Leylah Attar QUOTES

101 " My eyelids drooped, but I didn’t want to miss any of it—the way his fingertips were tracing the outline of my lips, the way his beautifully proportioned body felt against mine, the flecks of harvest gold in his sky-blue eyes. “Remember this.” He brushed the hair off my neck and breathed a kiss there. “When you’re curled up with your books on a rainy afternoon in England, remember how you painted my world with your colors. Remember your rainbow halo.” “I will.” A hot ache grew in my throat. He was already saying goodbye. “I’ll remember. For the rest of my life. "

― Leylah Attar , From His Lips (53 Letters for My Lover, #1.5)

103 " Black was One. There were no shades to black. Black was absolute, impenetrable. Black absorbed all the colors. If you fell into black, it swallowed you whole. Yet here was a different kind of black. It was black ice and burning coal. It was well-water and desert night. It was dark tempest and glassy calm. It was Black battling Black, opposite and polar, and yet still . . . all black. "

― Leylah Attar , The Paper Swan

105 " Hate was an illusion, rage was an illusion, vengeance was an illusion. They were all empty husks that he had watered and nurtured, and in the end, they bore no fruit. "

― Leylah Attar , The Paper Swan

107 " We had found a pocket of quiet, where all the ghosts in our minds had gone to sleep, and we were the only two people awake. "

― Leylah Attar , Mists of the Serengeti

109 " You know what’s heartbreaking?” He slipped his hands into his pockets, as if to keep them from touching me. “It’s not when bad things happen to you, or when your life turns out completely different from what you thought it would be, or when people let you down, or when the world knocks you down. What’s heartbreaking is when you don’t get back up, when you don’t care enough to pick up the million broken pieces of you that are screaming to be put back together, and you just lie there, listening to a shattered chorus of yourself.
“What’s heartbreaking is letting the love of your life walk away, because you can’t give up your work or your home to go with her, because everything you love gets taken away from you. So I’m saying no to heartbreak. Right here, right now. This is me getting back up, crossing an ocean and coming straight to your door, Rodel.
“I can’t unlove you. And I can’t stop thinking about you. So I’m here to say the words because I never said them and that is what’s breaking my heart. I’m not saying them to hear it back. I’m not saying them so we can have a happily ever after. I don’t know where you’re at, or if you still think about us, or if we can even make it work. I’m saying them for me. Because they’ve been growing in my chest with every breath I take, and I have to get them out or I’ll explode. I love you, Rodel Emerson. That’s what I’m here to say. This is me, unbreaking my heart. I know it’s selfish and thoughtless and just plain arrogant to show up like this, but I couldn’t go another day without seeing you.” -Jack Warden "

― Leylah Attar , Mists of the Serengeti

111 " I pulled back, my eyes still closed, knowing that I had just stolen an epic moment from life. Someday when I looked back, I would smile in the middle of the street and no one would know why, because it was just for me, so that I could say to myself: Once in Africa, I kissed a king . . . "

― Leylah Attar , Mists of the Serengeti

113 " Who is it?” asks Zain, his eyes wide with disbelief at Shayda’s unusual outburst. “No-one,” she replies. It’s a day of simple words, loaded with meaning. The no-one she said yes to a few hours ago. The no-one she agreed to spend the rest of her life with. The no-one whose rosary is dangling from her wrist. I will always be no-one. Because everyone who counts in Shayda’s world is on the other side of the door. I will always be on the perimeter of her life, always the outsider, looking in. "

― Leylah Attar , From His Lips (53 Letters for My Lover, #1.5)

115 " It was a sense of belonging that blurs the lines between two people, when you find your ankle wrapped around someone else’s, or your fingers intertwined, and it’s so natural, so automatic, that you have no conscious thought of it happening. When I think of God, I think of all these magical, inexplicable things, multiplied by infinity. "

― Leylah Attar , The Paper Swan

117 " Spawn of Satan, "

― Leylah Attar , The Paper Swan

119 " Don’t cry, güerita.” Damian’s thumb swiped my cheek. “Hit me, slap me, punch me, but don’t fucking cry. "

― Leylah Attar , The Paper Swan