Raeder Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes all you know about where you're going is that it's away from where you are. — Leah Raeder

I slapped a big fake smile on my face like I did every day, as a cam girl, as a barista, as anything, because women are taught to smile, that smiling means men are less likely to hurt us. — Leah Raeder

Maybe people could fall in love without an identity crisis. — Leah Raeder

But when I was alone I couldn't breathe. Everything feels like drowning except you. You're my oxygen. — Leah Raeder

Sometimes boys grew up to be women. And girls grew up to be men. — Leah Raeder

Point is, nobody knows what to do with this life. And the second you think you do, your life will flip upside down. — Leah Raeder

Seeing someone you once loved is like falling in love for the first time all over again. — Leah Raeder

Did you see her?" I said. He raised his eyebrows. "The real me." "She's right here," he said, and kissed me. — Leah Raeder

I love you, I thought. If I was the only person truly alive that night, it was because of you. You made the world come alive for me and I love you, I love you, I love you. — Leah Raeder

Then why'd you do it?"
"Jealousy," she said without hesitation. "It always comes down to something crude. Don't kid yourself, Keating. It's human nature. — Leah Raeder

I stood in the rain, watching his car go. A string tied to it looped around my heart and pulled tighter and tighter until it sheared clean through. — Leah Raeder

I couldn't tear my eyes from the window, wanting to drink in as much of St. Louis as I could, knowing somewhere out there, one of those infinitesimally small lights was him. I wondered if he'd look up and see the planes crossing the sky like shooting stars, knowing one of those lights was me. — Leah Raeder

I am falling in love with you, Laney Keating."
"Don't say that."
"It's true."
"Don't say it," I said miserably, looking away.
"Why?"
Falling for someone is like pulling a loose thread. It happens stitch by stitch. You feel whole most of the time even while the seams pop, the knots loosen, everything that holds you together coming undone. It feels incredible, this opening of yourself to the world. Not like the unraveling it is. Only afterward do you glance down at the tangle of string around your feet that used to be a person who was whole and self-contained and realize that love is not a thing that we create. It's an undoing.
"Because you deserve better," I whispered. — Leah Raeder

We'd never know what was real and what wasn't about each other. That was the beauty of our shared fiction. — Leah Raeder

I'm not over you. I dream about you every night. I watch that fucking video over and over just to hear your voice. Does that make you happy? Is that proof I cared? — Leah Raeder

If two people could make each other smile and laugh and forget all the pain and darkness in the world for a moment, why should we feel ashamed of it? — Leah Raeder

In a typical college romance novel, this was the moment I would've been waiting for. The validation of all my shame and suffering at the hands of other men: a beautiful boy loved me. What had been done to my body didn't ruin me for Mr. Right. Zippity-fucking-doo-dah. — Leah Raeder

If I die, that's what they'll find in me. This face, inked in the surface of every cell. — Leah Raeder

Just like in fairy tales, the wish wasn't worth the price — Leah Raeder

I saw his pupils dilating like a pulsing black heart. I saw every tremor of strain and pleasure that went through him. I watched what I did to him, how vulnerable he became as he gave himself to me ... — Leah Raeder

What happened felt more like chemistry than a kiss. Pure liquid heat on my lips, dissolving into me, trailing a hot line down my chest and pooling in my stomach. My heels rose off the floor. All of me rose, unanchored, held down only by his weight pressing me to the chilly slab of the door. We kissed as we could not have done until now - like lovers. — Leah Raeder

That's not who you are," Blythe said.
"Who am I?"
"My little wolf." She traced my jaw, the ridge of my knuckles. "All teeth and claws. Cunning, and fierce, and insatiable. — Leah Raeder

It's not crazy if I see monsters when I live in a fucking nightmare. — Leah Raeder

Hate is when you love someone but wish you didn't. — Leah Raeder

Maybe all you need to pull you back form the ledge is to know someone would miss you if you fell. — Leah Raeder

I felt like an animal in a cage being stared at by other animals, all of us anonymous, mindless, interchangeable. — Leah Raeder

