Top 180 M.L. Rio Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “The sky was clear and quiet, stars peering curiously down at us from a wide dome of indigo. The water, too, was still, and I thought, what liars they are, the sky and the water. Still and calm and clear, like everything was fine. It wasn’t fine, and really, it never would be again.”

— M.L. Rio

102. “I don’t know, it’s like I look at you and all the sonnets start making sense.”

— M.L. Rio

103. “We cracked up”, I say, but the phrase feels wrong. It was not so simple, or as clean, as a piece of fractured glass. “But we didn’t really shatter until we were all back together again.”

— M.L. Rio

104. “Would you change the ending, if you could? What if Benvolio came forward and said, ‘I killed Tybalt. It was me.”

— M.L. Rio

105. “Hm,” she said, gaze descending slowly from the top of my head to my feet with the cold scrutiny of a slave trader at auction. “Well. Shall we get started?”

— M.L. Rio

106. “Nothing is so exhausting as anguish.”

— M.L. Rio

107. “Tomorrow, if he tries anything, instead of assassination we give him a righteous ass-kicking.” “Here is my hand,” James said, after a split second’s hesitation. “The deed is worthy doing.” I hesitated also, a split second longer. “And so say I.”

— M.L. Rio

108. “He’d rolled toward me sometime in the night, and his head was tucked against my shoulder, breath racing down my arm every time he exhaled. The strange sudden thought that I didn’t want to move struck me, with the surprising lucidity of a sunbeam slanting right in my eyes. His warm drowsy weight in the bed beside me felt natural, comfortable, comme il faut.”

— M.L. Rio

109. “Like Aphrodite, she demanded exaltation and idolatry.”

— M.L. Rio

110. “The story has changed; we both feel it. It happens just like it did ten years ago: we find Richard in the water and we know nothing will ever be the same.”

— M.L. Rio

111. “When it was his turn to speak I watched him closely, uncertain whether he was acting only, or if he and I were both gnashing secrets between our teeth.”

— M.L. Rio

112. “She turned away from the fire, and I was relieved not to find her frowning. Instead, she looked at me with a sad, stricken expression. I was seized by the strange unfounded idea that she was debating whether or not to say I love you. But the difference between us was that she assumed people just knew those sorts of things, while I was always worried that they didn’t.”

— M.L. Rio

113. “Some people saw me as Gwendolyn always cast me: simply the loyal sidekick. James was so quintessentially a hero that this didn’t bother me.”

— M.L. Rio

114. “He was the sort of actor everyone fell in love with as soon as he stepped onstage, and I was no exception.”

— M.L. Rio

115. “But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart – by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”

— M.L. Rio

116. “There were seven of us then, seven bright young things with wide precious futures ahead of us, though we saw no farther than the books in front of our faces.”

— M.L. Rio

117. “Our holidays weren’t so different, probably – hours of reading and staring at the ceiling, isolated from siblings and parents so unfamiliar that they might as well have been different species.”

— M.L. Rio

118. “We’re all falling apart.”

— M.L. Rio

119. “We stood numb and silent on the dock as the earth ceased to turn. A terrible stillness held our six warm breathing bodies and Richard – unmoving, inanimate thing – in the same unbreakable thrall. Then there was a sound, a soft groan; Richard stretched one hand feebly toward us, and the whole world lurched. Wren stifled a scream and James grabbed my arm. “Oh, God.” He choked on the word. “He’s still alive.”

— M.L. Rio

120. “The world was perfectly still for one precious instant. Then there was a crash, a shout, and something inside shattered.”

— M.L. Rio

121. “I think you understand it perfectly. Nothing makes sense to him either. His whole world is falling apart, and once he realizes he can’t stop it or fix it or change it, there’s only one thing left to do.”

— M.L. Rio

122. “Some people saw me as Gwendolyn always cast me: simply the loyal sidekick. James was so quintessentially a hero that this didn’t bother me. He was the handsomest of us, but more charming than that was his childlike depth of feeling, onstage and off.”

— M.L. Rio

123. “In that brief one moment, I actually wondered if “okay” or something like it might still be possible. But that is how a tragedy like ours or King Lear breaks your heart – by making you believe that the ending might still be happy, until the very last minute.”

— M.L. Rio

124. “I could still see it. Richard suspended on the surface of life, bloodied, gasping – and the rest of us simply watching, waiting for the curtain to drop. Revenge tragedy, I wanted to say.”

— M.L. Rio

125. “Our sheer capacity for feeling got to be so unwieldy that we staggered under it, like Atlas with the weight of the world.”

