Top 500 Casey McQuiston Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “It’s weird the thing with Henry could make him understand this huge part of himself, but it does. When he sinks into thoughts of Henry’s hands, square knuckles and elegant fingers, he wonders how he never realized it before. When he sees Henry next at a gala in Berlin, and he feels that gravitational pull, chases it down in the back of a limo, and binds Henry’s wrists to a hotel bedpost with his own necktie, he knows himself better.”

— Casey McQuiston

152. “The andante- the third movement- is his favorite, he explains, because he read once that it was written to evoke the image of a castle in ruins, which he found darkly funny at the time.”

— Casey McQuiston

153. “No se cultiva un amor imperecedero por ‘La guerra de las galaxias’ si no se sabe que un “imperio” no es algo bueno.”

— Casey McQuiston

154. “It’s the first time Alex has seen Henry in person since the weekend in London and the hundreds of texts and weird in-jokes and late-night phone calls that came after, and it almost feels like meeting a new person. He knows more about Henry, understands him better, and he can appreciate the rarity of a genuine smile on the same famously beautiful face.”

— Casey McQuiston

155. “A veces saltas y esperas que no sea un precipicio.”

— Casey McQuiston

156. “The class is Ethical Issues in International Relations. He really has got to stop taking classes so painfully relevant to his life.”

— Casey McQuiston

157. “He keeps waking up in DC, and Henry keeps waking up in London, and the whole world keeps waking up to talk about the two of them in love with other people.”

— Casey McQuiston

158. “August, we’re adults. Just say you got your back blown out.”

— Casey McQuiston

159. “A veces, uno se lanza, abrigando la esperanza de no encontrarse con un precipicio al otro lado.”

— Casey McQuiston

160. “Henry’s retort comes two days later by way of a screenshot of a Daily Mail tweet that reads, Is Alex Clarmount-Diaz going to be a father? The attached message says, But we were ever so careful, dear...”

— Casey McQuiston

161. “He likes taking Henry apart, but there’s something incredibly intimate about sitting on the bed they wrecked te night before.”

— Casey McQuiston

162. “Henry permite que Alex le haga el amor con precision y paciencia, y pronuncia tantas veces el nombre de Dios entre gemidos que la habitacion entera adquiere un aire de estancia consagrada.”

— Casey McQuiston

163. “Henry’s whole face grimaces in frustration, his eyes casting skyward like they’re searching for help from an uncaring universe. “Christ, you are as thick as it gets,” he says, and he grabs Alex’s face in both hands and kisses him.”

— Casey McQuiston

164. “Hey, Coffee Girl.” “Hey, Subway Girl.”

— Casey McQuiston

165. “It’s unpredictable and it’s intoxicating and it’s fun, because Alex has never met a challenge he didn’t love, and he – well, Henry is a challenge, head to toe, beginning to end.”

— Casey McQuiston

166. “My whole life has been about fighting. I fought.”

— Casey McQuiston

167. “But I’ve kissed your mouth, that corner, that place it goes, so many times now. I’ve memorised it. Topography on the map of you, a world I’m still charting. I know it. I added it to the key. Here: inches to miles. I can multiply it out, read your latitude and longitude. Recite your coordinates like la rosaria.”

— Casey McQuiston

168. “He’s not, he thinks, upset people know. He’s always been pretty unapologetic when it came to things like who he dates and what he’s into, although those were never anything like this. Still, the cocky shithead part of him is slightly pleased to finally have a claim on Henry. Yep, the prince? Most eligible bachelor in the world? British accent, face like a Greek god, legs for days? Mine.”

— Casey McQuiston

169. “She can’t believe a tall butch subway angel saw her crying into her coffee tits.”

— Casey McQuiston

170. “It’s weird because I always know things about people, gut feelings that usually lead me in more or less the right direction. I do think I got a gut feeling with you, I just didn’t have what I needed in my head to understand it. But I kind of kept chasing it anyway, like I was just going blindly in a certain direction and hoping for the best. I guess that makes you the North Star?”

— Casey McQuiston

171. “Alex has been learning for a while Henry isn’t what he thought, but it’s something else to feel it this close up, the quiet burn in him, the pent-up person under the perfect veneer who tries and pushes and wants.”

— Casey McQuiston

172. “Okay, but, uh, what if they escape? I’ve seen Jurassic Park. Did you know birds are directly descended from raptors? That’s a scientific fact. Raptors in my bedroom, Henry. And you want me to go to sleep like they’re not gonna bust out of their enclosures and take over the island the minute I close my eyes? Okay. Maybe your white ass.”

— Casey McQuiston

173. “The rats are almost definitely unionizing.”

— Casey McQuiston

174. “It’s about to be gay DEFCON five in this administration. For God’s sake, put some clothes on.”