I never wanted to be saved. I wanted someone to follow me down into the darkness. — Leah Raeder

Simplify what you see until it's only bones, essence, soul. That's the only way to understand what something really is. — Leah Raeder

We're the sun and moon, Blythe." "What does that mean?" "I turn invisible when you're out. — Leah Raeder

The simplest way to not get caught doing a bad thing is to do it in front of everyone. Because most people are good - or scared, which is the same thing, functionally - and good people associate badness with guilt. Skulking, hiding. Lurking in the dark. They assume you feel their shame, that you'll try to hide your sins. They try to catch you in the shadows. No one looks for badness in the light. — Leah Raeder

The brain is an incredible multitasker. At the same time that it's piercing itself with superheated needles of anguish, it's ruthlessly making plans, contingencies, plotting out a future, giving zero fucks whether it'll ever see it. On the day I die, it'll be calculating what to have for dinner as it bombards itself with pain signals from my amputated legs or my clocked-out heart. — Leah Raeder

Recklessness makes you act. Bravery is following through. — Leah Raeder

If you know you're going to die, what's left to fear?
That's the thing. Maybe we're not really afraid of pain. Maybe we're afraid of how much we might like it. — Leah Raeder

Grow up. This is real. The world is ugly and nasty and fucked up, and so are we. — Leah Raeder

Part of loving someone is wanting them to be happy, even if it hurts you. — Leah Raeder

That's another thing about lies: if you convince yourself they're true, they become true. A lie is a discrepancy of belief, not fact. — Leah Raeder

You said you didn't know how to have a grown-up relationship. Well, here's your first lesson, Maise. When it gets hard, you don't run away. — Leah Raeder

The clearest sign of coming catastrophe is when all the bad shit in your life suddenly stops. You're entering the eye of the shitstorm. — Leah Raeder

I hide myself in my words. There's a cipher, and one half is in my writing and the other half is in me, and if you have them both then you'll understand everything. Strangers think it's just a story, but you'll know what's real. You'll know who I really am. — Leah Raeder

Lesson number one: defensiveness is defeat. Never defend yourself. — Leah Raeder

If you're trying to avoid loss, there's no point in taking another breath, or letting your heart beat one more time. It all ends. — Leah Raeder

Nobody knows how to be a grown-up. We're all just pretending for each other. — Leah Raeder

Why did everything beautiful come from pain? — Leah Raeder

Most of the time romance isn't even about love, anyway. It's about escape. Fantasy. Salvation from the mundane. Save me from boredom, from exhaustion, from my undersexed body, from microwave dinners and reality TV, from going to bed alone with a vibrator or a cat. Save me from my desperately ordinary life. — Leah Raeder

This is what helps me sleep at night. Knowing that one of us stood up and refused to take it. One of us said, Fuck you, and struck back.
One of us became the wolf and bloodied her jaws so that others can live without fear. — Leah Raeder

Sometimes we have to hurt the people we love to spare them a greater hurt. — Leah Raeder

I can't hold on to you. You're like a shooting star. Just a trail of fire in my hands. — Leah Raeder

I never wanted you until I had you." She looked at me now, her breath ruffling my hair. "And then I couldn't imagine my life without you anymore. You're the dark thing that was in me. I set you free. — Leah Raeder

If I could fall in love with a girl, it'd be her. Those ifs are dangerous. You try them on in your head like dresses, so easy to slide in and out of. If I kissed girls, I'd kiss her. If we kissed, it'd go like this. At some point I dropped the if like a slip and just wore the feeling, nothing between it and my skin. When I kiss her. When it happens. All of it took place in my head, in silence, locked tight in skull bone and the frantic synaptic whispers between neurons, no clues popping out except the passive-aggressive haircut, the incriminating poem.
That's the problem with writers. Too much imagination.
The greater part of me knew it couldn't be real, but the hopeful part, which is more concentrated and condensed, rich in nine essential delusions, thought: It's not all in your head. — Leah Raeder

