Casey McQuiston Quotes

I was hoping you two would start talking dirty," Pez says. "Please, do go on." "I don't think you could keep up, Pez," Alex tells him. "Oh really?" The picture returns to Pez. "What if I put my co-" "Pez," comes the sound of Henry's voice, and a hand with a signet ring on the smallest finger covers Pez's mouth. "I beg of you. Alex, what part of 'nothing he cannot do' did you think was worth testing? Honestly, you are going to get us all killed." "That's the goal," Alex says happily. "So what are y'all gonna do today?" Pez frees himself by licking Henry's palm and continues talking. "Frolic naked in the hills, frighten the sheep, return to the house for the usual: tea, biscuits, casting ourselves upon the Thighmaster of love to moan about Claremont-Diaz siblings, which has become tragically one-sided since Henry took up with you. It used to be all bottles of cognac and shared malaise and 'When will they notice us'-"
"Don't tell him that!"
"-and now I just ask Henry, 'What is your secret?' And he says, 'I insult Alex all the time and that seems to work.'"
"I will turn this car around.

Chloe Green is going to put her first through a window. Usually when she has a thought like that, it means she's spiritually on the brink. But right now, squared up to the back door of the Wheeler house, she's actually physically ready to do it. Her phone flashes the time: 11:27 a.m. Thirty-three minutes until the end of the late service at Willowgrove Christian Church, where the Wheelers are spending their morning pretending to be nice, normal folks whose nice, normal daughter didn't stage a disappearing act at prom twelve hours ago.
It has to be an act, is the thing. Obviously, Shara Wheeler is fine. Shara Wheeler is not missing. Shara Wheeler is doing what she does: a doe-eyed performance of blank innocence that makes everyone think she must be so deep and complex and enchanting when really, she's the most boring bore in this entire unbearably boring town.
Chloe is going to prove it. Because she's the only one smart enough to see it.

Outside Kensington Palace, Alex takes Henry's phone out of his hand and swiftly opens a blank contact page before he can protest or sic a PPO on him for violating royal property. The car is waiting to take him back to the royals' private airstrip. "Here," Alex says. "That's my number. If we're gonna keep this up, it's going to get annoying to keep going through handlers. Just text me. We'll figure it out." Henry stares at him, expression blankly bewildered, and Alex wonders how this guy has any friends. "Right," Henry says. "Thank you." "No booty calls," Alex tells him, and Henry chokes on a laugh.

"It's public knowledge. It's not my problem you just found out," his mother is saying, pacing double-time down a West Wing corridor. "You mean to tell me," Alex half shouts, jogging to keep up, "every Thanksgiving, those stupid turkeys have been staying in a luxury suite at the Willard on the taxpayers' dime?"
"Yes, Alex, they do-"
"Gross government waste!"
"-and there are two forty-pound turkeys named Cornbread and Stuffing in a motorcade on Pennsylvania Avenue right now. There is no time to reallocate the turkeys."
Without missing a beat, he blurts out, "Bring them to the house."
"Where? Are you hiding a turkey habitat up your ass, son? Where, in our historically protected house, am I going to put a couple of turkeys until I pardon them tomorrow?"
"Put them in my room. I don't care."
She outright laughs. "No."
"How is it different from a hotel room? Put the turkeys in my room, Mom."
"I'm not putting turkeys in your room."
"Put the turkeys in my room."
"No."
"Put them in my room, put them in my room, put them in my room, put them in my room-"
That night, as Alex stares into the cold, pitiless eyes of a prehistoric beast of prey, he has a few regrets.

Someone else's choice doesn't change who you are.

Alex wouldn't say he likes Henry, but he does enjoy the quick rhythm of arguments they fall into. He knows he talks too much, hopeless at moderating his feelings, which he usually hides under ten layers of charm, but he ultimately doesn't care what Henry thinks of him, so he doesn't bother. Instead, he's as weird and manic as he wants to be, and Henry jabs back in sharp flashes of startling wit.