— Casey McQuiston

175. “The search tells him Pyramus and Thisbe were lovers in a Greek myth, children of rival families, forbidden to be together. Their only way to speak to each other was through a thin crack in the wall built between them.”

— Casey McQuiston

176. “Sometimes. But, you know, that feeling? When you wake up in the morning and you have somebody to think about? Somewhere for hope to go? It’s good. Even when it’s bad, it’s good.” And August – well, August finds herself without a single damn thing to say to that.”

— Casey McQuiston

177. “Why is it so bad to want to feel special, or loved, or accpeted?”

— Casey McQuiston

178. “Mi vida entera ha sido una lucha. De modo que he luchado.”

— Casey McQuiston

179. “Like – okay, I dated this girl who was an artist, right? And she’d do figure drawing where she’d draw the negative space around a person first, and then fill in the person. and that’s how I’m trying to look at it. Maybe I don’t know what fills it in yet, but I can look at the space around where I sit in the world, what creates that shape, and I can care about what it’s made of, if it’s good, if it hurts anyone, it makes people happy, if it makes me happy. And that can be enough for now.”

— Casey McQuiston

180. “I don’t know, man. I was in my junior year of high school, and I touched a boob. It wasn’t very profound. Nobody’s gonna write an Off-Broadway play about it.”

— Casey McQuiston

181. “Maybe there’s more than one dream for you, or more than one way to get there.”

— Casey McQuiston

182. “Hi,” he says, when he reaches Henry’s eye level. “Hello,” Henry says back. “I’m gonna take your pants off now,” Alex tells him. “Yes, good, carry on.”

— Casey McQuiston

183. “Maybe they had the right idea, as far as secrecy goes. The loudest Christians I’ve ever met were the worst ones. I don’t believe doing something in front of everybody makes it more meaningful, anyway. If anything, it makes it stop belonging to you.”

— Casey McQuiston

184. “How many times do I have to tell y’all not to discuss your murder plots in front of a sitting president?” their mother interrupts. “Plausible deniability. Come on.”

— Casey McQuiston

185. “What I want is... I want to fall in love. I want to have a big, dramatic, ridiculous love story, like a period piece, and my love interest is played by Saoirse Ronan and I get to wear a fancy corset. I want to write books about the way that feels. And I don’t know if I’ll ever have any of that here, but I know what I’ll lose if I leave.”

— Casey McQuiston

186. “He stands naked at the edge of the pier, looking at Alex’s head and shoulders bobbing in the water. The lines of him are long and languid in the moonlight, just skin and skin and skin lit soft and blue, and he’s so beautiful that Alex thinks this moment, the soft shadows and pale thighs and crooked smile, should be the portrait of Henry that goes down in history. There are fireflies winking around his head, landing in his hair. A crown.”

— Casey McQuiston

187. “That was the moment he decided he wasn’t going to allow himself nerves ever again. Not as Alex Claremont-Diaz, First Son of the United States, and not as Alex Claremont-Diaz, rising political star.”

— Casey McQuiston

188. “And there Henry is, in the flesh, as classically handsome as ever in his tailored three-piece suit, all tousled sandy hair and high cheekbones and a soft, friendly mouth.”

— Casey McQuiston

189. “And so, in her first month in the apartment on the corner of Flatbush and Parkside above the Popeyes, August learns that the Q is a time, a place, and a person.”

— Casey McQuiston

190. “She was walking through the shelves and imagining herself there one day, one spine tucked alongside all the others, fitting in perfectly.”

— Casey McQuiston

191. “I kinda wish people still wrote like that. History, huh? Bet we could make some.”

— Casey McQuiston

192. “We’ve kissed, like, three times, but he has that thing where he’s terrified of being loved and refuses to believe he deserves it. It’s so tedious.’ She sees the look on August’s face and laughs. ‘I’m joking. I mean, that is his deal. But I’ve never found that boy tedious.”

— Casey McQuiston

193. “He’s just as attracted to Henry’s cloudy tempers, the way he comes back from them, and the million of shades in between.”

— Casey McQuiston

194. “How am I supposed to do that? He has the personality of a cabbage.”

— Casey McQuiston

195. “At cruising altitude, he takes the chain off his neck and slides the ring on next to the old house key. They clink together gently as he tucks them both under his shirt, two homes side by side.”

— Casey McQuiston

196. “I didn’t know you wore glasses,” he says finally.”

— Casey McQuiston

197. “Anderson Cooper, you handsome bastard.”

— Casey McQuiston

198. “Alex hasn’t been a good Catholic in a long time, but he knows confession is a sacrament.”

— Casey McQuiston

199. “Please do smack me if this is out of line, but you are the most exquisite woman I have ever seen in my life, and I would like to procure for you the most lavish drink in this establishment if you will let me.”

— Casey McQuiston

200. “Who names a dog David? He sounds like a tax attorney.”

— Casey McQuiston