Some days I didn't eat. I confused the gnawing in my belly for hunger and fed it, but it only made me sick. Strange how much missing someone feels like hunger. How the hole they leave behind is so much larger than they were. How it grows even bigger, feeding on you. — Leah Raeder

Our gazes struck like flint and steel. And I realized that gunsmoke smell wasn't ozone. It was us. We burned. — Leah Raeder

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed and sung me moonstruck, kissed me quite insane. And before you think that's cheesy,that's Sylvia Plath. Google her, young Padawan. — Leah Raeder

But Mom's shamelessness and weakness of will had led me to become the opposite: stubborn and proud. Too proud to ask for help, even when I needed it most. Especially when I needed it most. — Leah Raeder

Riding it [a roller coaster] is like living your whole life in five minutes. — Raeder Lomax

I almost turned around right there. Stupid, yeah, but PTSADS doesn't care how stupid a trigger is. If you need me to spell that out, it's Post-Traumatic Stuffed Animal Death Syndrome. I thought it was pretty funny. Mom and the psychologist did not. The psychologist said I had substituted George for Dad and I actually had post-dad syndrome. I told her George was a fucking bunny. — Leah Raeder

Part of falling in love with someone is actually falling in love with yourself. Realizing that you're gorgeous, you're fearless and unpredictable, you're a firecracker spitting light, entrancing a hundred faces that stare up at you with starry eyes. — Leah Raeder

I thought of Blue. Sometimes it's easier to talk to a stranger. — Leah Raeder

Everything was flame shades of tangerine and pomegranate, ripeness on the brink of decay, and when the wind rippled the leaves they looked like a mosaic of fire, like the walls of the Cathedral Basilica. — Leah Raeder

It's always goodbye with the mouth and until we meet again with the heart. — Leah Raeder

The whole summer was inside of us. — Leah Raeder

You're angry."
"Wow. You really are good."
"And guarded. You've been hurt, but you still crave connection. Understanding. So you throw yourself into risk in a calculated way. You're a paradox: a careful daredevil. — Leah Raeder

I told you what I was when we began. I'm the black iris watered by poison. The wolf that raised its head among sheep and devoured its way, ruthless and bloody, to freedom. I never forgave, never forgot.
I didn't feel sorry. I felt bad. As in bad girl, not guilty. And feeling bad made me feel so fucking good. — Leah Raeder

If you tell a story enough times, it sounds like fiction. You don't feel that visceral throb of resonance with the person who is you, who did the things you did. — Leah Raeder

It blurred the lines between lust and inspiration in a way we've always intuitively known they should be blurred, because desire underlies every act of creation. — Leah Raeder

The thought of how much happiness lay scattered across the universe, unrealized, in fragments, waiting for the right twist of fate to bring it together. — Leah Raeder

This world is run by people who know somebody. — Leah Raeder

This is ridiculous," I said, trying to laugh it off. "I never cry at movies."
"Because you've never been in love," he said. — Leah Raeder

Suicide isn't really about death, though. It's about change. Release. — Leah Raeder

There's something so terrible about wanting something you've already had. You know exactly what you're missing. Your body knows precisely how to shape itself around the ache, the hollowness that wants to be filled — Leah Raeder

I know what you were searching for. The same thing I want.

To live without pain.

But the only way to live without pain is to live without feeling. Or to not live. — Leah Raeder

That's why we're just friends," Armin said, so softly I barely heard. "She can't fall in love, and I can't fall out. — Leah Raeder

I was too young to care about boring adult jobs. I was still testing out how my heart worked. — Leah Raeder

We don't always get closure. Sometimes we have to make our own. — Leah Raeder

Boys are so beautiful when they don't realize how powerful they are. When they hold it with quiet grace, oblivious to how easily they could rip the world apart. — Leah Raeder

We all see blue, but some of us see blue as an inflection, a mood, of black or red, while others see blue as its own creature. — Leah Raeder

This life will be a cage for you. — Leah Raeder

It's inevitable that three drunk friends with unresolved sexual tension will play truth or dare. — Leah Raeder

