut out and restricted to its own fiction.

It's very difficult, I think, especially on two cellphones, to have a romantic conversation.

You can be Han Solo," he said, kissing her throat. "And I'll be Boba Fett. I'll cross the sky for you.

Attraction is what happens between you. It's not universal. And it's not conventional. And thank God for that.

Having a conversation on a landline is more intimate than talking to someone in person. Your voices are so clear and close - you're in each other's heads.

I definitely had a hard time leaving for college because I'm not much of a risk-taker.

I think, when I was younger, I believed in - and yearned for - conventional beauty. I thought there was a spectrum from ugly to beautiful, and that you could objectively plot everyone you saw along it.

I love you more than I hate everything else.

When I watch a romantic comedy, I feel like they're selling something that doesn't exist. Two beautiful, but extremely unpleasant, people are terrible to each other for an hour, accidentally kiss, then decide to like each other during an extremely vague montage. That isn't how people fall in love.

With 'Attachments,' my goal was to write a really good romantic comedy. I wanted the reader to be smiling throughout.

When you actually fall in love, no one sees that other person the way that you do.

I was in my mid 20s when email finally took off. Until then, the phone was my primary way of connecting with the people in my life.

Everytime, he breaks your heart. And everytime, he expects me to pick up the pieces.

Every time, he breaks your hearts. And every time, he expects me to pick up the pieces.

I really am happy for Kiley. And for you and every other happily married lady. Except for that I'm not happy for you. I kind of want you all to drop dead.

I feel like some sort of fiction-writing hobo, jumping trains and always hoping I'll find a good place to start a fire in the next town. And I keep having these panicky episodes where I corner my husband and rant at him: 'I don't have anywhere to write! I can't write! I don't have a place to write!'

Kids took a fathomless amount of time and energyAnd they took it first. They had right of first refusal on everything you had to offer. p220

Her heart leapt out to him before she could stop it.

She thought of the way he never made made her feel crazy, even when she was acting crazy, and never made her feel like a failure, even when she was failing.

Georgie pretended to dance. She clung to Neal's shirt. They rubbed their noses together. You're my wife, Neal said, and then he laughed, and she tried to catch his dimples with her teeth. (Like if she caught them she might get to keep them.)Yours, she said.

King of grand gesture.

But I don't want to write my own fiction,' Cath said, as emphatically as she could. 'I don't want to write my own characters or my own worlds -- I don't care about them. . . . I'd rather pour myself into a world I love and understand than try to make something up out of nothing."

You've read the books?""I've seen the movies."Cath rolled her eyes so hard, it hurt. (Actually.) (Maybe because she was still on the edge of tears. On the edge, period.) "So you haven't read the books.""I'm not really a book person.""That might be the most idiotic thing you've ever said to me"

Lincoln?" she (Beth) asked."Yes?""Do you believe in love at first sight?"He made himself look at her face, at her wide-open eyes and earnest forehead. At her unbearably sweet mouth."I don't know," he saidDo you believe in love before that?"Her breath caught in her throat like a sore hiccup.And then it was too much to keep trying not to kiss her."

...and his eyes were so green they could turn carbon dioxide into oxygen."

There are other people on the Internet. It's awesome. You get all the benefits of 'other people' without the body odor and the eye contact.

I always get lost in the library,' he said, 'no matter how many times I go. In fact, I think I get lost there more, the more that I go. Like it's getting to know me and revealing new passages.

Dumb. He should have gotten the pen. Jewelry was so public... and personal, which was why he'd bought it. He couldn't buy Eleanor a pen. Or a bookmark. He didn't have bookmarklike feelings for her.

Oh, I love period dramas, especially period dramas starring Colin Firth. I'm like Bridget Jones if she were actually fat." "Oh... Colin Firth. He should only do period dramas. And period dramas should only star Colin Firth. (One-star upgrade for Colin Firth. Two stars for Colin Firth in a waistcoat.) "Keep typing his name, even his name is handsome.

Everybody drinks," she said calmly. The Only Rational One. "Your sister doesn't." When rolled her eyes. "Forgive me, but I'm not going to spend my college years sitting soberly in my dorm room, writing about gay magicians." "Objection," Cath said, reaching for a burrito.

October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup. October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!

So...I'm larking through the Baby Gap, looking at tiny capri pants and sweaters that cost more than ... I don't know,more than they should. And I get totally sucked in by this ridiculous, tiny fur coat. The kind of coat a baby might need to go to the ballet. In Moscow. In 1918. To match her tiny pearls.

She didn't have words for what Levi was. He was a cave painting. He was The Red Ballon. She lifted her heels and pulled him forward until his face was so close, she could look at only one of his eyes at a time. "You're magic," she said.

He'd stopped trying to bring her back. She only came back when she felt like it anyway, in dreams and lies and broken-down deja-vu.

Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.

It's our last chance. No. No, I can't... I, no, I need to believe that it isn't our last chance... Eleanor? Can you hear me? I need you to believe it, too.

He wished that they could go through life like this. That he could physically put himself between Eleanor and the world.

For the first time in weeks, Park didn't have that anxious feeling in his stomach on the way home from school, like he had to soak up enough Eleanor to keep him until the next day.

He made her feel like more than the sum of her parts.

Nothing before you counts," he said. "And I can't even imagine an after." She shook her head. "Don't." "What?" "Don't talk about after." "I just meant that... I want to be the last person who ever kisses you, too.... That sounds bad, like a death threat or something. What I'm trying to say is, you're it. This is it for me.

He looked like someone with a steerage ticket on the titanic. Somebody who'd be standing in line at Ellis Island. Undiluted and old-blooded. Also cute.

You flirt with everything." She could tell that her eyes were popping-- her eyeballs actually felt cold around the edges. "You flirt with old people and babies and everybody in between.

She smiled, and her eyes started to drift downward. "Cather..." Back up to his eyes. "You know that I'm falling in love with you, right?

I want everyone to meet you. You're my favorite person of all time.

To really be a nerd, she'd decided, you had to prefer fictional worlds to the real one.

I'm the Cool One," she told herself. "Somebody give me some tequila because I'll totally drink it. And there's no way you're going to find me later having a panic attack in your parents' bathroom. Who wants to French-kiss?

You think I'm cute?" He said thinkly, pulling on her hand. She was glad he couldn't see her face. "I think you're..." Beautiful. Breathtaking. Like the person in a Greek myth who makes one of the gods stop caring about being a god.

Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.

I look like a hobo?" "Worse," he said. "Like a sad hobo clown." "And you like it?" "I love it." As soon as he said it, she broke into a smile. And when Eleanor smiled, something broke inside of him. Something always did.

I want someone whose heart is big enough to hold me.

If you don't want people to look at you, Park had thought at the time, don't wear fishing lures in your hair. Her jewelry box must look like a junk drawer.

Cath wanted to go back and rewrite every scene she'd ever written about Baz or Simon's chests. She'd written them flat and sharp and hard. Levi was all soft motion and breath, curves and warm hollows. Levi's chest was a living thing.

When Cath's eyes closed, her eyelids stuck. She wanted to open them. She wanted to get a better look at Levi's too-dark eyebrows, she wanted to admire his crazy, vampire hairline--she had a feeling this was never going to happen again and that it might even ruin what was left of her life, so she wanted to open her eyes and bear some witness.

Levi's smile broke free and devoured his whole face. It started to devour her face, too. Cath had to look away.

Levi's eyebrows were pornographic. If Cath were making this decision just on eyebrows, she would have been "up to his room" a long time ago.

He already knows what I look like," Cath said. "There's no point in being tricky about it now." "How is doing your hair--and maybe putting on some lip gloss--being tricky?" "It's like I'm trying to distract him with something shiny.

Don't make me angry-kiss you.

You think that holding someone hard will bring them closer. You think that you can hold them so hard that you'll still feel them, embossed on you, when you pull away. Every time Eleanor pulled away from Park, she felt the gasping loss of him.

Ophelia was bonkers, right? And Juliet was what, a sixth-grader?

I couldn't love anyone more than I do you, it would kill me. And I couldn't love anyone less because it would always feel like less. Even if I loved some other girl, that's all I would ever think about, the difference between loving her and loving you.

Cath wished she didn't use the word "just" so much. It was her passive-aggressive tell, like someone who twitched when they were lying.

Real life was something happening in her peripheral vision.

I'm afraid," Professor Piper said, "afraid that you're never going to discover what you're truly capable of. That you won't get to see-that I won't get to see-any of the wonder that's inside of you.

Like, really like you. And i want that kiss to have been the start of something. Not the end.

Nothing was dirty. With Park.Nothing could be shameful.Because Park was the sun, and that was the only way Eleanor could think to explain it.

...and his eyes were so green they could turn carbon dioxide into oxygen.

You looked like the girl I loved.

Miniature Emilie came along. Lincoln could tell she was watching him, but he tried not to encourage her. He didn't want to betray Beth. They wouldn't let you ride Splash Mountain, he thought.

When she and Wren divided up their clothes, Wren had taken anything that said "party at a boy's place" or "leaving the house." Cath had taken everything that said "up all night writing" or "it's okay to spill tea on this."" (pg. 189)

It made her want to have his babies and give him both her kidneys.

I dare you to call Ask-A-Nurse and tell them you feel a presence in your womb region.

Sometimes she wondered if the shape of his eyes affected how he saw things. That was probably the most racist question of all time.

