Joshilyn Jackson QUOTES

81 " Young men, romantics, call it love at first sight, but even then I understood it was only prettiness. Young men see pretty, and they start hanging all the things they hope you'll be onto you till you're so weighed down you can't move. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , Backseat Saints

82 " It was love, though. Love, or some other, nameless feeling that was sister to it. I was racked with it. It thundered through me, shook my frame... This, I thought. This is how supervillains start. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , The Almost Sisters

83 " He’d been doing crap like this for me since we were both five, the outsiders at a milk-white elementary school in a so-white-it-was-practically-Wonder-Bread county. I was the only half-a-Jew for miles, and Walcott was the sperm-donated product of a pair of lesbians who left Atlanta to grow organic veggies and run a mountain bed-and-breakfast "

― Joshilyn Jackson , My Own Miraculous

84 " I unpacked and took a shower, trying to wash the road and a little of my mingled grief and anger off me. Rachel had a point, but was it wrong to want a single, peaceful evening? The smell of roasting hens, peppery and succulent, wafted up the stairs as I got dressed, like a sensory argument for respite. Birchie would serve them with fat slices of the summer’s first heirloom tomatoes from the back garden and her famous cornbread. To make it, she saved bacon drippings in a coffee can by the stove, and she’d put some of that grease into the cast-iron skillet and set it in the oven. She’d make batter while the rendered fat got so hot that it was close to smoking. The sizzle of the batter landing in that pan was the kitchen soundtrack of my youth. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , The Almost Sisters

85 " This was another pretend, and here in a yard on a bench was his real wife, with sad, kind, tired eyes. The lesson of Mimmy and my dad was not for me. It was for her. It was for them. I was so sick with understanding that I was practically yelling at her. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , Someone Else's Love Story

86 " My plan was to go on my run, grab Ms. Fancy, drive like a cocaine-attled hell bat to the airport and hurl her and her bags out as I slowed down in the drop off lane. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , Backseat Saints

87 " Then he did the thing I couldn’t manage. The kid leaned in and hugged me. A real hug, committed. I stiffened up—I couldn’t help it—but he was clearly a dog person, so I didn’t pull away. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , The Opposite of Everyone

88 " You don’t see it, but next happens anyway and always. With or without you. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , The Almost Sisters

89 " We were so careful with each other. We had to be. We touched softly in deference to all the ways that we were wounded, working around each other’s bruises and ruined places. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , The Opposite of Everyone

90 " William knows that science and magic are the same thing; magic is only science that hasn’t been explained yet. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , Someone Else's Love Story

91 " He threw up his hands and said, "And you know I fucking love you. So?"
I looked into his right eye, then his left, back and forth.
"Why do you love me?"
I knew what I wanted, but on his side, I didn't want it to be because I could be so bad for him. I didn't want to be a pretty fist that he could bang himself into. I leaned against the wall, my head right by the keypad. "If we're going to take a run at this, it has to be more than good sex and your masochism."
I wasn't sure he was going to answer. I wasn't sure he had a reason, and he could be so hard to read. But then he smiled.
"Because everyone on this shithole planet says a lot of pretty words to make themselves look good while they do awful things", he said. "You're the opposite."
It was a good answer. A good thing to say. I peered from one eye to the other, back and forth, harder than I had looked into Clark's eyes or the gun's. Birdwine's left one was rimmed in black and violet, still swollen. I watched his pupils expand as I leaned up. There was a fair amount of crazy present, sure, but in the darkness of his eyes I saw myself reflected clearly. I was real to him. He saw me all the way down to the bottom and knew every awful thing I'd done. More - he knew all that I was capable of doing, and yet, he looked at me like I was something worthy and good.
"Come upstairs," I said. There was a promise in the words that spoke to more than sex. I thought it was implicit. But he only waited, silent. He didn't even blink, until my own eyes felt dry and itchy on his behalf. Finally I added, "Yes. Okay. Yes. I fucking love you."
"Oh yeah," he said, and punched the entry code in for my door. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , The Opposite of Everyone

92 " She never told me to be any different, the jagged scrape of a thousand guilt and fury slivers rasping on my bones became background music, an ever-present hum. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , The Opposite of Everyone

93 " She’s stepped right in and owned me, and yet, it does not feel like surrender. There is choice inside surrender. This is something much more basic. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , The Opposite of Everyone

94 " A whole slew of them lived outside Immita on a big piece of trailer-dotted land everyone called Ducktown, and they were all cousins and brothers and aunts with one another so many times over that it was hard to tell who was exactly related and how. Growing up, I’d had six or so in school right around my grade, but I was a sophomore now, and only one was left. Either the rest had failed so many times I’d left them behind by middle school or they had plain dropped out. OMG "

― Joshilyn Jackson , A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty

95 " She was exactly like her house, expensive and elegant, but not at all comfortable. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , Someone Else's Love Story

96 " He had lost his child; he knew how fast things could spin out of control. He knew a person could lose anything in half a heartbeat. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , Someone Else's Love Story

97 " sex was where laurel knew she knew him, and talking was the way she called him to her. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

98 " She’d only set my mouth, giving me her taste for called saints, good books, and angry men. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , Backseat Saints

99 " Pee-poo are like dis, Rachel had told me once, putting the peachy-pink Crayola that used to be called Flesh into my hand. As if all the flesh that mattered was that color. That crayon was called Peach now, but the ideas behind its old name were still alive and present. Present everywhere, all across the country, but more overt in Birchville. I wouldn’t raise Digby "

― Joshilyn Jackson , The Almost Sisters

100 " In fight or flight Kai has always chose for us, and my mother is made out of wings. I don't think I am like her, not in this way. "

― Joshilyn Jackson , The Opposite of Everyone