Say the Word QUOTES

1 " People say love isn’t supposed to be painful. But maybe the best things in life are the ones that hurt the most after they’re gone. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

2 " Maybe instead, I wanted the kind of love that devastates you. The kind that rips your insides open and leaves you gutted, out in the cold. Maybe I wanted that great, epic, once-in-a-lifetime love, that consumes with the brightest of flames. And maybe, even though I knew the hottest fires often burn out the fastest, even though it couldn’t last… it was worth it.
People say love isn’t supposed to be painful. But maybe the best things in life are the ones that hurt the most after they’re gone. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

3 " Regret was an emotional cancer, destroying you from the inside out. Eating at your most vital parts until there was nothing left but scar tissue and sorrow. It chipped away at you in small increments, shattering your defenses and tiring you out. But, unlike a physical cancer, which might eventually go into remission or be cut out with a few careful strokes of a surgeon’s scalpel, regret would stay with you forever. It was chronic, but not terminal — a constant companion that would haunt you until your deathbed. And there were no cures to diminish its influence. No salves to counteract its effects.
Regret didn’t break your body. It crushed your spirit.
Mine had just been broken beyond repair. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

4 " I’ve loved you since the first moment I clapped eyes on you in Latin class. Since that day in the rain, when you climbed into my car and slipped my sweater over your head to get warm. Since the first time I watched you with Jamie, laughing and joking even though the weight of the world was on your shoulders. Since I saw you running in crazy, breathless circles around the circumference of my favorite tree, a look of absolute joy on your face.” He traced a finger down my cheek. “I’ve loved you since before I even knew what love was. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

5 " I should’ve fought for you. Instead, I spent a long time blocking out every emotion I felt for you. And when I finally stopped being hurt and confused and headstrong, when I started to let feeling back in… six years had passed and I was alone, on the other side of the world, without the only person I’d ever wanted standing by my side. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

6 " I’d learned some hard lessons in my life, but perhaps the most important one was that you have to cherish the insignificant moments you have with your most significant people. To hold onto the times when you’re happy. To smile often, and laugh loudly. To enjoy the ones you love, and hold them close to your heart while you still have them. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

7 " I think that if two people are meant to be together, nothing can ever truly separate them. Time, distance, other people — it doesn’t matter. They’ll circle back around to each other eventually. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

8 " I’d felt it – that moment when a person you need more than air or water or sustenance steps into your orbit and everything subtly shifts, like a camera finally sliding into focus. That person, who used to mean less than nothing, enters your life and rearranges your entire atmosphere around them, as if every atom and cell that makes you you isn’t your property anymore. Suddenly, every part of you becomes theirs – your particles dissembled and rearranged to align perfectly with someone who you don’t even know or understand yet. You cease to exist as you once were, and that person who meant nothing is suddenly, overwhelmingly, everything. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

9 " And we were a box of fireworks. A sixty-gallon drum of gasoline. An unstable container of napalm.
One spark, one look, was all it took.
We went up in flames. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

10 " When you walk away from your soul mate – when you take real, true love and throw it in the fire and watch as it burns down to ashes – you know you’ll never be the same again. The heart isn’t like the liver; it doesn’t regenerate, no matter how much time passes. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

11 " There’ll be moments in life, sweet pea, that stand out in your memories like a photograph. Scenes captured perfectly in your mind, frozen in time with each detail as colorful as it was that first time you saw it. ‘Flashbulb memories,’ some people call them,” she’d told me, her eyes crinkling up and nearly disappearing in a face etched with too many laugh lines to count. “Most people don’t recognize those moments as they happen. They look back fifty years later, and realize that those were the most important parts of their entire life. But at the time, they’re so busy looking ahead to what’s coming down the line or worrying about their future, they don’t enjoy their present. Don’t be like them, sweet pea. Don’t get so caught up in chasing your dreams that you forget to live them. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

12 " Say the word and I’ll go,” I whispered in a broken voice, my watering eyes locked on his furious ones. “Say the word and I’ll fade away, and this, right here, will be the last time you see me. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

13 " I’ve traveled across the world, trying to outrun my memories of you. But damned if I didn’t get to every fucking continent and still see your face on the other side of my camera lens — in a crowded Tibetan market, on the cliffside of a snowy Himalayan peak, in the reflection of a muddy river in Thailand. You were always there, haunting me, around every corner. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

14 " Soulmates are a reward, not a certainty. I think you have to earn them. And I believe, if you’re one of the bastards lucky enough to stumble across yours, that you have to fight for them with everything you have, "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

15 " There’s a nonsensical dichotomy that exists within you after you break up with someone — especially if it’s someone you loved deeply. A large part of you hopes they’ll move on, be happy, follow their dreams to the fullest.
That’s the side you show the world.
But a smaller part of you, whether you admit its existence or not, secretly and selfishly yearns for a reality in which that person would never move on. Never forget your love, or replace you with someone else; never be fully complete again, without you by their side.
That’s the side we hide away, the innermost part of ourselves that we push down below the socially-acceptable responses to heartbreak. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

16 " I’ve always thought that relationships are kind of like stars. The majority of them burn brightly for a time and then slowly die out, leaving a luminous legacy in their wake. Their residual light shines brightly for years after their dissipation – a dazzling imprint of what once was, that lingers even in the absence of the star itself. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

17 " You’re crazy,” I whispered, attempting to tug my hand from Sebastian’s grip.
“Crazy for you,” he countered, leading me into his kitchen through the back patio
door.
“You’re ridiculous.” I rolled my eyes.
“Ridiculously infatuated with you,” he revised, tugging me along behind him. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

18 " I felt drunk — on love, on lust. Utterly inebriated by this ludicrous feeling of distorted perfection that was setting off fireworks within my body. Was this insatiable need to be joined as one — not only physically, but emotionally — a mere symptom of infatuation, of teenage lust? Or was it love, this fire burning in my veins, spinning me out of control until I felt so off balance I knew I’d never again be able to stand on my own? "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

19 " Aut Viam Inveniam Aut Faciam.

- I shall either find a way, or make one. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word

20 " I’d known then, at eighteen, that my case of heartbreak was terminal, incurable. It wasn’t “puppy love” or “first love” or any of the loves that supposedly fade with time and large quantities of ice cream. Because when you walk away from your soul mate – when you take real, true love and throw it in the fire and watch as it burns down to ashes – you know you’ll never be the same again. The heart isn’t like the liver; it doesn’t regenerate, no matter how much time passes. Once it’s gone, it’s gone for good. "

― Julie Johnson , Say the Word