Top 500 Casey McQuiston Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “You mean to tell me,” Alex half shouts, jogging to keep up, “every Thanksgiving, those stupid turkeys have been staying in a luxury suite at the Willard on the taxpayers’ dime?”

— Casey McQuiston

352. “Look, I was gay in the ’70s. I can handle an emergency.”

— Casey McQuiston

353. “I thought he was your friend,” Rory says. “Dixon is a guy I hang out with,” Smith tells him. “That’s not the same thing.”

— Casey McQuiston

354. “Oh, Alex thinks. “Oh,” Alex says.”

— Casey McQuiston

355. “What do you say when The Girl tells you that you’re The Girl to her?”

— Casey McQuiston

356. “Wait, honey,” she calls after him, “I had Planned Parenthood send over all these pamphlets, take one! They sent a bike messenger and everything!”

— Casey McQuiston

357. “She studies August’s face, and August can practically see that confidence meter of hers filling up, right to Smug Bastard, where it usually sits.”

— Casey McQuiston

358. “Maybe he can absorb some of the ‘much’ from the place where their shoulders are pressed together.”

— Casey McQuiston

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

— Casey McQuiston

360. “The skin is soft, probably exfoliated and moisturized daily by some royal manicurist.”

— Casey McQuiston

361. “You gotta put in a little more work to crack this egg, baby.”

— Casey McQuiston

362. “Have you ever notices I have never once approached you and have been exhaustively civil every time we’ve spoken? Yet here you are, seeking me out again.” He takes a sip of his champagne. “Simply an observation.”

— Casey McQuiston

363. “She still listens, and she tries, and she wants us to be happy. But I don’t know if she has it in her anymore to be a part of anyone’s happiness.”

— Casey McQuiston

364. “Hey, maybe you will,” she says, and she honest-to-god winks. August is going to take out a full-page ad in The Times to scream about it. The city needs to know.”

— Casey McQuiston

365. “Maybe, with Jane on the Q, it’s actually true. Maybe the Q is the answer. Maybe the Q is where August should start.”

— Casey McQuiston

366. “Have you met Henry?” Alex says. “How am I supposed to do that? He has the personality of a cabbage.”

— Casey McQuiston

367. “You really can’t write teenage characters the same way you write adults. There should be more room for them to be messy and get things wrong, because that’s what being a teenager is. They don’t need to have things figured out, or even be anywhere close.”

— Casey McQuiston

368. “Stop thinking.” “Yes. Gladly.”

— Casey McQuiston

369. “You take care of yourself, and that’s important,” her mom says. “And you don’t hurt anyone.” “But I do hurt people,” Chloe insists. “Do you do it on purpose?” “No.” “Okay, then, you’re human.”

— Casey McQuiston

370. “June, I’m the son of the President of the United States. Prince Henry is a figurehead of the British Empire. You can’t just call him my ‘archnemesis,‘” Alex says. He returns to his donut, chewing thoughtfully and adds, “‘Archnemesis’ implies he’s actually a rival to me on any level and not, you know, a stuck-up product of inbreeding who probably jerks off to photos of himself.”

— Casey McQuiston

371. “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

372. “Harangued Royal Highness.”

— Casey McQuiston

373. “The older she’s gotten, the more she prefers thinking of love as a hobby for other people, like rock climbing or knitting. Fine, enviable even, but she doesn’t feel like investing in the equipment.”

— Casey McQuiston

374. “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

375. “This is the city where she got her heart broken. Nothing anchors a person to a place quite like that.”

— Casey McQuiston

376. “Henry who’s seen him in glasses and tolerates him at his most annoying and still kissed him like he wanted him, singularly, not the idea of him.”

— Casey McQuiston

377. “Her whole life, the gnaw of anxiety has made people opaque to her. No matter how well she knows someone, no matter the logical patterns, no matter how many allowances she knows someone might make for her – that bone-deep fear of rejection has always made it impossible for her to see any of it. It frosts over the glass. She never had anyone to begin with, so she let it be unsurprising that nobody would want to have her around.”

— Casey McQuiston

378. “You’re from Boston, Hunter. You really want to talk about all the places bigotry comes from?”

— Casey McQuiston

379. “No booty calls,′ Alex tells him, and Henry chokes on a laugh.”

— Casey McQuiston

380. “August has the sexual prowess of a goldfish and the emotional vocabulary to match.”

— Casey McQuiston

381. “She throws herself down the subway stairs, races to the platform, and there, somehow in perfect alignment with the universe, is the Q waiting for her with doors open. She lunges onto the train as they slide shut. Momentum carries her across the aisle, and she smacks into the opposite side of the car, startling a drunk couple so much, they nearly drop their takeout. To her right, a voice says, “Hell of an entrance, Coffee Girl.”

— Casey McQuiston

382. “Still kissed him like he wanted him, singularly, not the idea of him.”

— Casey McQuiston

383. “Come on,” Myla says. “Joy Division? Everyone who’s ever been within sniffing distance of a clove cigarette knows Joy Division.”

— Casey McQuiston

384. “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

385. “If the girl’s going to end up with a dude who’s a monster,” Chloe says, “it needs to be – ” “Phantom,” Georgia finishes for her as they head outside, because she’s heard it five hundred thousand times. “Monster on the outside, but on the inside, he cares about her career goals!” Chloe says. “Call me old-fashioned, but a man’s place is in the basement, preparing vocal exercises for his more talented wife.”

— Casey McQuiston

386. “I’ve been trying to be happy my entire idiot life.”

— Casey McQuiston

387. “Oh my God. I’m in love with a monster turducken.”

— Casey McQuiston

388. “ATTN: will be wearing a burgundy velvet suit tonight. please do not attempt to steal my shine. you will fail and i will be embarrassed for you.”

— Casey McQuiston

389. “But way worse people with way bigger problems than me get elected all the time.”

— Casey McQuiston

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

— Casey McQuiston

391. “New York takes from her, sometimes. But she takes too. She takes its muggy air in fistfuls, and she packs it into the cracks in her heart.”

— Casey McQuiston

392. “He didn’t realize how terrified he was of her knowing until the fear is gone.”

— Casey McQuiston

393. “So, if she’s the only one in the class of ’22 who’s really out for now, if her existence can provide cover for half her graduating class to stand up for something without saying things about themselves they can’t yet say, that’s enough. That’s plenty.”

— Casey McQuiston

394. “Ellen sighs and looks over at Leo. “I did that, didn’t I? No goddamn manners. Like a couple of little opossums. This is why they say women can’t have it all.”

— Casey McQuiston

395. “She goes through the cards again and again, reading over Shara’s handwriting, which she’s come to know with a kind of intimacy that makes her want to lie down in the ditch behind her house and forget she even knew there were girls like Shara Wheeler.”

— Casey McQuiston

396. “The president is sitting down with as many member of the Office of Communications as we could drag out of bed at three in the morning,” Zahra tells him, ignoring his question. The phone is buzzing none stop in her hand. “It’s about to be gay DEFCON five in this administration. For god’s sake, put some clothes on.”

— Casey McQuiston

397. “Alex paces the solarium and listens to Henry talk, stories about a man with Henry’s same sandy hair and strong, straight nose, someone Alex has met in shadows that pass through the way Henry speaks and moves and laughs.”

— Casey McQuiston

398. “Why do you even have staff?” Alex says. “Nobody has ever tried to stop me from walking straight in here.”

— Casey McQuiston

399. “I think it’s amazing,” Nora says. “Sworn enemies forced to make peace to settle tensions between their countries? There’s something totally Shakespearean about it.”

— Casey McQuiston

400. “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