Emily Habeck Quotes

“Lewis, you've told me so much about Wren, sometimes I think I miss her, too.”

Source: Shark Heart

“How, since the loss, Wren looked at her hands first thing every morning and pretended they were her mother's hands—hands that never left her, hands that lived on in the foggy transition between sleeping and waking.”

Hands Loss Grief

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“In their innocence, they failed to grasp the labor of losing a partner, how the tasks of simple existence would become logistical feats and one person's burden.”

Love Romance Loss Grief Burden

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Wren missed her mother most at times like these, when she felt powerless and had no idea what to do. She looked at her hands as if an answer were written upon them.”

Hands Loss Grief

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Wren was disgusted with herself and then devastated. His work could no longer be discovered. She had lost him all over again.”

Loss Grief

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“With this private tradition, there was no need to sit awkwardly at another mother's table with a seven-dollar greeting card, wondering what to do with her hands, what to do with her heart.”

Loss Mother S Day

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“She took a northern detour because returning home felt like a commitment to a life that could go on without him.”

Loss Avoidance

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Funny, how you get a kiss but lose your virginity. I don't feel like anything's been taken or added at all.”

Concepts Kiss Virginity

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Then, for the last time, Lewis lifted his head and kissed her mouth: flower-petal lips to sharp teeth.”

Love Romance Kiss Goodbye Endings

Author:Emily Habeck

“As their saltwater tears combined with the sea, Lewis finally understood the log line of their love story: He was an aimless kite in search of a string to ground him to the world, but instead, he'd found Wren, a great, strong wind who supported his exploration of the sky.”

Love Romance Wind Metaphor Anchors Kites String

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Lewis's mutation was like the weather; they could prepare, but they could not control a thing.”

Metaphor Weather Mutation

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“And then, like soft rain on a hot day: the sudden relief of prophetic understanding. Wren could do for Lewis what she was too young and resourceless to do for her mother. Plenty of smart people denied the existence of free will, but perhaps the stakes were not as high for them.”

Metaphor Free Will Prophecy

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Moments when he was no longer their teacher but an imperfect man who had just apprehended a flash of enlightenment in the fourth row of the high school auditorium; moments when he was no longer a human becoming a shark, in fact: no longer a body at all but a celestial object, simultaneously born and dying from an overwhelm of love and goodness.”

Transformation Metaphor Celestial Body

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Without eyelids, he seemed to stare right through her when he slept, like a figure in a painting whose gaze follows you no matter where you orient yourself in the room.”

Horror Metaphor Following

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Angela lay faceup on the hot green concrete, pretending her body was a melting Popsicle. As she started to sweat, she imagined all the ugly parts of herself dripping away, leaving only her dream self, whom she deeply, truly, always wanted to be.”

Metaphor Self Image

Author:Emily Habeck

“The thought of her parents once evoked an involuntary ache in her chest, but now she experienced a new uncaring neutrality. Angela's future felt so full, and her parents existed another life ago, ghosts relieved from the duty of haunting.”

Metaphor Parents Ghosts Strained Relationships

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“She hated the cliché, but Lewis gave her something she didn't even know she needed. Wren needed it so much she could not resist him once he found her, but when she began to love him, Wren battled indecision and fear, the convincing voice telling her that loving was a risk she could not afford.”

Love Need

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Afterward, as those in attendance sifted through their own junk drawer of troubles, they would thank the tilted universe it wasn't their change to bear; their blood and bones ripping away from humanity's known, narrow lane; their life and family broken and rearranged.”

Burden Body Horror

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Wren started dining alone in cafes, diners, bars, and restaurants just to be near other people, the movements and sounds of lives being lived together. On one of these solo excursions, Wren met a man in a yellow shirt who made her feel that the world was a good place, and the world was a good place because she was someone living in it.”

Love Feelings Togetherness First Meetings

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“She knew it was wrong to think this way, but seeing Marcos's mulberry thumbprint beneath the soft flap of her earlobe the next morning gave Angela the creeping satisfaction that he took the time to touch her.”

Abuse Bruises Toxic Relationship

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“The more time the Tiny Pregnant Woman spent in the pool, the more the pool became like a crystal ball, revealing things about her that she could not see on her own. It seemed the pool had something to teach her about her life's purpose, and she needed to keep swimming to realize it.”

Life Purpose Swimming Crystal Ball

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“They were two strangers holding each other for the night, and given the vast timeline of the universe, the difference between a night together and a lifetime seemed pretty much negligible.”

Time Universe Strangers

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“I've been thinking lately, maybe we do get new performances of the same day, opportunities to be more accepting and loving. Maybe practice, rehearsal, is also the way to freedom. We can start over. Time can loop back on itself, and here I am again with you, Margaret, trying.”

Trying Time

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Second-grade Wren's reasoning was that a life too noticeable might be stolen, and conversely, a wispy existence might blow away or be stepped on. Medium was safe.”

Life Dreams

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“In the rare hopeful hour, I tell myself this darkness has a purpose: to help me recognize light if I ever find it again.”

Light Hope Darkness

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Margaret felt his smile was bright enough to turn the dark ocean aflame with light and colors yet to be seen or invented.”

Love Light Smile Colors

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“What if magic is just mislabeled peace?”

Peace Magic Questions

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“They each served a purpose in the other's life, and separately, each had enough to grieve without grieving each other as well.”

Purpose Friendship Grief

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“So, the atmospheric shimmering of greatest happiness, two girls greeting life hadn't in hand, was theirs to borrow, not keep.”

Friendship Lost Friendshipds

Author:Emily Habeck

“Wren did not love him obliquely, making him dance for her affection.”

Love Romance Marriage

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“They say the first year of marriage is the hardest," she said at last as she squeezed his hand. It was the most hopeful thing anyone could have said, a bypassing of the truth, because there would not be another year to measure against this first one.”

Marriage

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

“Did she not see how the man she married was already irretrievable despite himself? Lewis hoped she wouldn't be the last to know.”

Humanity Loss Marriage Loss Of Self

Book:Shark Heart

Source: Shark Heart

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