Even before Alex's parents split, they both had a habit of calling him by the other's last name when he exhibited particular traits. They still do. When he runs his mouth off to the press, his mom calls him into her office and says, "Get your shit together, Diaz." When his hard-headedness gets him stuck, his dad texts him, "Let it go, Claremont."

So, as I've warned you," Henry says as they approach the doors to the Royal Box, "Philip will be there. And assorted other nobility with whom you may have to make conversation. People named Basil." "I think I've proven that I can handle royals." Henry looks doubtful. "You're brave. I could use some of that.

Get some shoes, we're running," Zahra tells him. "Priority one is damage control, not feelings. He grabs a pair of sneakers, and they take off while he's still pulling them on, running west. His brain is struggling to keep up, running through about five thousand possible ways this could go, imagining himself ten years down the road being frozen out of Congress, plummeting approval ratings, Henry's name being scratched off the line of succession, his mother losing reelection on a swing state's disapproval of him. He's so screwed, and he can't even decide who to be the angriest with, himself or the Mail or the monarchy or the whole stupid country. He nearly crashes into Zahra's back as she skids to a stop in front of a door. He pushes the door open, and the whole room goes silent. His mother stares at him from the head of the table and says flatly, "Out." At first he thinks she's talking to him, but she cuts her eyes down to the people around the table with her. "Was I not clear? Everyone, out, now," she says. "I need to talk to my son.

Today, Henry goes back to London. Today, Alex goes back to the campaign trail. They have to figure out how to do this for real now, how to love each other in plain sight. Alex thinks they're up for it.

There are no fireworks out here, no music, no confetti. Just sleeping, single-family homes, TVs switched off. Just a house where Alex grew up, where he saw Henry's picture in a magazine and felt a flicker of something, a start. "Hey," Alex says. Henry turns back to him, his eyes silver in the wash of the streetlight. "We won." Henry takes his hand, one corner of his mouth tugging gently upward. "Yeah. We won." Alex reaches down into the front of his dress shirt and finds the chain with his fingers, pulls it out carefully. The ring, the key. Under winter clouds, victorious, he unlocks the door.

Alex rolls his eyes and sends back, the harrowing struggle of managing the empire's blood money. Henry's response comes a minute later. That was actually the crux of the meeting- I've tried to refuse my share of the crown's money. Dad left us each with more than enough, and I'd rather cover my expenses with that than the spoils of, you know, centuries of genocide. Philip thinks I'm being ridiculous.
Alex scans the message twice to make sure he's read it correctly. i am low-key impressed. He stares at the screen, at his own message, for a few seconds too long, suddenly afraid it was a stupid thing to say. He shakes his head and puts the phone down. Locks it. Changes his mind, picks it up again. Unlocks it. Sees the little typing bubble on Henry's side of the conversation. Puts the phone down. Looks away. Looks back.
One does not foster a lifelong love of Star Wars without knowing an "empire" isn't a good thing.
He would really appreciate it if Henry would stop proving him wrong.

All in all, finals come and go with much less fanfare than Alex imagined. It's a week of cramming and presentations and the usual amount of all-nighters, and it's over. The whole college thing in general went by like that. He didn't really have the experiences everyone else has, always isolated by fame or harangued by security. He never got a stamp on his forehead on his twenty-first birthday at the Tombs, never jumped in Dahlgren Fountain. Sometimes it's like he barely went to Georgetown, merely powered through a series of lectures that happened to be in the same geographical area.

Well. It will matter, you know. It will always matter.

She tosses the magazine aside, folding her arms on the table. "Please, tell me another joke," Ellen says. "I want so badly for you to explain to me how this is funny." Alex opens his mouth and closes it a couple of times. "He started it," he says finally. "I barely touched him- and he's the one who pushed me, and I only grabbed him to try and catch my balance and-" "Sugar, I cannot express to you how much the press does not give a fuck about who started what," Ellen says. "As your mother, I can appreciate that maybe this isn't your fault, but as the president, all I want is to have the CIA fake your death and ride the dead-kid sympathy into a second term."