Nina LaCour

Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

A Novel

We are Okay

I listened to the same heartbroken song the entire bus ride home, because it was still a summer when sadness was beautiful.

Sanja.

I wish her more happiness than can fit in a person. I wish her the kind of happiness that spills over.

smile??

Julia

It's so funny how the imagery of loss tends to be depicted as a grey cloud that hangs over a person since it really is like losing the idea of who you are without that thing or person.

"I wonder if there's a secret current that connects people who have lost something. Not in the way that everyone loses something, but in the way that undoes your life, undoes your self, so that when you look at your face it isn't yours anymore." 

"But sometimes two people have a deep connection. It makes romance seem trivial. It isn't about anything carnal. It's about souls. About the deepest part of who you are as a person." 

Knowing you aren't enough but not knowing that it isn't your fault

"I wasn't enough of a companion. I wasn't any kind of anchor. I felt the blow of it but I swallowed the hurt and said, "I'm sure she feels the same for you." 

Perspective plays the biggest difference in how lonely and small or how lonely and big we can be in the grand scheme of being alive

"I don't know if I've ever thought this way about the expansiveness of a life. I think about it as it is in the wider world -- in nature and time, in centuries and galaxies -- but to think of Ana and Javier being young and in love, having their first baby, and watching him grow up, get married, move across the world. Knowing that they'll soon have another descendant to love. Knowing that they'll grow older as time passes, they'll become old the way Gramps was, with gray hair and a tremble in his step, so much love still in their hearts -- this astonishes me. I am capsized." 

"I found my way to the love seat. I wanted a lecture about anything. The correct name for a coffee establishment. The duplicity of nuns. The difference between carnal desire and the love for someone's soul." 

"I stayed longer. The hot water lasted forever. I knew I could wash away the dirt and the grease, but the wildness in my eyes was more difficult, and that was the worst part." 

We can exist in a simple space with good company

"And Hannah kept saving me. She saved me with never asking questions, with instead reading to me about bees and botany and evolution. She saved me with clothes she loaned me and never took back. She saved me with seats next to her in the dining hall, with quick evasions when people asked me questions I couldn't answer, with chapters read aloud and forced trips off campus and rides to the grocery store and a pair of winter boots." 

We are Okay quotes

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