I'm extra-good at wanting things. I want things until I feel sort of sick about them. I want enough for two normal people, at least.

Looks like somebody's got jungle fever.''That's not even the right kind of racist.

My girlfriend is sad and quiet and keeps me up all night worrying about her.

I didn't know someone could love me like this," she said. "Could love me and love me and love me without...needing space."Lincoln wasn't asleep. He rolled on top of her."There's no air in space," he said.

She could have just told him about the magic phone. Full disclosure. Then they could have solved it together. They could have Sherlocked and Watsoned from both endsof the timeline.

Neal huffed. Frustrated. "I hate that you thought I wouldn't call--I hate that everything is so tentative between us right now. When did everything get so tentative?

You look like a protagonist.

She wanted to lose herself in him. To tie his arms around her like a tourniquet.If she showed him how much she needed him, he'd run away.

He's mad at me.""For what?""For not being like him."Eleanor looked dubious. "Has he been mad at you for the last sixteen years?""Basically.

She had the kind of smile you see in toothpaste commercials, where you can see practically all of somebody's teeth. She should smile like that all the time, Park thought; it made her face cross over from weird to beautiful. He wanted to make her smile like that constantly.

Levi was smiling. He kicked her chair again.

The snow came up to the top of Georgie's calves - she had to lift her feet high to make any progress. Her ears and eyelids were freezing...God, she'd never even been able to imagine this much cold before. How could people live someplace that so obviously didn't want them?

I'm genetically programmed to be a terrible person.

Make that: no one I ever wanted to kiss wanted to kiss a fat girl.

What would it be like to hold a different girl?

Every woman wants a man who'll fall in love with her soul as well as her body.

And in those moments, Park thought about pulling back from her."Not breaking up with her. That phrase didn't even seem to apply here. Just . . . erasing away. Recovering the six inches between them

It was the nicest thing she could imagine. It made her want to have his babies and give him both of her kidneys.

Can't you just like a girl who likes you back?''None of them likes me back. I may as well like the one I really want.

The first time he'd held her hand, it felt so good that it crowded out all the bad things. It felt better than anything had ever hurt.

She started dialing his cell, then hung up and tried the landline -- maybe Margaret was a better bet to pick up; their parents' generation still felt morally obligated to answer phones.

He'd stop trying to bring her back.

I think he just gets like this sometimes. Like he needs to pull away. I think of it like winter. During winter, it isn't that the sun is gone (or cheating on you with another planet). You can still see it in the sky. It's just farther away.

I didn't know love could leave the lights on all the time.

Sunshine gives me a headache

The ultimate act of heroism shouldn't be death.

Nick wanted to meet on campus at Love Library. (That was the actual name; thank you for your donation, Mayor Don Lathrop Love.)

I think of it like winter. During winter, it isn't that the sun is gone (or cheating on you with some other planet). You can still see it in the sky. It's just farther away.

She had five tapes from him now - which meant, if her batteries lasted, she had four hundred and fifty minutes to spend with Park in her head, holding his hand.

Best of all, she had Park's songs in her head - and in her chest, somehow.

It was terrible music to dance to; all you could really do was nod and hunch to the music. The girls all looked like they were listening to the same sad story. "Yes, yes, yes, that's awful. Yes, yes, yes.

I also knew that music was pretty much the only thing in life that he felt was worth the hassle.

I'm sorry about yesterday," she said.He hung on to his straps and shrugged. "Yesterday happens.

I'm sorry Penelope." "Don't waste my time with sorries,Simon.If we stop to apologize and forgive each other every time we step on each other's toes,we'll never have time to be friends.

You are very kind," he said. "Very wrong, but very kind.

Hey,' he said. It came out hard and frustrated. 'I told you to smile because you're pretty when you smile.' She walked to the bottom of the steps, then looked back at him. 'It'd be better if you thought I was pretty when I don't.

That was the beauty in stacking up words--they got cheaper, the more you had of them.

Your trash can is full of energy bar wrappers." "You were looking through my trash?

What if I promise not to touch you?" "Cath laughed. "Now I have zero incentive to come." "What if I promise to let you touch me first?" "Are you kidding? I'm the untrustworthy person in this relationship. I'm all hands." "I've seen no evidence of that, Cath." "In my head, I'm all hands." "I want to live in your head.

So, what if, instead of thinking about solving you whole life, you just think about adding additional good things. One at a time. Just let your pile of good things grow.

You saved me life, she tried to tell him. Not forever, not for good. Probably just temporarily. But you saved my life, and now I'm yours. The me that's me right now is yours. Always.

(Because being assaulted with maxi pads is a great way to win friends and influence people.)

My favorite Starbucks is nice - Omaha Starbucks stores tend to be friendlier than big-city ones, and the baristas are especially lovely at mine - but it's still a Starbucks.