Top 40 Heidi Cullinan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Kill them with kindness and if that didn’t work, use a shotgun.”

— Heidi Cullinan

2. “Hush, Sophie. You’re beautiful.” It was, mostly, a quote from the movie, and it finished Elijah off. Shutting his eyes, he leaned into Baz’s touch. “Don’t eat my heart, Howl.” “Never,” Baz vowed, sealing the promise with a kiss.”

— Heidi Cullinan

3. “Endings are hard, but important. You have to have an end, so you can have another beginning.”

— Heidi Cullinan

4. “When you have an invisible disease, your sickness isn’t your biggest problem. What you end up battling more than anything else, every single day, is other people.”

— Heidi Cullinan

5. “I don’t think people understand about suicidal thoughts. They act as if everyone who makes an attempt is looking for attention.”

— Heidi Cullinan

6. “Nothing in the world is the same as anything else, so how can anyone be normal?”

— Heidi Cullinan

7. “No one is normal. Normal is a lie.”

— Heidi Cullinan

8. “My anger and sadness was my ocean, and I couldn’t carry it. Not anymore. No one could really love me. Not when they could love somebody else instead.”

— Heidi Cullinan

9. “I should probably be noble and tell you I’ll let you go if it’s what you want, but I’m a spoiled, selfish brat. I’ll follow you, beg you, bribe you to stay. Because you’re the first one to make it to my island. I don’t want to let you leave.”

— Heidi Cullinan

10. “Let me lick you how much I’m sorry.”

— Heidi Cullinan

11. “Why do you stay with me?” he whispered. He wished he hadn’t said it once the words were out of of his mouth, wished he could pull them back, but Laurie didn’t seem fazed at all. In fact, he just smiled a crooked smile and kissed him again. “Because I don’t want to dance by myself,” he whispered.”

— Heidi Cullinan

12. “When people matter to you, they deserve your time and attention. That’s how you keep from screwing things up.”

— Heidi Cullinan

13. “It’s like Elwood Blues says: everybody needs somebody to love. I’m an everybody. I get a somebody.”

— Heidi Cullinan

14. “Every book is a revolution. Books are our ticket out of boredom, despair, loneliness – but also ignorance.”

— Heidi Cullinan

15. “Everything will change, if you wait long enough.”

— Heidi Cullinan

16. “Virgins are a rare breed anywhere, but at your age, you’re practically a unicorn.”

— Heidi Cullinan

17. “You want sins, Aunt? I’ll show you sinning. I’ll make the devil weep, I’ll sin so bad.”

— Heidi Cullinan

18. “Remember having a panic attack isn’t a failure, and not having one isn’t a success. Success is not letting the attacks run your life.”

— Heidi Cullinan

19. “There was no way Baz was consciously mimicking the pose of the Howl’s Moving Castle figurine, yet this was exactly what he was doing. Elijah’s imagination completed the shadows into dark wings, but otherwise it was the same: shorter, hesitant Elijah standing before the taller, hunched, aching Baz, tentatively trying to capture his attention.”

— Heidi Cullinan

20. “I don’t know why, but nobody undoes me like you. You want to know why I ran from you for a month? That. That right there.” He traced the tip of his nose along Elijah’s. “I’m done running.”

— Heidi Cullinan

21. “Mental illness is no different than a heart condition. In the same way a faulty valve can cause harm to the body and require medication and care, so does a malfunctioning brain. Insanity is a crude, culturally loaded term setting the sufferer apart in a way which will not aid the patient’s recovery. The way we regard those whose brains hinder them with fault or injury is a prejudice, not a diagnosis.” Dr. North.”

— Heidi Cullinan

22. “Jeremey smiled at me, and my chest felt warm and tight. I love you, Emmet. I love you too, Jeremey. I kissed the inside of my palm, then pressed that palm to Jeremey’s. His eyes were bright as he took the kiss tight in his fist and his open palm to his lips. I couldn’t stop smiling. I loved him so much.”

