Top 500 Casey McQuiston Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “How does she explain that she used to be afraid to love anyone because there’s a well at the center of her chest and she doesn’t know where the bottom is?”

— Casey McQuiston

402. “You were the only one it could be.”

— Casey McQuiston

403. “You engross my thoughts too intirely to allow me to think of any thing else – you not only employ my mind all day; but you intrude upon my sleep. I meet you in every dream – and when I wake I cannot close my eyes again for ruminating on your sweetness.”

— Casey McQuiston

404. “It was never a crush, if she’s being honest, not since she started planning her mornings around a girl she didn’t even know.”

— Casey McQuiston

405. “He’s absolutely sure that guys who kissed the Prince of England and liked it don’t get elected to represent Texas.”

— Casey McQuiston

406. “Back in their apartment, Wes leads her to the door to his bedroom and says, “If you tell Niko or Myla I let you in here, I will deny it, and I will wait months until you’re no longer expecting my retribution and give all your stuff to that guy on the second floor whose apartment smells like onions.”

— Casey McQuiston

407. “Shara wirft Dinge nicht weg, weil sie ihr nichts bedeuten. Sie wirft sie weg, weil sie zu viel bedeuten.”

— Casey McQuiston

408. “Alex lies awake that night, drunk on Shiner and way too many campfire marshmallows, and he stares at whorls in the wood panels of the top bunk and thinks about coming of age out here. He remembers when he was a kid, freckly and unafraid, when the world seemed like it was blissfully endless but everything still made perfect sense. He used to leave his clothes in a pile on the pier and dive headfirst into the lake. Everything was in its right place.”

— Casey McQuiston

409. “What? Pick the lock?” Wes says. “What kind of feral child are you? Are you Jessica Jones?”

— Casey McQuiston

410. “I don’t think I’m allowed back on Long Island after I dropped that jar of spiders on the LIRR,” Niko says.”

— Casey McQuiston

411. “Yes,” she says, and for good measure adds, “sir.” Ew. Hated that.”

— Casey McQuiston

412. “I can’t believe our ancestors survived centuries of wars and plagues and genocide just to wind up with your sorry ass.”

— Casey McQuiston

413. “Your pants are in the window by the TV,” says a voice, much too clear and much too loud for the hangover bog. August looks up, and there’s Lucie, glitter lingering around her eyes, glowering into the cabinets. “You said, ‘They need to get some air.”

— Casey McQuiston

414. “Jane tilts her head to look at her. She’s got this ability to move between pretty and handsome from moment to moment, a subtle difference in the way she holds her chin or the set of her mouth. Right now, she’s the prettiest girl August has ever seen.”

— Casey McQuiston

415. “If I seem confident, it’s because I have to. You, of all people, know what I mean.”

— Casey McQuiston

416. “Wes whips around, and there is Isaiah, makeup done, wearing a vibrant fuschia scarf around his head and laughing with a couple in matching Pilgrim costumes. He glances over, and August knows the second his eyes lock on Wes’s, because it’s the second Wes starts trying to climb under the table. “Absolutely not, bruh,” Myla says, throwing a kick. “Stand and face love.”

— Casey McQuiston

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

— Casey McQuiston

418. “One. The Gun File. A detailed index of every kind of insane gun Americans can own and state-by-State regulations, which he has to comb through for research on a new set of federal assault rifle policies. It’s got a giant smudge of pizza sauce on it because it makes him stress eat.”

— Casey McQuiston

419. “On a chain around his neck, always hidden from view, he’s worn the key to that house since the day he left for DC.”

— Casey McQuiston

420. “And through it all, Alex realizes with a start: He has friends now.”

— Casey McQuiston

421. “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.”

— Casey McQuiston

422. “I miss figuring out scams with my friends, having a beer, going to the movies. Dumb, small life things.”

— Casey McQuiston

423. “Oh my God. She literally shorted out the train because she was horny... She’s an icon.”

— Casey McQuiston

424. “This crush, she decides, is just not going to work for her.”

— Casey McQuiston

425. “Shame is a way of life here. It’s stocked in the vending machines, stuck like gum under the desks, spoken in the morning devotionals. She knows now that there’s a bit of it in her.”

