20 Oct
2026
Original quotes by Jonathan Anthony Burkett from Friends 2 Lovers Volume 10: In This One Life, taken word for word from the book. No spoilers. Share any of them with the credit “— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Friends 2 Lovers.”
“Get up, Reginald,” she said. “Before you can't.”
— Doreen
“That wasn't a safe, baby,” Doreen said. “That was a fuse.”
— Doreen
“Fifty-eight years old, and he had found out he liked being told that more than almost anything.”
“She'd made herself fit so well that nobody ever saw her at all.”
“He had never stood in one where a thing that big had happened that quietly.”
“Tim was afraid of the answer. We're not. So you open it because we're not. Not because you promised.”
— Kelly
“She had married a man who could hear what she meant, and he had married a woman who could see what he was doing before he did it.”
“You were always sitting right there.”
“Plain relief, like setting down a cooler you've carried too far.”
“He kept somebody,” he said. “In that house it's the same word.”
— Claude
“Friends to lovers,” she said. “That's what we thought the whole story was. Like that was the end.”
“She had learned to count the living instead.”
“Kelly read it over his shoulder. She always did. He'd never once minded.”
“the whole loud sky going on over them without asking either of them for anything”
“Some offers you didn't carry to a woman's table just so she could have the trouble of turning them down.”
“Everybody who wanted Doreen's story wanted to call her by where she stood. Nobody had once asked her name.”
“Because you'd have been proud of me, child,” Doreen said. “And he'd have seen it on your face.”
— Doreen
“I was eighteen once on a stoop and I thought a man listening was love.”
“That's not an excuse, baby. That's just the size of the room.”
“She knew how to do a great many things nobody asked her to.”
“I keep reaching for it now and it's like reaching for a light switch in a house you moved out of.”
“Somebody had to say the practical thing. In this family it was usually her.”
“A word could do that. It could be the truest-sounding lie in a room.”
“This isn't a hallway, baby,” she said. “It's got a table.”
— Doreen
“there was nothing in the world that calmed Valerie Dixon like a column that added up.”
“Pick the ones you'd give a room to.”
— Doreen to Latoya
“She let them go by like cars on a road she wasn't crossing.”
“It's Monday. You'll want your coffee.”
— Doreen
“You don't look for the wall at your back. You know it's there.”
“Fifty-three years she had walked through rooms full of men with her eyes on the carpet so they wouldn't see her, and now she walked through this one with her chin up so they would.”
“Everybody she loved was in this room, and she knew it without looking, the way you know your own hand.”
“like the ground had been moved two inches to the left while he wasn't paying attention.”
“He took his coffee with three sugars. Fifty years I poured it, and he never once said thank you.”
— Doreen
“Maybe everybody gets out of the car eventually. Some people take fifty-three years.”
“go find out what she looked like when she wasn't standing at the edge of something.”
“it had come from the one person who'd loved him without being afraid of him, and then been afraid of him without stopping.”
“It's Wednesday,” she said. “I've got church.”
— Doreen
“Some things you didn't count. You let them be.”
“It felt like a key going into a lock it was cut for.”
“There's a great many people sitting in a great many kitchens right now who think nobody's counting.”
“Children nobody's counting.”
“She let it go the way you set down a dish.”
“I owe some people a standing,” she'd said. “You don't owe a standing from an airplane.”
“Claude's got his hands.” She was quiet. “That's more than either of us.”
— Doreen
“Hard and warm at the same time. Like being hugged by somebody who's mad at you.”
“It was Daisy who broke it, because Daisy broke everything.”
“He'd learned to wait from people who were very good at it.”
“Three years he had stood behind this stone wondering who was counting.”
“She had never in her life been introduced to anything she didn't answer.”
“She weighed nothing. She weighed more than anything Valerie had ever held.”
“Every one of them wrote thank you for reading this at the bottom. Every one. Like they figured nobody would.”
“Kid's going to knock me out one of these days, and I'm not going to see it coming because I'm going to be proud.”
“the way you see the shape of a house under new paint, a boy.”
“Hold on,” Clinton said, without looking at him. “I'm talking to my mother.”
— Clinton
“I've seen him eat. I don't need to see him go.”
“he fell asleep, like a man who had nobody left to watch for.”
“Then we'll be old in Detroit.”
— Kelly to Claude
“by one of them saying it out loud, and the other one not saying no.”
“she let the rest of the world count without her.”
“That he'd never once just say yes to her to get it over with.”
“Like you yelling at the TV,” she said finally, “but you make the pancakes.”
— Daisy
“Short and true. Answer the question she asks, not the one you're scared of. Then stop.”
“I did it. I'm the champion. And I'm going home to be a father.”
“You did not apply to us for anything but this. You do not owe us anything but your best.”
“Every one I signed I prayed for.”
“Baby, it was always yours to drive.”
— Doreen
“I drive careful, he would have said, if anybody had ever asked him. I don't read.”
“Stems to you. Heads to her. Don't you dump them on her like groceries.”
“Met the hand. Ate the rice.”
— Whitlock
“Fifty-three years of keeping it in and one year of letting it out. I'd like a little while of neither.”
“So I put you first. Because somebody has to.”
“I didn't ask if you were all right.”
“All his life Reggie had sat where he was put.”
“It's not much of a face. You don't have to keep an eye on it. Sit where you want to.”
— Doreen
“Kelly didn't count anybody. She just held the one she had.”
“Daddy is my Daddy and you are my Da and that's two and I'm allowed.”
— Lori
“Now everybody knows exactly who everybody is.”
“Sparrow is not little now and he is not scared of the light. He stays out in it. Papa says he decided.”
“a woman who'd been late to this family for twelve years could stand to be early once.”
“Me, Kelly thought. I'm here.”
“It felt like trying on somebody else's coat and finding it fit.”
“See?” Doreen said, low. “Sitting's not so hard.”
— Doreen
“It meant a phone that rang at seven, and somebody on each end of it.”
“let the clock keep itself.”
“Nobody to count last.”
“and she helped him up anyway.”
“He had stood in a lot of places since he sat on this curb. Most of them, he'd stood in with her.”
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