Top 30 Monica Drake Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The Buddhists say if you meet somebody and your heart pounds, your hands shake, your knees go weak, that’s not the one. When you meet your ‘soulmate’ you’ll feel calm. No anxiety, no agitation.”

— Monica Drake

Featured in: Soulmate Quotes

2. “When you meet your ‘soul mate’ you’ll feel calm. No anxiety, No agitation.”

— Monica Drake

3. “When life sucks, throw yourself into art.”

— Monica Drake

4. “The only value of wasted time is knowledge.”

— Monica Drake

5. “Maybe da Vinci didn’t serve lamb in his painting of the Last Supper, but there was room for interpretation. Jesus himself was the lamb led to the slaughter.”

— Monica Drake

6. “I watched the moon through the window. It was a beautiful, floating illusion of a still point in the universe. Dark shadows passed over the plains, mountains and water.”

— Monica Drake

7. “In the middle of a wrist’s suicide slash-line, below the layered skin and above the pulse, there’s an acupuncture point that says, “Get back to who you were meant to be.””

— Monica Drake

8. “Space is never empty. Emotions have vectors and velocity. You can crush a person from a distance. Sometimes the first weapon is the act or art of pulling away.”

— Monica Drake

9. “The moon was now paper-thin and fading. That moon was sky-tinged, the way you could see right through it to the blue of the evening light, and it was hung like a damp tissue as though pressed against glass.”

— Monica Drake

10. “Outside the window, one lone car passed and threw a violent blast of rainwater over the sidewalk. It was a storm, by now. Looking at that rain, I was falling deeply in love with our warm bar. What could you do, with a world like that? I was in love with every minute of being alive even as I floundered.”

— Monica Drake

11. “The Arboretum’s overgrown grass rustled. The branches of an apple tree shook as though an animal had jumped from one to the next. A wind slid up my thighs, in the night, under my short nightgown. Crickets and cicadas made a sound like distant laughing children, the laugh track to a sitcom that didn’t end. It was like the grass was full of tiny giggling babies. So beautiful, and creepy.”

— Monica Drake

12. “There is no such thing as a truly single person, only a lonely one. Humans are porous in the borders of our skins, these walking micro cities.”

— Monica Drake

13. “You will be my favorite ex,” I whispered in his ear. “I’ll be your fifth former wife. We’ll mutter crazy dreams together then apart, but you will always be with me.” His breath was warm and so very human, not demonic at all. He said, “Don’t break my nose.” I said, “I won’t even break your heart.”

— Monica Drake

14. “This was my language. The house was talking to me. It was telling me about my own mistakes: they don’t go away. The trash goes out, but it seeps back in tiny increments, like the backflow of blood, the rush that causes a heart murmur.”

— Monica Drake

15. “In the middle of a wrist’s suicide slash-line, below the layered skin and above the pulse, there’s an acupuncture point that says, Get back to who you were meant to be. This is the heart spot, the center. Your whole life the skin on that place will stay closest to being a baby’s skin, as close as you can get anymore to the way you started, the way you once thought you’d always be.”

— Monica Drake

16. “We’re mourning and celebrating at the same time, so drink.”

— Monica Drake

17. “What I feel in that kitchen is the way humans are so flawed and so perfect, and I want to share bodies. You know your old dog? That’s how I feel – I want to climb on people, breathe their breath, lick the inside of stranger’s mouths. I don’t know these two, but who do we ever know, really, past the skin? How do we get there?”

— Monica Drake

18. “Buying kids booze was against the law but hell, it wasn’t the worst thing he’d done. After that, it turned into a thing – they’d see him and wave, and they knew his name and let him be one of theirs, one of them. They cut a small place in the world for him to belong.”

— Monica Drake

19. “I thought I was old, back then. I thought I was grown up. I didn’t know all my big mistakes were up ahead of me, still to come. Always.”

— Monica Drake

20. “Everything was out in our crowded lawn, really – love, anger and jealousy. History and intimacy. You could breath it in, thick as fog. I wanted to yell, Get out of our yard!”

— Monica Drake

21. “I, American in body and spirit, healthy, debauched and dedicated to travel, had no date. I felt a simmering discontent. What good was freedom when I wasn’t free to hand it over, what use was the currency of my body if I couldn’t spend it?”

— Monica Drake

22. “He was hurt. He was a man who needed a country. I was a woman who needed a man. I’d be his country. He’d be my dictator. I saw our future unfold like a history book.”

— Monica Drake

23. “Love is a demon. It would take over, and it would kill us, but first it would keep us all alive.”

— Monica Drake

24. “Come with me, Mack,” I said. “Back to my place.” I tried to pull my hand back. Our fingers were intertwined like those bloody hospital robes. I didn’t mind, even when he scared me a little. The blood that kept us alive was trapped just under our skin, racing through veins. All those cells inside and out were fighting for a way to move closer together, beyond the trap of skin, dependent on breath.”

— Monica Drake

25. “She didn’t call. That was good. If she called, she’d have a chance to cancel.”

— Monica Drake

26. “Where we grew up, we didn’t learn how to live. We learned how to bury the land, seal life off. There was an unacknowledged backdrop to being a kid on land that was fast turning into strip malls, when you loved trees and a silent corporate presence kept showing up to knock the trees down. It was the helpless sense that everything you ever loved could be destroyed, without debate.”

— Monica Drake

27. “And she thought, Who the hell are you, Mister? But his eyes were blue and his hair was thick, and his arms were strong and sinewy. He had a Nevada tan, desert tan, wherever he’d been living, wherever he sometimes went. He was gorgeous, that hothead. She put an orange segment in her mouth, held it out toward his mouth, leaned in, rolled on top of him, her body over his, and he bit into the orange, gulped it even, made his mouth ready for more, for her, like he’d been starving.”

— Monica Drake

28. “My head was so light. Wind sang through the field grass. The same wind brushed hair off my face, soft as my mother’s hand, and when the falling snow started to clump into flakes, each thick flake came down with the love of a frozen kiss, like somebody was saving up, freezing their warm love for later.”

— Monica Drake

29. “The day Travis met Lu he was in his best suit – dark blue, pinstripes, a necktie. Women his age would see right through his sweat and pretense. Any woman his age, she’d say, “What, you work at Men’s Warehouse now?” Yeah, a woman would know a cheap suit was like an easy costume, but the girls didn’t catch on.”

— Monica Drake

30. “When I stand around all day, into the afternoon, I start to feel like a good bike pulled to the curb. I’m every car that’s ever idled, a motorcycle gulping its own exhaust, lurching toward open road. I’m paid to stand, and I get this feeling my body is waiting for my mind to figure out what I’m supposed to do with being alive.”

— Monica Drake

31. “Playing Frisbee gave Sean permission to look at Lu, across a short distance. He didn’t have to feel stupid for staring.”

— Monica Drake

32. “He said, “Only you.” I was alone and he was alone and we had nothing in common short of being human at night.”

— Monica Drake