— M.L. Rio

126. “Ik kreeg de merkwaardige gedachte dat ze bij zichzelf overwoog ‘ik hou van je’ te zeggen. Het verschil tussen ons was dat ze altijd aannam dat mensen dat soort dingen wel wisten, terwijl ik me er altijd zorgen om maakte dat ze het niet wisten.”

— M.L. Rio

127. “You know everyone calls you ‘nice’... but that’s not the word. You’re good. So good you have no idea how good you are.”

— M.L. Rio

128. “I looped one arm around her neck, pulled her close, and kissed her temple. I felt her sigh, and when she breathed her sadness out, I breathed it in.”

— M.L. Rio

129. “The yard twinkled as though several hundred obliging fireflies had decided to attend the party.”

— M.L. Rio

130. “I, on the other hand, was average in every imaginable way: not especially handsome, not especially talented, not especially good at anything but just good enough at everything that I could pick up whatever slack the others left.”

— M.L. Rio

131. “For the first time in a long time, that little rip in the middle of me, the black bruise on my soul that’s been struggling to heal for nearly a decade, throbs. Old feelings come softly thronging back. Bittersweetness, discord, and confusion.”

— M.L. Rio

132. “Acteurs zijn van nature opvliegend – wezens uit de alchemie, opgebouwd uit licht ontvlambare componenten, emoties, ego en nijd. Warm ze op, roer ze door elkaar en soms krijg je goud. Soms een catastrofe.”

— M.L. Rio

133. “The strange sudden thought that I didn’t want to move struck me, with the surprising lucidity of a sunbeam slanting right in my eyes. His warm drowsy weight in the bed beside me felt natural, comfortable, comme il faut.”

— M.L. Rio

134. “I never wanted you to look at me the way you’re looking at me right now.”

— M.L. Rio

135. “We spoke it as a second language, conversed in poetry, and lost touch with reality, a little.”

— M.L. Rio

136. “I decided that perhaps “brave” and “crazy” were not mutually exclusive.”

— M.L. Rio

137. “He turned and lurched toward her so suddenly that everyone jumped back, but Meredith didn’t move an inch – she was either brave or crazy.”

— M.L. Rio

138. “Sentimos todas las pasiones de los personajes que interpretamos como si fueran nuestras. Pero las emociones de un personaje no anulan las del actor; en lugar de eso, sientes las dos al mismo tiempo.”

— M.L. Rio

139. “Everyone seems to remember it differently.” There was a subtle, cloying challenge in his voice. Answer if you dare.”

— M.L. Rio

140. “The water, too, was still, and I thought, what liars they are, the sky and the water. Still and calm and clear, like everything was fine. It wasn’t fine, and really, it never would be again.”

— M.L. Rio

141. “She looked at me like I was crazy, but then – to my relief and my delight – she laughed, the sound wild and lovely, like a tiger lily bursting open.”

— M.L. Rio

142. “How swiftly, how suddenly everything had gone wrong. Where did it even begin?”

— M.L. Rio

143. “The absurdity of the matter does not make it any less true.”

— M.L. Rio

144. “Without him, without Dellecher, without my company of lyric-mad classmates, what would become of me?”

— M.L. Rio

145. “I’m afraid,” she said, after what felt like a year, speaking very slowly, “that I’m prettier than I am talented or intelligent, and that because of that no one will ever take me seriously. As a performer or a person.”

— M.L. Rio

146. “For you it was just one day, then business as usual. For us it was one day, and every single day that came after.” I lean forward on my elbows, so my face is only a few inches from his, so he hears every word when I lower my voice. “It must eat you alive, not knowing. Not knowing who, not knowing how, not knowing why. But you didn’t know him.”

— M.L. Rio

147. “He tilted his head back to admire the sky. “It looks farther away when they’re so little of it.”

— M.L. Rio

148. “James looked up, looked right at me. He seemed surprised to see me standing there, though I didn’t know for the life of me why he should be. Was I not always his right-hand man, his lieutenant? Banquo or Benvolio or Oliver – little difference.”

— M.L. Rio

149. “Eighteen and vulnerable, I’d felt for the first time the extraordinary dread of wanting something so desperately and watching it slip through my fingers, so I took the risk of telling him I would go to Dellecher or nowhere.”

— M.L. Rio

150. “Everything was bleak and gray, the lake dull and lusterless under a thin layer of ice. From so far and so high, it looked like a fogged mirror, and I imagined God reaching down to smear the glass clean with his sleeve.”

— M.L. Rio