Home > Work > The Dead-Tossed Waves (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, #2)
21 " So many memories roll through me and I realize that this is who we are: memories and shared experiences. This is what ties us all together. "
― Carrie Ryan , The Dead-Tossed Waves (The Forest of Hands and Teeth, #2)
22 " But that's what love is like when it's fresh and new. It's fire and thunder and heat. "
23 " When you're young you have such expectations of each other. So many needs. And when you're older..." He shrugs. "You want someone who understands. We've lived different lives. We've loved different people. But I think that there will always be that..." He struggles for the right word. "That understanding we share. Of having grown up in the same world, of having live through the same memories. "
24 " That's what I've started to learn about this world. It might give, but it always takes away. "
25 " Sometimes it's those things you can't touch that you need to hold on to the most. "
26 " You know how you can think you know someone or think you know them but maybe you only know them one way?" He sneaks a glance at me and I notice that his cheeks are red in the moonlight. "Maybe you know someone as your little sister's friend," he says. "And then maybe something shifts. Maybe one day you hear them say something unexpected. Or hear the way they laugh and then suddenly you see them all over again. Like this time it's different. This time maybe you see them as ..." He pauses. "Beautiful," he finishes. Catcher leans in closer. "Wonderful and funny. "
27 " I realize that this is the way the world works. If I could stop the spin, stop the rotation, I would have done so long ago. I would have stopped it the first moment that Catcher's lips met mine under the moon in the amusement park. I would have held us in that eternity forever. But of course everything presses forward, even as we dig our feet against the reality of it all. One even tumbles from the next out of our control and we are dragged along, helpless. "
28 " We will always survive. There is always hope. "
29 " It's the most beautiful thing in the world." he says, "I just..." He pauses and looks back into the fire. "I just kept walking. Wrapped in this white nothingness. "
30 " It's as if everything shifts around me, the pieces that didn't fit together finally twisting until they match. The terror that had been clouding and suffocating me begins to filter away, dissipating in the night. "I want something more too," I whisper. "I want more than looking back and wishing for what was or what could have been. Who I was or could have been. I want..." I lick my lips, tasting him. "I want you. "
31 " I remember my mother telling me earlier that we are nothing more than our stories. I look at the masses of dead flesh, at all the stories that are now forever silenced. "
32 " We’re set in motion and then we spend our lives maintaining that motion, but to what end? For what purpose? "
33 " I realize that that's been my problem all along. Not only wanting comfort and security and safety, but looking to others to find it when I need to find it inside myself. "
34 " What use are experiences if we're not allowed to remember them? If we forget in order to avoid the pain and loss? What is the point of living if we have to always insulate ourselves? "
35 " Gabrielle.” She takes my hands in hers and smiles a little. “Life is life,” she says. She shrugs, looking up at me. “You choose to live it or you do not. "
36 " What if I don't know what I want?" I ask her, voicing the fear that rages through me. "What if I never know? What if I'm wrong? "
37 " Afraid of the tangle of words twisting around my own tongue, I swallow and place my hand against the thick wood of the Barrier. "
38 " Cira’s asking for you because she wants to say good-bye. She’s dying, Gabry. "
39 " But the earth keeps spinning, the waves keep crashing, the lamp in the lighthouse keeps turning. Nothing stops just because I feel as though it should. Just because I’m lost. "
40 " As if she is lost in that picture, lost in the blur of water and sky and I am the only thing holding her firm. "