Books Quotes

Henry: I'm as much a person and a part of this family as you. I deserve to be happy as much as any of you do. And I don't think I ever will be if I have to spend my whole life pretending.

Philip: Nobody's saying you don't deserve to be happy. First love makes everyone mad—it's foolish to throw away your future because of one hormonal decision based on less than a year of your life when you were barely in your twenties.

Henry: I've been gay as a maypole since the day I came out of Mum, Philip.

Alex: Are you two in a fight now?

Zahra: No. Why would you think that?

Alex: Oh. I just thought because—

Shaan: It's fine. This is why we set rules about the personal-slash-professional lines at the outset of the relationship. It works for us.

Zahra: If you want a fight, you should have seen it when I found out he had known about you two all along. Why do you think I got a rock this big?

Shaan: It usually works for us.

Zahra: Yep. Plus, we banged it out last night.

(Zahra and Shaan high-five each other.)

Henry: What are we even defending here, Philip? What kind of legacy? What kind of family, that says, we'll take the murder, we'll take the raping and pillaging and the colonizing, we'll scrub it up nice and neat in a museum, but oh no, you're a bloody poof? That's beyond our sense of decorum! I've bloody well had it. I've sat about long enough letting you and Gran and the weight of the damned world keep me pinned, and I'm finished. I don't care. You can take your legacy and your decorum and you can shove it up your f**king arse, Philip. I'm done.

Alex (to Philip): For what it's worth, that is the bravest son of a b*tch I've ever met.

Philip: It's time to remember your place in this family. Be a man. Stand up and take responsibility. Fix this. For once in your life, don't be a coward.

Henry: I'm not a coward. And I don't want to fix it.

Bea: You need to understand this to be with Henry. He is the most loving, nurturing, selfless person you could hope to meet, but there is a sadness and a hurt in him that is tremendous, and you may very well never truly understand it, but you need to love it as much as you love the rest of him, because that's him. That is him, part and parcel. And he is prepared to give it all to you, which is far more than I ever, in a thousand years, thought I would see him do.

Alex: I've never... I haven't been through anything like that. But I've always felt it, in him. There's this side of him that's... unknowable. But the thing is, jumping off cliffs is kinda my thing. That's the choice. I love him, with all that, because of all that. On purpose. I love him on purpose.

Bea: Then you'll do fine.

(After the emails leak, Alex arrives to UK and goes straight to Henry...)

Henry (to Alex): Bit short for a stormtrooper.

(Alex hugs Henry)

Zahra (to Alex): Shut up and let me get some sleep before we have to deal with the rest of this. I'm running on nothing but black coffee, a Wetzel's Pretzel, and a fistful of B12. Do not even breathe in my direction.

Zahra: Look, I'm only going to say this once, and if you ever repeat it, I'll have you kneecapped. I'm rooting for you, okay?

Alex: Wait. Zahra. Oh my God. I just realized. You're... my friend.

Zahra: No, I'm not.

Alex: Zahra, you're my mean friend.

Zahra: Am not. Don't speak to me for the next six hours. I deserve a f**king nap.

(After Alex's & Henry's photos and emails leak...)

Alex: I'm... I don't know. This isn't how I wanted to tell people. I thought we'd get a chance to do this right.

Ellen: You listen to me, I am your mother. I was your mother before I was ever the president, and I'll be your mother long after, to the day they put me in the ground and beyond this earth. You are my child. So, if you're serious about this, I'll back your play. So, do you feel forever about him?

Alex: Yeah, I do.

Ellen: Then, f**k it.

Alex: I'm telling you right now, I will physically fight your grandmother myself if I have to, okay? And, like, she's old. I know I can take her.

Henry: I wouldn't be so cocky. She's full of dark surprises.

(From Alex's email to Henry)

Alex (to Henry): Sometimes I feel like a funny-looking rock in the middle of the most beautiful clear ocean when I read the kinds of things you write to me. You love so much bigger than yourself, bigger than everything. I can't believe how lucky I am to even witness it—to be the one who gets to have it, and so much of it, is beyond luck and feels like fate.

(From Henry's email to Alex)

Henry (to Alex): I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you. And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it? Sometimes, even now, I still can't.

(From Henry's email to Alex)

Henry (about first time seeing Alex): You weren't even a president's son yet, but you weren't afraid. You had a yellow ipê-amarelo in your pocket. I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire.

(From Henry's email to Alex)

Henry (to Alex): I wonder sometimes what is the point of me, or anything. I should have just packed a bag like I said. I could be in your bed, languishing away until I perish, fat and sexually conquered, snuffed out in the spring of my youth. Here lies Prince Henry of Wales. He died as he lived: avoiding plans and sucking c*ck.

(From Alex's email to Henry)

Alex (to Henry): It drives me nuts sometimes that you don't get to have more say in your life. When I picture you happy, I see you with your own apartment somewhere outside of the palace and a desk where you can write anthologies of queer history. And I'm there, using up your shampoo and making you come to the grocery store with me and waking up in the same damn time zone with you every morning.

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