A Novel Love Story Quotes

“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.” Closing his eyes, he tilted his head back, and the sunlight caught in his fair hair. “I could if I liked naps.” I opened my eyes and gave him a look of disbelief. “You don’t like naps? What’s wrong with you? Who hurt you as a child?” He snorted a laugh. “That will take a few hours to unpack.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Someone once told me that we can only take on as much as we can carry with us.” I curled my legs up under me, watching him in the low light. “Would you carry me with you?” And then, because I couldn’t bear the weight of this conversation, I added, “Like in a satchel or…?” He laughed softly, probably made easier by the whiskey in his hand. “If you’ll let me, I’ll carry you here.” And then he picked up my hand, and kissed my palm, and placed it over his heart. And I felt his heartbeat under my fingers, bright and strong, and his skin was warm, and I couldn’t imagine for a moment that this man could ever be fictional when he was so very here. He had blood, and bones, and a beating heart, and calluses on the tips of his fingers, and a curl that never quite left his forehead, and eyes that weren’t quite green and weren’t quite gray, but a bright mint that was quickly becoming my favorite color. After a moment of feeling his pulse, I whispered, “I would like that.” Because he was right: sometimes people came into your life for brief moments, and changed you forever. I think he was my person.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I wanted to soak in the afternoon sun, and I wanted to fill my lungs with summer breeze.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Love looked like a man who had coffee ready for me in the mornings even though he preferred tea, and remembered exactly how I took it. Love ate my sugary spaghetti, and held an umbrella over my head when it rained, and apologized when he knew he was wrong. Love was inquisitive, and mindful, and—somewhere beneath the grumpy exterior—sweet. Love was tricking yourself into doing something you didn’t want to do, because you loved the person who did.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“When you’re in love,” I said, remembering all the years with Liam, “the lines sort of blur.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“It’s you,” he said to her. “Wherever, whatever, with you.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I began to realize my life wasn’t stopping, either. It would go on regardless of whether I burrowed my head in the sand and stayed stock-still.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“And he kissed—oh, fuck, he kissed like he made it his mission to read kissing books every day of his life.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“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.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“They have character. Though, I've yet to meet a bookstore that doesn't.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“He struck me as the kind of quiet and stoic character who crept into your heart the longer you spent with him, steadfast like a dictionary.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I couldn’t remember the last time someone had kissed me that passionately- savored me, like I was the last sentence in his favorite book.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“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

“In the back left corner of the store, beside a cozy reading area with a stone hearth and a weathered fainting couch, there was a spiral staircase to the second floor. I followed him up, and the loft was off to the left of the cookbooks, behind a narrow blue door. He took his keys out of his pocket and unlocked it. “It may smell a bit musty,” he began, opening the door for me, “but it’s secluded, and you have your own bathroom and shower. The sheets are fresh, too.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“He rubbed his hands on his trousers, shaking his head. “Peas don’t pay carrots, don’t worry about it.” “Why am I the pea?” “Because I hate peas.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“He was close enough that I caught a note of his cologne—cedar and black tea and, faintly, the subtle scent of a well-loved paperback. Familiar and yearning.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“When Pru and I were in school, we’d plan our reading days based on the weather. She’d circle the spring rains on her calendar, mark off the weeks when hurricanes came through in the fall, and then when the storms hit, we’d have at least a dozen books ready—library reads and wilted paperbacks from the secondhand shop. We’d curl up on the couch for hours on end, playing hooky from school.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“A book doesn’t have to be pretty to be able to read it.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“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. I’d met countless stories by the time I read a book that changed my life.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I was hungover and halfway dead, and still my heart had the audacity to be horny.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“In my next life, I’d like to be a bookstore cat. Sunlight and books and naps.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I’m not a book boyfriend, you know. I’m real.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I needed to get lost in a book. More than I needed anything else.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Sometimes, a book can change your life. It’s hard to explain that to someone who doesn’t read,”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“I should’ve realized that he never looked back to see if I was still there. His gaze was always trained ahead, and that’s what I’d loved about him, but in the end it turned out that I simply wasn’t important enough for him to look back at.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“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

“every fiber of my being wanted to just get lost in this book.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“You don’t realize how much of life is built for relationships until, newly single, you find yourself with a broken ankle, cooped up on the couch in your one-bedroom apartment, and you need to go to the restroom. The problem is, you’ve knocked your crutches over and the pain prevents you from moving too much at all. You go through the Rolodex in your head of whom you can call, and every one of them has someone more important than you in their lives to take care of. You have to weigh how much of a bother you’re going to be, and how much you can rely on them. (Obviously you can rely on your friends. Obviously I’m not saying you can’t, but there is always a limit of how much before you’re a burden.)”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“To remind us that like a starling’s song, all stories are different,”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story

“Sometimes, a book can change your life.”
― Ashley Poston, A Novel Love Story