Robin York Quotes

You arm yourself with love, friends, knowledge. You figure out who you are. What you want. You figure it out, and you go after it with everything you've got. And that means sometimes you have to let yourself be scared.

— Robin York

“You're mine. He hurt you. I want to hurt him.”

— Robin York

“When you've got a shot at deeper, you have to fist your hands in its T-shirt and pull it closer. Tug until fabric rips. Yank at it, reel it in until it's naked up against your belly and you're starving and full, desperate and satiated, dizzy and grounded.”

— Robin York

“I want you, and I don't know how to stop wanting you. I want to get deep inside you, and then deeper, until I'm so deep I don't even know what's me anymore and what's you.”

— Robin York

“I could feed you a line about how I want that because I think you need somebody to show you you're not broken, how you're beautiful and sexy and if you're dirty it's only in the good way, the way everybody is dirty. I could tell you that, and it would be true, but what's really true is that I'm selfish and I want you. I don't know how to stop wanting you. I'm just really fucking tired of trying.”

— Robin York

When you surround yourself with lies, all the real things start to break.

— Robin York

“Love is what fucks people up. Love is the undertow.”

— Robin York

“Don't wait for me," he whispers, and he kisses me again. "I don't want you to wait.”

— Robin York

“I just know that when she looks up, the tears make her eyes shine, and that's where the stars are.”

— Robin York

“You have a great shift." I tell him. "I'll see you around. It's a good thing we're not friends, or else maybe I'd miss you. Or something more than friends-it's a good thing we weren't going out, or I'd be gutted right now. But, you know, we're not. Going out. Obviously. It's so obvious. I'm not sure why I didn't get the memo on that. Maybe it was all the phone sex, addling my stupid female brain. Or, hell, maybe it was all those hours we spent at the bakery, hanging out, or that time when I slept in your bed and cried on your lap on the bathroom floor. I just got confused about what we are. I didn't get the memo.”

— Robin York

“It doesn't take anything special to fight back against the world and all the ways it wants to box you in, hold you down, limit you, and keep you from thriving. You just have to know what it is you want to accomplish. You have to know who you want to be with and what you'll give up to get them. You have to let yourself want what you want as hard as you can, as deep as that goes, even if it scares the fuck out of you.”

— Robin York

“What if you go after the love of your life and it ruins you?”

— Robin York

“I'll woo you until you can't walk sweetheart.”

— Robin York

“Because I love you. I don't want to, okay? I think there are some things that are so hard, you shouldn't have to do them, only no one can take them from you. There are feelings so sick, so obviously unhealthy, you shouldn't have to feel them. But there they are. I still love you, and I'm not ever going to see you again, not ever. You did that to us. Not your dad or your family. just you. So I could hit you. I could rage at you right now, and call you every ugly name I know, and I know a lot. I could tell you how much I'm hurting, or I could get out of the car, slam the door, hitchhike to the airport because fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, West, how could you do this to me? How?”

— Robin York

“Nice," he says. "I'm jealous."
"Of my nap?"
"Of your pillow.”

— Robin York

My heart is so light, I think it might be made out of air. It might float up and escape through the gap between my front teeth.

— Robin York

“I didn't plan this, but her lips shape the welcome I've been waiting for my whole life, her arms are the anchor I need, her body is my home.”

— Robin York

With West, I picked deep and then deeper. I picked all the way, hot and cold, good and bad, dark and light.

— Robin York

“I've learned that when evil crawls out of a snake pit, you have to track it down and squash it. Then you have to assume it had babies and go looking for them too.”

— Robin York

“I don't want to go. Okay? That's my problem, Caroline. I never want to go.”

— Robin York

The world's not black and white," she tells me. "Life doesn't have good guys and bad guys or a beginning, middle, and end. Not while you're living it. It's just people doing stuff that's beautiful or stupid or somewhere in the middle.

— Robin York

“What am I supposed to do about you? I think you'd better tell me. Caro, because I don't have a fucking clue.”

— Robin York

“I have what it takes to claim what I want.”

— Robin York

“His name feels like a secret, and now he's wearing it on his wrist. I want to know all about this girl who put it there. What she looks like. If she's got freckles, fair hair or dark, like his. If she's scrappy or etheral, funny or serious, scrape-kneed or ladylike. I know that she loves him, so I want to know everything else. But West doesn't want to share her with me. I shouldn't keep trying to scale these walls he puts up. I'm a terrible climber.”

— Robin York

“I love you, and I'll miss you, and I want everything good for you, West. Everything wonderful. I want you to be happy. I want you to be whole.”

— Robin York

“For the record, Caro?" "Yeah?" "Hard as a fucking rock.”

— Robin York

“Because I'm trying to notice, these days, when I'm making shit harder than it has to be. I'm trying to notice when there's something I want and I'm throwing obstacles up in front of it for no reason at all.”

— Robin York

“I treated her like she belonged to me, even though I wouldn't have her and I wouldn't let her have me, either.”

— Robin York

“And after it's all said and done and you get released, I want you to find Caroline and take care of her for me. Take good care of her. I know you can't talk right now, but you promise me just the same. She's gonna need you.”

— Robin York

“Sometimes I hate the girl I was back then. It's like how, when you see a horror movie, you can't help but feel contempt for the virgin who goes for a walk in the woods after midnight. How can she be so stupid? Doesn't she know she's about to get gruesomely hacked to death?
She should know. That's why it's so hard to watch. Because you want her to know. You want her to defend herself, and you look down on her for not knowing, even though obviously it's the guy who hacks her up who's at fault.”

— Robin York

“Because I don't think you ever tell anybody the truth. You're awake at two in the morning. You look like shit. You're exhausted. When I invite you in here, when I ask you how it's going, you think I'm going to fucking buy it that you're fine? You think that's what I want you to say?”

— Robin York

“You know, that's the thing that made me cry the hardest last night, even after what you did to me? Even with how mad I am. how fucking gross I feel every time I even look at your mouth or think about hearing what I heard-thinking about how you made me hear it-it's even worse to think I'm going to leave and you're going to drive back to Silt and die there. Die there every day.”

— Robin York