Rainbow Rowell ALWAYS Says It Best, Swoon

For the past four years, Rainbow Rowell has written great love stories in every day settings, giving readers a glimpse into the lives of a desk mate, the unpopular kid on the bus, the overworked mother, and sometimes themselves. Rowell’s gift of writing funny, thoughtful characters who are just as flawed as they are strong jumps off the page whether she's writing YA or adult fiction. And that's, simply, why you love her.

You started your obsession when Rainbow's stories when she released her debut novel Attachments, and built a love story around an IT employee who falls in love with a coworker through reading her emails. Next came YA novels Fangirl and Eleanor & Park, which readers (and, hey, reviewers, too!) both fell head over feels for. The latter is currently in talks to be made into a movie, with Rowell tapped to write the screenplay. Then, Rowell released the novel Landline, and most recently wrote the short story Midnight for the compilation My True Love Gave To Me, which also featured the works of David Levithan and Jenny Han. Swoon!

Whether she's writing about teens trying to navigate first love amidst violence at home, or a woman who finds a magical phone that lets her travel back in time, Rowell is continually bringing to life extraordinary love stories in seemingly ordinary characters. And her writing is a reminder that relationships are the great equalizer, no matter the struggle. At any age, love is messy, confusing, exciting, and possibly most importantly, universal.

With her fifth novel Carry On set to be released in October, here are 15 of Rowell’s most relatable, poignant, and emotional quotes about love and relationships. Get ready to want to post these EVERYWHERE, because, obviously, Rainbow.

Attachments

• “There’s never been a moment,” he barely said, “when I didn’t recognize you…I’d know you in the dark,” he said. “From a thousand miles away. There’s nothing you could become that I haven’t already fallen in love with.”

• Love. Purpose. Those are the things that you can’t plan for. Those are the things that just happen.

• “I didn’t know love could leave the lights on all the time…I thought it took more naps,” she said, struggling to find the right words. “Or blinked. I didn’t know it could just go on and on like this without falling off an edge. Like pi.”

Fangirl

• "That moment," she told Cath, "when you realize that a guy's looking at you differently -- that your're taking up more space in his field of vision. That moment when you know he can't see past you anymore."

• "I don't have to forgive you," Cath said. "It's not like that with you. You're just in me. Always. No matter what happens."

Eleanor & Park

• She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn’t supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.

• "There’s no reason to think we’re going to stop love each other", he said. "And there’s every reason to think that we won’t."

• Nothing was dirty. With Park. Nothing could be shameful. Because Park was the sun, and that was the only way Eleanor could think to explain it.

• This kiss had to last Park forever. It had to get him home. He needed to remember it when he woke up scared in the middle of the night.

Landline

• How does anyone ever know whether love is enough? It’s an idiotic question. Like, if you fall in love, if you’re that lucky, who are to even ask whether it’s enough to make you happy?

• He kissed her like he knew exactly who she was.

• “I think I can live without you,” he said, like it was something he’d spent twenty-seven hours thinking about, “but it won’t be any kind of life.”

• He felt his cheeks warm, just thinking about seeing her again. That’s what Georgie did to him. She pulled the blood to the surface of his skin.

• Wasn’t that the point of life? To find someone to share it with? And if you got that part right, how far wrong could you go? If you were standing next to the person you loved more than everything else, wasn’t everything else just scenery?

"Midnights," from My True Love Gave To Me

• That’s just the way it was between them. If she didn’t tell Noel about something, it was almost like it didn’t happen.

Image: RainbowRowell