It's easy to see other women as enemies. But we're the only real allies we've got. — Leah Raeder

Missing someone is the whetstone that sharpens want. — Leah Raeder

I don't categorize people by who I'm allowed to like and who I'm allowed to love. — Leah Raeder

Some girls had mothers who never called them beautiful but swore their love up and down. It's all the same, really. All bullshit. — Leah Raeder

He embraced me, and said into my ear, 'I'm going to fuck the shit out of you.'
I lost my breath.
It was crude, it was unexpected, and it set me on fucking fire. — Leah Raeder

Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don't guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it's total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It's feral.
And it's relentless. — Leah Raeder

If I was gay, I wouldn't need an asterisk beside my name. I could stop worrying if the girl I like will bounce when she finds out I also like dick. I could have a coming-out party without people thinking I just want attention. I wouldn't have to explain that I fall in love with minds, not genders or body parts. People wouldn't say I'm 'just a slut' or 'faking it' or 'undecided' or 'confused.' I'm not confused. I don't categorize people by who I'm allowed to like and who I'm allowed to love. Love doesn't fit into boxes like that. It's blurry, slippery, quantum. It's only limited by our perceptions and before we slap a label on it and cram it into some category, everything is possible. — Leah Raeder

Anger is like that. Runs on its own fumes, devours itself voraciously, explosively, until one day there is no fire left. Only pure, cold, unbreakable hardness. Like the diamond core in me. — Leah Raeder

Usually the thought process for a seventeen-year-old boy went girl touching me omg boner. — Leah Raeder

That's how you know someone loves you. When they want you to be happy even in the part of your life they'll never see. But right then I was too stuck in the moment, in the visceral pleasure of it all. — Leah Raeder

She was an uptight elitist bitch who considered fast food unworthy of being fed to dogs, but when she did something she did it wholeheartedly, with perverse gusto, as if to show she was so far beyond irony she'd circled back to authenticity. — Leah Raeder

No pretensions of goodness, of trying to do the right thing. We'd both wanted to embrace this fucked-up thing between us. — Leah Raeder

Every dream is a pipe dream before someone achieves it. — Leah Raeder

What a strange world where we pay people to listen to our problems, and pay them to fuck themselves while we watch, and pay them to save us. — Leah Raeder

People know their feelings much sooner than they consciously accept them. — Leah Raeder

I leaned back on my palms, looking at the Milky Way spilling in modest grandeur across the sky. A fountain of stars frothing over, surrounded by a mist of stardust. It looked like raw magic, like the glimmer I'd spy in a shadowy corner where the sun skimmed off invisible particles, reminding me there was a whole hidden world tucked inside this ordinary one. And it was up there every night, offering its mute beauty while we sat here with our heads down, tragically terrestrial. — Leah Raeder

Girls get under each other's skin. We get too close, too attached, too crazy, and then we can't let go. Our claws sink too deep. When we separate, we tear each other apart. — Leah Raeder

There are moments, when you're getting to know someone, when you realize something deep and buried in you is deep and buried in them, too. It feels like meeting a stranger you've known your whole life. — Leah Raeder

Thanks, Dad, for leaving a huge void in my life that Freud says has to be filled with dick. — Leah Raeder

Raeder, the political admiral, stealthily built up the German Navy in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, and then put it to use in a series of aggressions which he had taken a leading part in planning. — Erich Raeder

I respect people who get nerdy as fuck about something they love — Leah Raeder

You know, rust is just oxidation. The same chemical process as fire. Oxygen interacts with steel, electrons drift from one element to the other. So really, rust is a slow fire. Isn't that weird? Water causes something to burn. — Leah Raeder

It's crazy, that the defining moment of your life can be nothing to someone else. Like an infatuation, an unrequited love, every bit of you is drawn to it, orbits that heaviness at the center of your universe, everything you think and feel revolving around it and yet, nobody knows. Even the one who caused it. Especially the one who caused it. — Leah Raeder