A Novel Love Story Quotes

“SOMETIMES, A BOOK CAN change your life. It’s hard to explain that to someone who doesn’t read, or who has never felt their heart bend so strongly toward a story that it might just snap in two. Some books are a comfort, some a reprieve, others a vacation, a lesson, a heartbreak.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Love was tricking yourself into doing something you didn't want to do, because you loved the person who did.
Love was a bunch of small things that added up to bigger things.
Love was feeling valued. And accepted.
Just the way you were.
It was never feeling too much, or not enough, even though often you were both, because Love loved you anyway. Not in spite of it, but because of it.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“It’s hard to explain that to someone who doesn’t read, or who has never felt their heart bend so strongly toward a story that it might just snap in two. Some books are a comfort, some a reprieve, others a vacation, a lesson, a heartbreak. I’d met countless stories by the time I read a book that changed my life.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Because love stories were enough. They were safe. They would never fail me.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Sometimes, that’s how it happens. Sometimes your favorite book just hits you out of the blue like a bolt of lightning.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I want a first chapter, and a second and a third—those long chapters, you know, the ones you have to take a break from halfway through. I want all of it, not just the end.” He looked down at my hands, and took them in his, and squeezed them tightly. “And I want it with you.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“It wasn’t the end that mattered, but every word leading up to it.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“In my next life, I’d like to be a bookstore cat. Sunlight and books and naps.” “I dunno, I think you could do that in this life.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I love you,” he repeated. “I love the way your mouth always slides into a smile, even when no one’s looking. I love the way you go out of your way for people you’ve barely met. I love how your hair always curls right here, at the nape of your neck”—and he ran his fingers along the side of my neck. “And I love how you make me want to see the world in color, and I love how I feel when I’m with you. And maybe we won’t work out, but maybe we will—and I’ll run across cities, and I’ll show up with boom boxes outside your window, and I’ll meet you at the tops of buildings, and I’ll kiss you in the rain just to remind you that you’re worth every moment.” He bent and kissed my cheeks, and I realized that he had kissed the tears off them. I was crying, and I couldn’t stop.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“If you loved something—someone—sometimes you had to let them go. And if they loved you, too, they’d come back. Love—true love—always came back.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Love was patient and meticulous and it never ceased to surprise me. It wasn't something that I needed, something that I deserved, that I was worthy of--- love was what I wanted. Anders was who I wanted. For now. For a day. For a week--- for years. A story written in the language of kisses, and read to me in sweet, soft sighs.
And though I didn't know the ending, I didn't need to. Because this?
This was enough.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“And he would never stop missing her, because that was what love was in the end-breaking of a piece of of yourself that you'd never get back, There were people who tried to fill that hole with work, and there were people like me who tried to fill it with stories: people filled it with whatever could fit.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“you’re allowed to be cared for, too. You don’t have to do everything alone.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I'm just tired of sacrificing myself all the time," I replied. "I sort of felt like the Giving Tree, chopping myself smaller and smaller, and I guess I finally realized, if I keep this up, I'd be nothing but a stump in the end.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“This man was made with tweed and argyle, and sewn together with an Oxford comma.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Jasper frowned at the name. "Like, a meet-cute?"
"At the end," I supplied. "It's when Darcy tells Elizabeth he loves her most ardently, when Mark brings Bridget a new diary, when Harry tells Sally he loves her, when Will buys Junie the inn." I smiled up at the name, putting my hands on my hips. "The grand romantic gesture."
So, obviously, we named the bookshop the Grand Romantic.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“But you reminded me that things didn’t always have to be good, over and over and over, but they could be great, some days. Perfect even. I spent so long trying to blend into the background, I forgot what this feels like.” My throat tightened. “This?” He motioned between us. “This. When I’m around you,” he added, his tight shoulders unwinding, and turned those minty eyes back to my face to study it—my eyes, my nose, my mouth. Very much my mouth. “I feel like someone again.” My heart thrummed, bright and loud, in my throat. “Like a main character in your own life?” “Or…just someone important in yours,” he muttered, and as a surprise to us both, he bent close, but so did I, like two stars falling into each other’s gravity—”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I didn't need love. I didn't need to fall into it. I didn't need to find it at all. Not again. Never again.
Because love stories were enough. They were safe. They would never fail me.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“So who could blame me for sinking into books, where I knew the people weren’t real, but they also never disappointed me? I knew everything would work out in the end. I knew happy endings were destined, ever afters fated, and no matter what trials and tribulations and, well, surprise fuckups happened, things would end up okay.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“It was a love that I knew wouldn't fail me. It was safe. it was a comfort when I was heartbroken and yearning to feel something good, because I couldn't imagine it on my own.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“But you reminded me that things didn't always have to be good, over and over and over, but they could be great, some days.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“we can only take on as much as we can carry with us.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Nothing ever stopped. Nothing was permanent. Att lived and breathed, like love, like friendship. Life- like works of art- was transformative. It persisted. And through them, so did we.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“And the summer hummed on, humid and clear, without a cloud in the sky, and the fireflies lit on the edges of too-tall blades of grass, and so, so quietly, the wind that sighed through the trees sounded like the turn of a page.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“He finally returned my gaze, and held it. A knot lodged in my throat, because he was closer than I expected, and his eyelashes were darker than I expected, and long, and there was a gray rim around the inside of his irises that looked like crowns of storm clouds surrounding a peridot. His gaze made the butterflies in my stomach shake off their hibernation and want to remember how to flutter again.
Oh yes, he had to be the main character.
Book boyfriend material, once someone fixed him up.
But then: Where was his heroine?”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“If this was a romance novel, we'd kiss. That's what always happens--- the gumptious heroine meets her match in the first chapter. A meet-cute. Something memorable. Remarkable. In old Harlequins, we'd be intimate by page one hundred, and a part of me intimately wanted to know what it felt like to unbutton this stranger's shirt. To let go of this plot and just fall headfirst into someone else's.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Love was a bunch of small things that added up to bigger things. Love was feeling valued. And accepted. Just the way you were. It was never feeling too much, or not enough, even though often you were both, because Love loved you anyway. Not in spite of it, but because of it.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Readers still didn't like Honey and the Heartbreak, but I finally understood it, and like the honey Gemma Shah's bees made, the story coated my soul and kept me warm. Not all love happens at first glance--- sometimes, it takes a reread at the exact right (or wrong) time in your life.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“It's weird, I didn't think some of my best friends would be strangers on the internet, but here we are. My mom doesn't quite get it, but she understands enough. She said once you find the good ones, you keep them around no matter what.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“This is..." I couldn't come up with the words.
"My favorite place in town," he replied, and carefully we walked over to the edge of the bell tower. The sun was slowly sinking down between the rolling hills of the Catskills, purples and blues and pinks. "I've never been up here with anyone else."
My heart fluttered. "No one?"
He shook his head. "But I thought you'd appreciate it."
I glanced up at him as the setting sun made the harsh lines of his face softer, the blond of his hair more gold. This was a special place--- meant for a grand romantic gesture. It was a place wasted on me.
I was stealing all his heroine's moments, wasn't I?
It was a sobering thought.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story