— Heidi Cullinan

23. “That’s it, he rasped. Hump me. Are you a dog? Are you a dog in heat? You my dog? He slapped me again. Speak, puppy.”

— Heidi Cullinan

24. “As Elijah collapsed, shaking, against him, Baz wrapped his arms around his lover, shut his eyes and let the velvet rope Elijah had used to lead him here settle comfortably around his heart.”

— Heidi Cullinan

25. “The chairs and tables, decorated with runners of Italian silk, were Disney-movie themed, because Kelly ate, breathed and farted Disney.”

— Heidi Cullinan

26. “Sometimes I liked him for his smile. Sometimes I liked him because he didn’t smile. Sometimes I got an erection because of the way he brushed his hair away from his face. It didn’t matter to my brain that these were odd reasons to care for someone. My brain, my body, my everything wanted to be Jeremey’s boyfriend.”

— Heidi Cullinan

27. “That’s my ocean. I have to pretend as best I can to be like people on the mean so people don’t call me a robot. I’m not a robot. I’m real and I have feelings the same as everyone else. And I want a boyfriend. Except my ocean doesn’t make me want to be dead. It makes me want to fight. I want you to fight too, Jeremey. I want us to carry our oceans together.”

— Heidi Cullinan

28. “As far as Elijah Prince was concerned, gay weddings could choke on their own cheery goddamned glitter and die.”

— Heidi Cullinan

29. “Frankly, I’m awesome, and anybody who doesn’t agree should get out of my way.”

— Heidi Cullinan

30. “You thought I was so toppy I wouldn’t bottom?” He laughed and bit the place he’d been kissing. “Honey, I can drive from anywhere.”

— Heidi Cullinan

31. “There is no normal. There is not an invisible bar you must meet to be acceptable to society.”

— Heidi Cullinan

32. “There is no normal, not really. Not a right and a wrong way to be. But there is belonging.”

— Heidi Cullinan

33. “He wondered... if the journey of a life with pain was simply finding more and more layers of acceptance, that at best the most constant tether would be that he would never really find the bottom, that the bottom had different levels, and that no matter how good he tried to be, sometimes he would sink into a hole.”

— Heidi Cullinan

34. “There is no normal, not really. Not a right and a wrong way to be. But there is belonging. That day in Bohemia with Jeremey and David and the girls, I belonged. I belonged as much as anybody on the mean. Maybe even a little bit more.”

— Heidi Cullinan

35. “He was Elijah’s Howl.”

— Heidi Cullinan

36. “I can’t live in the dorms and I can’t stop people from calling me a freak, but I can always solve for X.”

— Heidi Cullinan

37. “I want us to carry our oceans together.”

— Heidi Cullinan

38. “I really am Super Emmet, and like the comic book Superman, I have a powerful secret weapon. My mom.”

— Heidi Cullinan

39. “This was something he’d done a great deal of when he was very young, so young the memory was washed to sepia with age.”

— Heidi Cullinan

40. “This story is about how we undid those complications and got ourselves the rest of our happy ever after anyway.”

— Heidi Cullinan

41. “Able-bodied people aren’t expected to do superhuman feats each time they walk out the door. It should be enough to simply exist. We could start with ending abuse and neglect and giving everyone a more level playing field. We shouldn’t have to tell you we want to cure cancer to get a few extra bucks. We should be able to say we just want to be able to ride the bus like the other citizens in the city. To enjoy life the way everyone else takes for granted.”

— Heidi Cullinan

42. “Then we’ll be lonely hearts together.”

— Heidi Cullinan

43. “I’m so in love with him I can’t even ask him out. I want to lie at his feet, want to smooth out all the wrinkles in his life and make everything okay.”

— Heidi Cullinan

44. “People are good medicine, but they can’t be your foundation of functionality. You must build that yourself.”

— Heidi Cullinan

45. “That’s the big thing that I learned this year: it’s okay to go slow. That everybody else’s pace and definition of success isn’t mine. What is easy for other people isn’t necessarily do for me. Though some things are easy for me and hard for other people.”

— Heidi Cullinan