Top 500 Casey McQuiston Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “She was walking through the shelves and imagining herself there one day, one spine tucked alongside all the others, fitting in perfectly.”

— Casey McQuiston

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

— Casey McQuiston

203. “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

204. “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

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

— Casey McQuiston

206. “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

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

— Casey McQuiston

208. “Anderson Cooper, you handsome bastard.”

— Casey McQuiston

209. “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

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

— Casey McQuiston

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

— Casey McQuiston

212. “All I want is a nice girlfriend in a cottage where we have philosophical conversations over scones or something.”

— Casey McQuiston

213. “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. Sometimes, when I walk into a church, I’m not sure I’m supposed to be there, even though it feels like home. Home hasn’t always been a good place for me to be.”

— Casey McQuiston

214. “You only just noticed she has one outfit?” “I don’t know! It’s ripped jeans and a leather jacket! Every lesbian I’ve ever met has that outfit!”

— Casey McQuiston

215. “Jane is spun sugar. A switchblade girl with a cotton-candy heart.”

— Casey McQuiston

216. “Listen, I’m telling you right now, I will physically fight your grandmother myself if I have to, okay? And, like, she’s old. I know I can take her.”

— Casey McQuiston

217. “Saved by God first and her God complex second.”

— Casey McQuiston

218. “Love is indomitable.”

— Casey McQuiston

219. “Alex, you need other friends.” Luna tells him. “Friends who aren’t in Congress.”

— Casey McQuiston

220. “Henry looks Philip square in the face and says, “I’ve been gay as a maypole since the day I came out of Mum, Philip.”

— Casey McQuiston

221. “God, Shall I compare thee to an icebox pie? Couldn’t be gayer if she tried.”

— Casey McQuiston

222. “A whole lifetime of fine.”

— Casey McQuiston

223. “I’m conscious this could be rather burdensome to hear, but you remain the thing I have most chosen for myself. The things that’s most exclusively mine. The one that brings me the deepest joy.”

— Casey McQuiston

224. “Her girl. She came back.”

— Casey McQuiston

225. “He’s too perfect. Alex wants to poke it.”

— Casey McQuiston

226. “Sorry. Er. I was just. Cornettos.”

— Casey McQuiston

227. “No, what I’m gonna do is silently compile and process enough data to know exactly what’s gonna happen for the next twenty-five years. Then I’m gonna buy a house on the top of a very tall hill at the edge of the city and become an eccentric recluse and sit on my veranda. Watch it all unfold through a pair of binoculars.”

— Casey McQuiston

228. “Wait,” she says, reaching for his phone again, “are you watching videos of Justin Trudeau speaking French again?”

— Casey McQuiston

229. “Please do keep me in your – what is it American politicians say? – thoughts and prayers.”

— Casey McQuiston

230. “If it weren’t for her morning meditation sessions, Alex is sure his mom would have throttled an aide by now.”

— Casey McQuiston

231. “If there’s any legacy for me on this earth, I want it to be true.”

— Casey McQuiston

232. “I’m there for whatever you decide you want to do, just, like, let me know if I need to start practicing gazing wistfully out the window, waiting for my love to return from the war.”

— Casey McQuiston

233. “Or his senior year, when he got drunk and made out with Liam in his twin bed for an hour, and he didn’t have a sexual crisis about it – that had to mean he was straight, right? Because if he were into guys, it would have felt scary to be with one, but it wasn’t.”

— Casey McQuiston

234. “She was beautiful like a city you always wanted to go to, like how you wait years and years for the right time, and then as soon as you get there, you have to taste everything and touch everything and learn every street by name. I felt like I knew her. She reminded me who I was. She had soft lips and green eyes and a body that wouldn’t quit. Hair like you wouldn’t believe. Stubborn, sharp as a knife. And I never, ever wanted a person to save me until she did.”

— Casey McQuiston

235. “He stood in front of the Privy Council and said ‘Christ had John, and I have George’.”

— Casey McQuiston

236. “You’re thirty-nine.” “My liver is ninety-three.”

— Casey McQuiston

237. “I feel like there are two different sides of me, like I could be anyone and touch anyone and love like that kind of Holy Ghost love – everywhere and everyone. Most of my friends act like they know exactly who and what they are, like there’s only one answer, but to me, that feels like putting a beginning and end on something that’s not supposed to have either.”

— Casey McQuiston

238. “A curious thing about grief is the way it takes your entire life, all those foundational years that made you who you are, and makes them so painful to look back upon because of the absence there, that suddenly they’re inaccessible. You must invent an entirely new system.”

— Casey McQuiston

239. “She feels like spine of a book about to crack and spill out all the love story guts.”

— Casey McQuiston

240. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,′ Thoreau had said. ‘Live the life you’ve imagined.”

— Casey McQuiston

241. “Two homes side by side.”

— Casey McQuiston

242. “Oh, like, I thought we were already there with you being bi and everything. Sorry, are we not? Did I skip ahead again? My bad. Hello, would you like to come out to me? I’m listening.”

— Casey McQuiston

243. “Look at them, Mum. They’re not props of a legacy. They’re my children. And I swear on my life, and Arthur’s I will take you off the throne before I will let them feel the things you made me feel.”

— Casey McQuiston

244. “It’s like I died... I died, except I have to feel it. And on top of that, I have to feel everything else I’ve ever felt all over again. I have to get the bad news again every day, I have to deal with the choices I made, and I can’t fix it. I can’t even run from it. It’s miserable, August.”

— Casey McQuiston

245. “Alex wants to rip it off.”

— Casey McQuiston

246. “So, what? he asks. You want me to quit politics and go become a princess? That’s not very feminist of you. That’s not how feminism works, she says, rolling her eyes.”

— Casey McQuiston

247. “Never tell me the odds.”

— Casey McQuiston

248. “In an instant of sudden, vivid clarity, he can’t believe he ever thought he was straight.”

— Casey McQuiston

249. “Henry touches his hand, gently, two fingertips against his palm. “Five minutes for the rest of our lives,” he says, laughing a grim little laugh. Alex reaches for him in return, presses one thumb into the hollow of his collarbone, slipping right under the knot of his tie.”

— Casey McQuiston

250. “Jane’s leaning in, taking advantage of her height to bracket August in, burning so hot that August can’t make sense of the chill sweeping up her spine. So steady and beautiful and close, too close, never close enough, and August is so completely, irreversibly, spectacularly screwed.”

— Casey McQuiston