Amy Engel Quotes

#1. But recognizing the ridiculousness of an emotion and being able to master it are two very different things, I'm finding.

Amy Engel

#2. He's an eighteen-year-old boy and this is his wedding night. I don't think he's taking me home to play checkers.

Amy Engel

#3. We're all fucked up, Lane, one way or another. It's only a matter of degree.

Amy Engel

#4. Now I understand - how sleep allows you to forget, but your pain wakes with the dawn, worse because for a split second you don't remember what you've suffered.

Amy Engel

#5. It would leave a little rotten spot, right here." I push my fist into the soft space beneath my rib cage. "Something that would only get bigger and darker with time.

Amy Engel

#6. You're easy to read, Ivy, but the whole book of you is complicated.

Amy Engel

#7. Often, when I am able to check out a book, I read it a dozen times before returning it, desperate to remain lost in the magic of someone else's story.

Amy Engel

#8. My mission is not to make him happy and bear his children and be his wife. My mission is to kill him.

Amy Engel

#9. Is it still manipulation if you know it's happening, but it works anyway?

Amy Engel

#10. My father might not have held my hand or expressed his love openly, but he taught Callie and me that we had inherent values, that we were fully formed human beings without a boy by our side.

Amy Engel

#11. Are you happy, Ivy?' he asks, surprising me.
In my whole life, I don't think anyone ever asked me that question.

Amy Engel

#12. He didn't save me, though. He allowed me the freedom to save myself, which is the very best type of rescue.

Amy Engel

#13. Maybe I'll be okay. Maybe I'll make it to the ocean.

Amy Engel

#14. He is such a child underneath all his alpha male bravado. A selfish child who thinks everything in the whole world is meant for him.

Amy Engel

#15. But there's something fundamentally wrong in a system where a girl like Meredith would even consider staying with a boy like Dylan if she has the chance to be free of him.

Amy Engel

#16. Strange how the sound of a single word can hurt more than a ruined shoulder, cut deeper than a bloody gash.

Amy Engel

#17. Love isn't something you can legislate. Love is more than charts and graphs and matching interests. Love is messy and complicated and it is a mistake to deny its random magic.

Amy Engel

#18. I remind myself of what [Bishop's] father's done. What he is still doing. But Bishop's touch is gentle, his intentions good. No matter how hard I look, I cannot find the blood on his hands.

Amy Engel

#19. The scars are just something that happened to me. They aren't me. Not anymore.

Amy Engel

#20. I want to be someone strong and brave enough to make hard choices. But I want to be fair and loving enough to make the right ones.

Amy Engel

#21. Roanoke girls never last long around here. In the end, we either run or we die.

Amy Engel

#22. always believed in who I am even during the times I struggled to believe myself.

Amy Engel

#23. And maybe that's love, too - feeling the other person's hurts like your own.

Amy Engel

#24. I like that he is complex, that the final result of all his pieces will be something unique and hard to solve. I have no right to wish it, and no hope the wish can ever be granted, but I still long to be the one to decipher him.

Amy Engel

#25. I don't trust most people. Except for you."
"Why me?"
"Because everyone needs someone to put their faith in.

Amy Engel

#26. You can't outrun what's inside of you. You can only acknowledge it, work around it, try and turn it into something better. I may not know exactly where I'm headed, but this time I'm choosing my own destiny.

Amy Engel

#27. I love you," he says quietly. I want to take his words, the truth of them I can see on his face, and cup them in my hands like a glowing coal from the fire. Keep them with me warm and bright, a talisman.

Amy Engel

#28. How do you measure the life of one person against the greater good? Can it ever be the right thing to sacrifice an innocent person? And how do you know what the greater good really is?

Amy Engel

#29. Even if most of the time we navigate so carefully we might as well be bombs trying not to explode, we are still always there, in each other's paths. Just waiting for the moments we intersect.

Amy Engel

#30. I'm not sure how we got to this place, where a girl's only value is in what kind of marriage she has, how capable she is of keeping a man happy.

Amy Engel

#31. Life is one sick joke after another, I'm discovering. Because it hardly seems fair that it should hurt so much to finally get exactly what I've been wishing for.

Amy Engel

#32. Sometimes it's a revelation, even to me, how much more comfortable I am with cruelty than with kindness.

Amy Engel

#33. There are only two choices. Stay here and die. Or get up and see what happens next.

Amy Engel

#34. I just want to be with you. Walk next to you, Ivy, wherever you're headed. That's all.

Amy Engel

#35. I don't understand how the pain of losing him can be a pale shadow in comparison to the pain of finding him again.

Amy Engel

#36. ...sometimes you have to hurt people just to prove you're alive.

Amy Engel

#37. That's what love is, though, isn't it? You don't stop loving someone just because they disappoint you.

Amy Engel

#38. I know the days can get long if you don't have a purpose.

Amy Engel

#39. I concentrate on the simple act of putting one foot in front of the other and continue moving forward even as part of me is left behind, beyond a fence I cannot breach.

Amy Engel

#40. I want to see you naked. I want to touch you. I want you to touch me. I just...want.

Amy Engel

#41. You think I had a choice?" Bishop demands. "What choice? I'm not like your father or Callie, Ivy. I was never going to just let you go. I love you. There was never any choice.

Amy Engel

#42. I'm glad she's not faking affection. It's more honest than what her husband is doing, at least. Dislike is an emotion I can respect.

Amy Engel

#43. Your eyes are still sad," she tells me. "But your whole face lights up when you look at him.

Amy Engel

#44. But I want to be better than the lessons they taught me. I want my love to be greater that my hate, my mercy to be stronger than my vengeance.

Amy Engel

#45. Relax," the girl says. She holds out a hand but doesn't touch me. "We're not going to hurt you."
"Yet," the man in the doorway says with a smirk.

Amy Engel

#46. I've grown accustomed to the stars above my head as I sleep, the ache in my muscles as we walk the land. The freedom that comes with defining your world instead of letting it define you.

Amy Engel

#47. When your fate is predetermined, there's not much benefit in coddling.

Amy Engel

#48. No one controls who we turn into but us.

Amy Engel