I'm Only Wicked with You Quotes

“For what it’s worth . . . I don’t think anyone you love is ever truly gone. I do very much feel their absence . . . but I also feel their presence all the time, in a new way. In some ways they’re with me now more than ever. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked With You

“He felt feral, standing naked - clearly the word of the day - and perspiring at an open window, irritable and restless, acutely aware of every inch of his skin, or, more accurately, the full contours of his being. As though it had been coiled into a cramped place and newly freed, and now was needling him as the blood flowed again. Skin was useful for more than being the thing between his viscera and bullets, for instance. It was capable of knowing glories.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“I thought love was meant to be an easy, peaceful thing, Lillias. But it's like life itself. It's maddening. And beautiful. And changeable and funny and passionate. It's...like a Hudson River Valley sunset. Underneath all that fire and glory the sky is ever constant. It's like you. For me, it is you.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“Hugh leaned back. “Well, isn’t it about perception? How do we know whether, for instance, the ruby-throated hummingbird doesn’t consider her nest a towering architectural achievement? Gyrfalcons return to the same nests again and again, year after year. One might consider that tradition. Generations of falcon may in fact use the same nest for thousands of years.” “A thousand years!” Delacorte marveled. “Imagine how much bird shite is in those nests by then!”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked With You

“But we have to be stronger and braver and cleverer than men are and not give them what they want simply because we find them charming. At which point, contrary creatures that they are, they will find us irresistible.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“She moved across the room, and every one of his muscles tensed as though they were getting ready to pin her to a mattress. And he knew with almost a sense of doom how Hades must have felt when he’d seen that girl in a meadow picking flowers. I must have her or die. It was that simple.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked With You

“It’s the very Americanness of ‘Cassidy,’ perhaps,” she said thoughtfully. “You look as though your best friend might be a bear.” “Lillias,” her mother said reprovingly from over in the corner, and somewhat doubtfully, as if perhaps there was nothing at all wrong with having a bear for a best friend. As if one never knew with Americans.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked With You

“All the shiny surfaces reflected the other shiny surfaces, as though the house was in love with itself and couldn’t stop winking and preening.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked With You

“the kind of pounding in his skull that made him immediately wish he could twist it off his neck and hurl it out the window.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked With You

“She turned to him as though he were the sun and she a sunflower.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked With You

“his father had pointed up and shown him Polaris, hanging up there like a diamond pin holding the black, black sky in place.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked With You

“It was all there was of life: moments of grace between the upheavals and changes.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked With You

“Why does anyone love anyone?” she said. He shifted on the bench and blew out a breath. “I don’t know. I know it’s the only thing that makes life bearable. And it’s the only thing that makes life unbearable.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked With You

“I feel that if one is properly living life . . . an excess of rumination and metaphor can put you at a remove from all that’s beautiful about it. If one takes advantage of all the senses—breathing, feeling, seeing . . . touching . . . tasting . . .” he tried not to look at Lillias “. . . then merely being alive is poetry.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked With You

“Once I have the target in my sights," he said, close to her ear, "I think of what I love most in the world. What will happen if I miss? Will they be harmed? Will they go hungry? Will I see them again?" He paused at length. "Because I've learned that once you know what truly matters in life, and once you know who and what you truly love, then you know who you are...and your aim will always be true.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“How he felt (hard as a wall, safe as a house, dangerous as a wild animal), how he smelled (sweat, sawdust, smoke, musk, sex), how he tasted (like sin, if sin was a liqueur)- taken together they should have all comprised an adventure. And then a lesson. And then be rapidly consigned to history.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“She gazed up into his face, and he gazed down into hers as if she were a landscape he was inspecting for hidden enemies. Or perhaps hidden wonders. Lost. His voice lowered conspiratorially. "Would you like your hand back?" The right words to say were bobbing around somewhere in the syrup her brain had become; she couldn't quite fish them out. The truth was, at the moment, her hand seemed to rightly belong to him. As though it were a trophy he'd won for snatching arrows out of air.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“Hugh sought the right words. "It's just that..." He pushed his hair back. And then he sighed. "I feel that if one is properly living life...an excess of rumination and metaphor can put you at a remove from all that's beautiful about it. If one takes advantage of all the senses - breathing, feeling, seeing... touching...tasting..." he tried not to look at Lillias "...then merely being alive is poetry.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“His smile was slow, and contained such a combination of genuine amusement, self-deprecation, and appreciation for her that for an instant every part of her felt illuminated, warmed, and too exposed.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“And...well he recalled hearing that Sir Galahad had been speechless when he'd first clapped eyes on the grail. It was a bit like that. Words seemed both pointless and impossible. But Galahad had allegedly been pure of heart, and that's where the comparison ended. Hugh's thoughts were anything but.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“Broke in two' made heartbreak sound as simple as treading on a twig - snap! She could now speak with some authority that the sensation in the actual moment - two months and two days ago, to be precise- was less a break and more of a swift harpooning - she had full access to her father's library and read a good deal; she was good at choosing words. And there was nothing simple about it. It wasn't just one emotion. A whole flapping Pandora's Box full of them had been released: astonishment, wounded pride, mordant amusement about the wounded pride, mordant amusement about the astonishment, confusion, scalding grief, a flailing loss.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“The nerve of him, looming up out of the dark like a cliff, the sort ships founder on in storms. Shoulders blocking the light, the shadows clinging to the valleys created by his cheekbones and jaw sculpting him rather starkly, and when he'd come closer - she perhaps should not have allowed him to get so close, but then, he'd felt like a dare from nearly the moment he'd appeared, ---”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“He had looked into the barrel of enemy rifles, the slavering jaws of a furious bear, the lifeless faces of his father and brother. He could build a home from the stripped timbers on up, shoot to kill nearly anything, expertly hold a newborn baby. He figured he'd been tested in more ways than Hercules, and in the end he supposed he was grateful that the war had sorted the entirety of his life into two categories for him: what was worth living for, what was worth dying for.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You

“Difficult people were looked upon as an opportunity to sharpen their wits and exercise compassion.”
― Julie Anne Long, I'm Only Wicked with You