For today's release week special event, I'm sharing a few of my (many) favourite quotes from Passing Through. If you've read it already, I hope this is a fun trip down memory lane. If you're new to the story, I hope it gets you excited to take your first trip to Three Rivers!
Of course, we have to start with my favourite ~spicy~ quote from the book, which I've already seen a few readers picking out too:
“Kim, right now I am not interested in being a princess or a lady or a delicate, beautiful flower. Right now, I am the kind of girl who’s desperate to get fucked in the back of a truck. Can you handle that?”
I won't hit you with any spoilers, but let's just say Kim can, in fact, handle it ;)
Which leads us to my favourite quote as far as prose goes. While being a writer is often a life filled with frustration and self-doubt, sometimes I write a line that makes me stop to punch the air and shout "DAMN, that's good!" The last line of this chapter from the story was one of them:
She looks wild. She looks feral. She looks like a force of nature staking its claim over a city built by people naïve enough to think anything could stand against the raw power of the earth.
A breathless peal of exhilarated laughter bursts out of me. It’s the laughter of someone standing in the eye of a storm with nothing left to do except laugh.
When she’s done, she reaches for me.
I drop down on top of her and pull her close. She wraps her arms and legs around my body. Our runaway heartbeats thump next to each other as we lay there chest to chest, and I realize there was never any question about it.
I am the city, and she is the storm.
Next up is a little exchange between Emily and her sister Trish, which is one of my favourite humorous quotes from the story, due to the fact that it is exactly the kind of exchange my partner and I have all the time (I am in my late twenties and often preoccupied with wrinkles my partner tells me are non-existent). When my partner read this part, I immediately received a comment of "lol, this is you":
“Ugh,” I say after leaning back. “That’s definitely a wrinkle.”
Trish scoffs. “Right. Yeah. You’re an ancient hag at the age of twenty-eight.”
“Just because you’ve got that whole smooth as a baby’s bottom thing going on doesn’t mean the rest of us aren’t suffering,” I tell her.
She makes a face as she comes over to stand beside me, leaving her trusty rock on the floor.
“Ew. Don’t compare my face to a baby’s butt, you weirdo. Also, you spend like seven thousand dollars a year on all those hippie skincare products. Your face probably has the same genetic makeup as, like, tree sap by now. I think you’re fine.”
That gets me to crack a smile. “I do not spend seven thousand dollars on skincare.”
Last up is one of my favourite quotes spoken by Emily's father. He's grown to be a favourite among readers already, and this scene where he drops his gruff man-of-the-woods exterior to publicly show his love for his daughters always gets me:
“You know, when you girls were younger, people always asked me how I handled having four women in the house,” Robert continues, ignoring the crowd and speaking straight to Emily, Trish, and Clover now. “They acted like it was some kind of curse, and I never understood that. Who wouldn’t want three daughters? You girls are the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m a lucky, lucky man, and even though she’s not here to tell you, I know your mother would be so proud of the women you’ve become.”
Ready to meet Kim, Emily, and the whole gang for yourself? Grab your copy of Passing Through here!