— Casey McQuiston

426. “There was this one weekend, a million summers ago, when I sat on the shore drinking a frozen limeade, and I realized the only thing I wanted to look at was the way the sun hit the girls swimming in the lake. The problem has always been this: When I look at you, I taste lime, and I see light on water.”

— Casey McQuiston

427. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just you.” “I’m not a nice person,” she says. “Chloe,” her mom says, “your mama and I decided long before you were born that we would let you be whoever you are, no matter who that is.” “And if who you are is a snarling little Pomeranian with eyes like fire, then that’s who you are, darling,” her mama adds.”

— Casey McQuiston

428. “And they’re not khakis, they’re chinos. Khakis are for white people.”

— Casey McQuiston

429. “Henry is one talented bastard. A man of many hidden gifts, Alex muses half hysterically. A true prodigy. God save the queen.”

— Casey McQuiston

430. “Just because you can’t run doesn’t mean you can make me do it for you.”

— Casey McQuiston

431. “Her eyes have this way of swallowing up the grimy fluorescent light of the train and transforming it into something new. Right now, when she looks at August: stars. The goddamn Milky Way.”

— Casey McQuiston

432. “She listens to the bass lines spilling over one another, and it starts to make sense. The music, and why it might mean so much to someone.”

— Casey McQuiston

433. “He has a bit of a caring-too-much problem about most things, including whether people can pay their medical bills, or marry whomever they love, or not get shot at school.”

— Casey McQuiston

434. “But I only stayed long enough to take the good, and I always left when the bad got bad.”

— Casey McQuiston

435. “Of course. Of course Shara gave her this instead of an explanation. Of course Shara cast herself as the main character of her own personal John Green novel.”

— Casey McQuiston

436. “And maybe you can make her happy while she’s here. Maybe it’s selfish to keep that from her. Maybe it’s selfish to keep it from you.”

— Casey McQuiston

437. “She lived because she wanted to. There’s nothing she can’t do.”

— Casey McQuiston

438. “What, did you think I was Sloane?” Henry says, pushing the panel open a crack and yanking Alex into a wide, dark plaza.”

— Casey McQuiston

439. “Yep. And for the record, making it was one of the most depressing moments of my career.”

— Casey McQuiston

440. “He switches off the lamp, and when he turns toward their room, August sees the soft melt of his smile, the gentle crease at one side of his mouth, a secret thing. They’ll sleep separately tonight, and somehow this hurts her heart more, the easy tether between them that doesn’t need a constant touch. The assurance that the other person is right there in your orbit, always, waiting to be tugged back in. Niko and Myla could be on opposite sides of an ocean and they’d breathe in sync.”

— Casey McQuiston

441. “He also thought about prying up the staples with his fingers and taking the picture out and keeping it in his room, but he never did. His fingernails were too stubby; they weren’t made for it like June’s, like a girl’s.”

— Casey McQuiston

442. “But it’s too late. She could live another fifty years, love and leave a hundred cities, press her fingertips into a thousand turnstiles and plane tickets, and Jane would still be there at the bottom of her heart.”

— Casey McQuiston

443. “Mr. Truman has never said he’s gay, he is a single fortysomething choir director with an extensive collection of slouchy sweaters. Some of the sweaters even have elbow patches. Like, come on.”

— Casey McQuiston

444. “Henry leans down to meet Alex’s mouth, and Alex is. Well, Alex is so in love he could die.”

— Casey McQuiston

445. “If they’re gonna kill you, get their DNA under your fingernails.”

— Casey McQuiston

446. “Depends if you don’t mind that they’re all about you.”

— Casey McQuiston

447. “6TH OF JULY, 2020.”

— Casey McQuiston

448. “Hey, Subway Girl.”

— Casey McQuiston

449. “It hums under the surface-that feeling August felt when she stepped inside Delilah’s, when Miss Ivy calls her by name, when they paraded down to the Q behind Isaiah in his top hat, when the guy at the bodega doesn’t card her, when Jane looks at her like she could be a part of her mental photo album of the city. That feeling that she lives here, like really lives here.”

— Casey McQuiston

450. “That night, as Alex stares into the cold, pitiless eyes of a prehistoric beast of prey, he has a few regrets.”

— Casey McQuiston