Mary Ann Rivers Quotes & Sayings

My path is the nice one. The one filled with friends who will smile when I buy their children books for their birthdays. Who will take me out, sometimes, when I call on a random night because I can't settle down. The path with peaceful holidays with my parents, and reasonable work promotions at reasonable times.
The path with nice men, who take me on nice dates where I learn their last names the minute we shake hands at the bar.
A path clear of a man with eyes that drift into some private sorrow. A path that will never lead to a man whose hands shake when he holds my face for a kiss that feels like falling. — Mary Ann Rivers

I think if you love somebody, and know you want to be with them forever, it doesn't matter how it starts, just so long as it doesn't end. — Mary Ann Rivers

Story guys are like life highlighters. Your life is all these big blocks of gray text, and then a story guy comes in with a big ol' paragraph of neon pink so that when you flip back through your life, you can stop and remember all the important and interesting places. — Mary Ann Rivers

I wonder if he practices making awkward and nerdy look sort of cool. Like he fills his house with furniture that is the wrong scale for his tall body and buys plaid shirts in bulk and tells his barber to leave crazy, too-long pieces of hair mixed in with the regularly cut hair so everything always looks messy.
Then he runs his hands through his hair and puts on his plaid shirts and uses mirrors to watch himself sit in uncomfortable furniture until comfortable furniture looks like it's the one with the problem. — Mary Ann Rivers

I would need ... daisy love, you know, pretty love, sweet love that nonetheless was ubiquitous in roadside ditches in the summertime, and instead I would get orchid love. Love that needed misting and replanting and pruning and fertilizing and died anyway. — Mary Ann Rivers

He pulls just an inch away, releasing with a sweet suction my bottom lip. "Your mouth is hot and tastes like honey." I show him the tea that I've been holding out of the way. "I see," he twinkles at me and takes the travel mug, helping himself to a long sip.
He leans back in, and I guess what he's doing just in time. His feeding me the hot sip of honeyed tea should be weird, but as usual, he's so committed to the moment that I just enjoy the sweetness, the intimacy. — Mary Ann Rivers

The problem is that stepping away from Brian, leaving him standing under that pergola on Wednesday, is no longer enough to leave behind how he made me feel in that hour. I could leave him there, we could part as strangers, but God, I know that I would look for him. He would live in my peripheral vision, a ghost nudging me to turn and look behind me, only to find a spot that is emptier than empty — Mary Ann Rivers

The first book I ever read that made me cry. I was seven and hadn't realized books could do that. Just finish you like that. I was sitting in a beanbag chair in the school library when the book ended, weeping, looking at all the books on the shelves all around me, and I decided then and there that I never wanted to be anywhere else. — Mary Ann Rivers

I can hear you shake," he whispers. "What are you doing?"
"My hand's under my blouse, my bra. Very softly, I am brushing my finger over my nipple. It's - so hard. So tight it almost hurts. I am barely touching it and I'm getting hot all over."
He groans, and I get inspired. I tell him, "Touch your nipples, too. Like I did for you at the picnic table in the park."
"Jesus Christ, Carrie. I'm sweating, hot. That feels good, but my cock is harder, please - "
"Touch it, something, Brian."
"I am - there's - pre-cum. I'm slippery. Carrie, God, Carrie, are you wet? Tell me. — Mary Ann Rivers

No. I'm waiting because it's not enough. What's on the other side of the waiting is enough. — Mary Ann Rivers

It's just that she's mine, you know? I get her, I know how to listen to her. Who will know her here? What if she's scared? I won't be here to know if she's scared. — Mary Ann Rivers

That's just it, Carrie. I'm not going to burden you. You would take it all, I can tell. God, it's tempting. You're tempting, and more so than just this," he says, gesturing his hand around the pergola. "You and your big, clear eyes that make me just want to lie down with you and rest. — Mary Ann Rivers

But I think, maybe, I won't look back at what you highlighted, because I won't need to. I want to read all the way to the end with you. — Mary Ann Rivers

It's very sad. There are no bike-riding federal contract attorneys in my apartment." If my phone had a cord, I would be twirling it around my finger right now.
"That is sad. Did you look everywhere? Sometimes they hide. — Mary Ann Rivers

You dole out these stolen little pieces for yourself. You've been doing it for so long that you not only have no idea what you need, you have no idea what anyone else might need, either. No one is all or nothing. Grown-ups don't need someone to be all or nothing. — Mary Ann Rivers

I look at my snow boots, counting the grommets while I try to name what I'm feeling. This has been a problem lately. It's never been a problem before - I've been happy, and sad, and frustrated.
I've felt angry and sentimental.
I've loved. I've been loved back.
Maintaining long moments of wordless eye contact with the man who is supposed to make me feel okay about going blind, noticing all the exact shades of blue and how I can always tell he's going to smile before he does, pretending I'm not responding to some tension between us?
I'm a little exhausted. — Mary Ann Rivers

Let's go to that Jamaican place around the corner from you."
"Cluck You Chicken? Are you serious? The health department probably uses that restaurant for training exercises. — Mary Ann Rivers

If I were there, Carrie, I would need to feel how soft the skin on the inside of your thighs is, first, how hot it is at that place where your thigh curves into your pussy. I love that place. I would kiss it first, but then lick it, inhale you. — Mary Ann Rivers

It's so easy to be consumed by this shamelessness with him. The way he kisses, let alone the way he touches me, is so sharply present that it is impossible to think about anything other than the one single second in front of me. With Brian, maybe all that we have is this single second in front of us. — Mary Ann Rivers

And yet, every day, Brian gathers his sister's long hair into a beautiful plait, and just the sound of his voice is enough to calm her when she is uncomfortable and frightened. I think that tells me his real story. — Mary Ann Rivers

