Riley Redgate > Quotes

“It was impossible to feel alone in a room full of favorite books. I had the sense that they knew me personally, that they'd read me cover to cover as I'd read them.”
― Riley Redgate, Noteworthy

“Sometimes you go a long time having fooled yourself into thinking that you're as grown-up as you'll ever be, or that you're more mature than the rest of the world thinks you are, and you live in this state of constant self-assurance, and for a while nothing can upset you from this pedestal you've built for yourself, because you imagine yourself to be so capable. And then somebody does something that takes a golf club to your ego, and suddenly you're nine years old again, pieced together from humiliation and gawky youthfulness and childlike ideas like, Somebody please tell me what to do, nobody taught me how to handle this, God, just look at all the things I still don't understand, and you can't muster up the presence of mind to do anything but stand there, stare, silent, sorry.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“Though I guess if you love someone, the thought of losing their approval is probably twice as terrifying.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“Isaac was panic over whether to call and the murmured admission that the world was too big and too furious and too much to make sense. He wasn't about to patch my doubts and make me whole; he wasn't going to be my cornerstone; he wasn't the blanket stretched taut to catch me when I fell. He was this nervous kid, playing with matches and dancing around gasoline, and I was this nervous kid, shying back from the firelight, and we were here nervous together, acting like we had it figured out - as if we hadn't already learned what it looked like to see each other pretending.”
― Riley Redgate, Noteworthy

“I think I'm beginning to understand
how hearts fit together.
Not like diseased carnations that lean against their crutches.
Not like vines that twine tight, throttling their hosts.
But like two trees:
two systems of deep, untangled roots,
two patterns of flowering branches,
whose leaves drink their own sunlight
and breathe their own air.
Two trees with something slung between them,
a hammock or a tapestry or a swing,
some third, beautiful thing
that neither would die without.
Hearts fit together like hands.
Not by necessity.
By choice.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“The story pours over me like water, drips down onto my head until I'm immersed head-to-toe, transported between the covers.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“My body is not yours. I don't owe you, I don't owe boys some fucked-up compensation for my reputation, I don't owe the public an apology for my personal life, I don't owe anyone a goddamn thing, so get out of my life and stay out!”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“There’s a point where procrastination turns into resignation that you will never do what you need to do,”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“We are always moving forward--I can see it now. We are hurtling through our lives. We are never standing still.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“Interrogate your instincts. Insecurity isn’t shameful. Attraction isn’t an embarrassment. Interpersonal affection isn’t a side note to be glossed over. Whatever the nature of the material that forms between two people, it’s the backbone of literature.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“It's too simple to hate the people who have doorways where you have walls”
― Riley Redgate, Noteworthy

“You know what they say. Three things last forever: faith, hope and spite. And the greatest of these is spite.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“Life is better when it’s scripted.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“Let's short circuit in the rain. I loved you then, too.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“What did they say?" Juni asks me over the cafeteria table. "I didn't catch whatever profoundly unnecessary insult it was."

"Ho-livia," I explain over the chatter echoing off the cafeteria ceiling. "It's funny, because ho means whore and also rhymes with the first syllable of my name. Ha-ha. Excellent joke.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“Life's not a Greek tragedy.'
After a long second, I shrugged. 'I mean, if you didn't sleep with your mom by mistake, that's fine, but don't go around acting all superior to the rest of us.”
― Riley Redgate, Noteworthy

“It wasn't enlightenment to live like you had no history and no consequences. The world wasn't just made out of instants -- it was made out of plans, too, and the ability to learn from your mistakes.”
― Riley Redgate, Noteworthy

“I promise you, two dozen words were not the difference between mediocrity and excellence. Make a habit of burning something to ash before expecting a rebirth.”
― Riley Redgate, Final Draft

“Sometimes, good intentions couldn't do a thing except make you feel less alone, and sometimes that was enough.”
― Riley Redgate, Noteworthy

“There's a point where procrastination turns into resignation that you will never do what you need to do, and I hit that point, like, two hours ago, after opening a Word document in a short-lived fit of optimism. At this point, anything I write will seem like one hundred percent bullshit when I read it over tomorrow morning, so is this even worth it? Signs point to no.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“It was a weird day if figuring out you were bisexual made up the least of your mental turmoil.”
― Riley Redgate, Noteworthy

“Sometimes you want people to -- not even put you first, or anything, but to just think about you a little, you know?”
― Riley Redgate, Noteworthy

“You don't realize how alone you are until you let yourself out of your cage, or until someone finds a way inside.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“I meant to ask Erik to say something to Victoria, to follow what had happened at the dance, but I couldn't settle on the right words. An apology for fleeing, sure, but then what? 'I only think of you as a friend'? 'I think we should see other people'? 'It's not you, it's the fact that I'm secretly a girl who sacrificed a foot and a half of perfectly good hair to the dark gods of a capella'?”
― Riley Redgate, Noteworthy

“...right," I say, clicking my pen. "I'd rather die than do a skit about Inferno, so there's that."

"You know it?" he asks.

"What?"

"Like, have you read it?" Matt has a quiet, husky voice. He rushes through words as if he's not allowed to be talking.

"Just excerpts, but I know the plot," I say. "Basically, Virgil gives Dante this guided tour of the nine circles of hell, and Dante wanders around judging people and fainting a ton. Which is kinda like, it seems sorta dangerous to drop unconscious in hell of all places, but I guess my experience there is limited, so.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“If you can't fix it, leave it behind.”
― Riley Redgate, Noteworthy

“Here, I choose to love what I have. Here, I choose to love what I am now”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“It's sort of hilarious, though, how so many... kids like to think they're social outcasts, talking with people who are obviously their friends about 'never fitting in'. They have no idea. If they did, they wouldn't glamorize it. The reality of isolation is glamorous and unexciting" -Kat”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“Man up. What a cleverly disguised way to say shut up. Shut up, or fight back, or you deserved what you got.

Everything was growing clearer. So this was why guys had such an issue backing down—why Mama fought for the last word in every argument, why Erik wanted revenge for every prank, why Isaac said sorry like it was brine on his tongue. I finally understood it.”
― Riley Redgate, Noteworthy

“I stand there looking after him with the feeling that - just like that, in one careless moment - I might've ruined somebody's life.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie