20 Oct
2026
Original quotes by Jonathan Anthony Burkett from Friends 2 Lovers Volume 8: Flesh and Blood, taken word for word from the book. No spoilers. Share any of them with the credit “— Jonathan Anthony Burkett, Friends 2 Lovers.”
“You've been across the street my whole life … Stay there.”
— Anthony
“You don't have to call him anything.”
“She has more people than she can fit in a prayer.”
“He said yes and let it stand on the white cloth like a bill come due.”
“But don't you let him be the only one who decides this time.”
“He decided once. This time you decide too.”
“She stood there absolutely straight in her white apron and cried without a sound.”
“You got the bench. I got the table.”
— Reggie
“A man stops fidgeting when he stops waiting for something.”
“Mama's making macaroni. You can stay.”
“Does anybody in that family know how to stand in just one place?”
— Whitlock
“That's how nobody in this family ever gets left on a bench.”
“I'm on his side all the way down.”
“Nobody in this house lies to anybody anymore. It's a rule.”
“Look at you. You already got your hands up.”
“He sits, … It's what we do. It's a family habit. It's not a good one.”
— Anthony
“He'd seen his own hands every day of his life. He'd never once seen them on anybody else.”
“A late man you can forgive.”
“A man who's on time for eighteen years has decided.”
“That's not what makes a thing yours, son. You know that better than anybody.”
“You came for him every day. You weren't his blood and you came anyway, every day you were alive.”
“Same hands, fixing and fighting. Didn't know any other way to hold a thing but tight.”
“A man was allowed to put a thing down without putting it away.”
“Choose your life, son. Not his. He already had his.”
“Nobody's keeping books in this family but me. I've seen what happens to books when men keep them.”
“I got out of it once, wrong. I'm staying out of it right.”
“That man's only gift was ever getting out of somebody's way.”
— Uncle Dev
“He said it was like living inside a very polite clock.”
— Whitlock
“I thought I was paying my rent with my son's blood. I was paying it with his time.”
“Good you can study. Awkward you just got to live through.”
“Across the room instead of across the street.”
“Nobody opens anything alone in this house.”
“Being a piece of paper in somebody's drawer.”
“Don't thank me. Eat off it.”
“And for the one who came the farthest.”
“In this one life that we live, You sent him to my table, and I don't know what I did to get that, and I'm not going to ask.”
“Walking all in my house like he pays bills here.”
“Thank You for this girl. Thank You for five whole years of her.”
“You do have a sense of humor. I just wish You'd explain the jokes.”
“She needs the true thing, in a size she can carry.”
“They come when you're patient.”
“He had always known everything. The order hadn't changed that. It had only changed whether he said so.”
“Every family in this whole story was being put back together out of whatever pieces were left lying around. Nobody had the instructions. Nobody had all the pieces.”
“They argued like two people who weren't afraid the other one would leave.”
“A man could sit beside you at a table and still be across the street.”
“I hired you for what you do with your face when nobody's talking.”
“We came the long way, though. That's the only way that counts.”
“Tameka knows you're crazy. She met Daisy.”
— Kelly
“I asked. That's the whole bill.”
— Claude
“So you can say there's one man in this family who, when somebody was across the street, went.”
“A day that doesn't count against anybody.”
“She was the only person who ever told me no and made me like it.”
“Devin says God doesn't promote fights.”
“He thinks hospitals are depots for people.”
— Nia
“He was good at waiting. It was the thing in this world he was best at.”
“Waiting for somebody to come, and then, when nobody did, learning to come for other people.”
“I know you can't go in. Go anyway.”
“Twelve strangers. Not one of them would have known how to sit still.”
— the old man
“This is as close as he can come. And this is as close as I can.”
“It was enough. He was surprised to find it was enough.”
“She'd learned there were nights you followed and nights you let a man sit with his clock.”
“He kept everything he ever picked up. Some of us he kept close and some of us he kept across the street, and every one of us is standing here.”
“I know. I'm just saying it so you hear somebody.”
“He had been watched his whole life. He could stand here and watch for five minutes.”
“They had come anyway. They had come and stood across the street.”
“Everybody missed her. That's the point of her.”
— Latoya
“How do you know, Mama, did you ask one?”
“He says it's the first time in his life he hasn't been waiting on a phone call.”
— Valerie
“You didn't open it alone, and you didn't hide that you had it.”
“I think I finally counted everybody.”
“It was just how you loved people that year: from a little farther away, and harder.”
“That one's still yours. Whenever you want to cross six feet of grass.”
“That one's Claude's. He earned it. I'm not taking it off him.”
— Marcus
“It is just a person who keeps showing up, and that may be the strongest tie of all.”
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