If I'm broken, the break will be clean and easily mended. If he breaks, I'm not sure if there will be enough pieces to approximate. I can afford to go along with what he thinks will protect him. I can have this, and I can give him what he thinks he needs, even if he may deserve better. — Mary Ann Rivers

If I were there, I'd be holding your knees over my shoulders, Carrie. My mouth would be over you and I'd lick you and taste you and suck you until you were so wet and swollen. And I'd move up to kiss you, so you would taste yourself, but I wouldn't leave you, my fingers high inside you, rubbing up and out until - — Mary Ann Rivers

I love you. I couldn't be more of a mess right now, but I can't believe I haven't told you because I have, for so long now, and it's like I don't have anything else to give you, anyway. Not time. Not my full attention. Not the kind of boyfriend you deserve. But my heart, such as it is, you do have that. I am struck by my previous reluctance for regret, as if regret were the worst possible consequence of living. — Mary Ann Rivers

Did you know that your mouth, your skin, is so soft? All week, every time I've thought about it, my hands feel like they're buzzing. I love your hair. I love that it's short and so when I put my fingers through it, I can feel your whole nape bust out in goose pimples. — Mary Ann Rivers

I have never had a first kiss like this. Is it that he's a stranger? So beautiful? If so, I am ruined for anything but beautiful strangers for the rest of my life. He is so hungry seeming, so explicit with his lips and teeth from every angle he tips my head into. I can feel my heart pounding every place ... — Mary Ann Rivers

I don't mind the dark, and because it's Christmas, we've been busy putting lights up everywhere. High, so everyone knows we're okay. — Mary Ann Rivers

He keeps his arms away from me, but eventually, holding him, I feel him tuck his chin over my head. Then he whispers, "You're the sweetest girl, the best girl, I ever kissed, Carrie West," and rubs his face into my hair like a child, breathing deep. — Mary Ann Rivers

Magic comes from freedom, from openness, from willingness. Play burbles up from the yes that lives in the dark space, the now, the gimme, the yearning urge to be and belong and become.
Our joy lives in the dizzying impulse we all learn to stifle as we grow - the voice of yes that tells us to close our eyes on the swings so we can feel the earth fall away beneath us, to lie in the grass with the sun warming our faces until we're certain that it's spinning, it's really spinning, and we're all spinning with it.
I told Cal that the dark space is light, and it is, but it is also play. To be at play is to release the light. — Mary Ann Rivers

I can't ignore his one-sided almost smile or his methylene blue eyes. I can't ignore his pretty shoulders or his arms. I can't ignore his big hands, his shoulder-blade-spanning hands, the way the tendons in them lock to every knuckle and speculate on things like capability and dexterity and, of course, the scar over those knuckles on his left hand that I've noticed before, and its reminder that he has a life and has been hurt in it. — Mary Ann Rivers

Then he was quiet, and Nina didn't have anything to say. But he stayed on the phone, she could hear him breathing, and so she kept it to her ear while she pulled out their plates, heated their food, wrapped utensils in napkins. He stayed right there, and didn't say good-bye until she did. He just stayed right there. — Mary Ann Rivers

You were the first thing I had asked for, just for me, in a long, long time. — Mary Ann Rivers

My life is cozy, but I'm starting to let myself think I want something wet and aching stabbed through it. I want something substantial. I want to gorge myself. Excess. — Mary Ann Rivers

If I wanted, I could choose to make my life a place that Brian could step into. He didn't have any room to move, but ... — Mary Ann Rivers

How does he make you feel?"
"Right now? Off balance. A little embarrassed. Worried. Like I don't know myself."
"Yeah. Exactly. Carrie, would you like to know this part of yourself?"
"Huh?"
"The part of yourself that opens herself up to a man based on nothing but a little intuition that there is goodness in him and that he kisses like the world's ending. Do you want to know that part? Because you don't have to. You're right. Your life is a nice one - there are no guarantees, but it's on the right path to stay a nice one. Brian is not on this path. — Mary Ann Rivers

I will meet you on Wednesdays at noon in Celebration Park. Kissing only. I won't touch you below the shoulders. You can touch me anywhere. No dating, no hookups. I will meet with you for as long as you meet me, so if you miss a Wednesday we part as strangers ... — Mary Ann Rivers

To have the love of this man, who knows what it is to sacrifice his life for love, I would have waited longer. — Mary Ann Rivers

For me, there isn't some miracle cure, this is my life, or my disease will progress and my life will change focus again, and I'll have another new life.
I need C to stay right where he is now because for now, I don't know enough to move from where I am.
My hypothesis is that the light will come back, both outside and inside me.
I'm afraid and angry, but the light is a theory I want to prove.
Until then, I just have to keep the experiment going with as many controls as possible.
One bus, back and forth.
One store.
One man, his words under glass. — Mary Ann Rivers

This is, of course, the privilege of love, to bear witness to a strong man's grief over the little sister he could never save, as much as he has tried to, with every moment of life. — Mary Ann Rivers

No picture necessary. I'd recognize you, see you, anywhere. I could fill my life with you. — Mary Ann Rivers

Oh Carrie," he breathes in my ear, "there are so many places I want to touch you."
"Above the shoulder?"
"No. Though I love your neck, and it's worth exploring more. So if I were there, I would start at your nape right where those small dark curls point into the hollow, where I can feel your goose bumps against my tongue when I bite into you. — Mary Ann Rivers

I should take his kisses with me and go. But with a seeping, resolute calm, I decide to keep him. I am not losing these Wednesdays, even if I can't have anything else. — Mary Ann Rivers