Casey McQuiston Quotes

"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.

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.

"That's not your emails-from-Zahra face," Nora says, nosing her way over his shoulder. He elbows her away. "You keep doing that stupid smile every time you look at your phone. Who are you texting?" "I don't know what you're talking about, and literally no one," Alex tells her. From the screen in his hand, Henry's message reads, In world's most boring meeting with Philip. Don't let the papers print lies about me after I've garroted myself with my tie.

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.

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.

Alex clenches his jaw. He's used to doing things that piss his mother off- in his teens, he had a penchant for confronting his mother's cilleagues with their voting discrepancies at friendly DC fundraisers- and he's been in the tabloids for things more embarrassing than this. But never in quite such a cataclysmically, internationally terrible way.
"I don't have time to deal with this right now, so here's what we're gonna do," Ellen says, pulling a folder out of her padfolio. It's filtered with some official-looking documents punctuated with different colors of sticky tabs, and the first one says: AGREEMENT OF TERMS.
"Um," Alex says.
"You," Ellen says, "are going to make nice with Henry." You're leaving Saturday and spending Sunday in England."
Alex blinks. "Is it too late to take the faking-my-death option?"
"Zahra can brief you on the rest," Ellen goes on, ignoring him. "I have about five hundred meetings right now." She gets up and heads for the door, stopping to kiss her hand and press it to the top of her head. "You're a dumbass. Love you."

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."

It's not a grudge, really. It's not even a rivalry. It's a prickling, unsettling annoyance. It makes his palms sweat. The tabloids- the world- decided to cast Alex as the American equivalent of Prince Henry from day one, since the White House Trio is the closest thing America has to royalty. It has never seemed fair. Alex's image is all charisma and genius and smirking wit, thoughtful interviews and the cover of GQ at eighteen; Henry's is placid smiles and gentle chivalry and generic charity appearances, a perfectly blank Prince Charming canvas. Henry's role, Alex thinks, is much easier to play.
Maybe it is technically a rivalry. Whatever.