Malibu Rising

“Nina understood, maybe for the first time, that letting people love you and care for you is part of how you love and care for them.”

“How were you supposed to change- in ways both big and small- when your family was always there to remind you of exactly the person you apparently signed an ironclad contract to be?”

“Family is found...whether it be blood or circumstance or choice, what binds us does not matter. All that matters is that we are bound.”

“Our family histories are simply stories. They are myths we create about the people who came before us, in order to make sense of ourselves.”

“Must be nice. To be able to be weak. I wouldn’t know.”

“Just because it is in Malibu's nature to burn, so was it in one particular person's nature to set fire and walk away.”

“She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.”

“She was a woman, after all. Living in a world created by men. And she had long known that assholes protect their own. They are faithful to no one but surprisingly protective of each other.”

“There’s no room for you in my life anymore. And I don’t owe it to you to make any space.”

“Maybe our parents' lives are imprinted within us, maybe the only fate there is is the temptation of reliving their mistakes. Maybe, try as we might, we will never be able to outrun the blood that runs through our veins. Or. Or maybe we are free the moment we are born. Maybe everything we've even done is by our own hands.”

“Alcoholism is a disease with many faces, and some of them look beautiful.”

“It was as if June had given her a box—as if every parent gives their children a box—full of the things they carried. June had given her children this box packed to the brim with her own experiences, her own treasures and heartbreaks. Her own guilts and pleasures, triumphs and losses, values and biases, duties and sorrows. And Nina had been carrying around this box her whole life, feeling the full weight of it. But it was not, Nina saw just then, her job to carry the full box. Her job was to sort through the box. To decide what to keep, and to put the rest down. She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.”

“There was finally enough air within her for a fire to ignite.”

“She knew it was up to her to say what had to be said. To do what had to be done. When there is only you, you do not get to choose which jobs you want, you do not get to decide you are incapable of anything. There is no room for distaste or weakness. You must do it all. All of the ugliness, the sadness, the things most people can't stand to even think about, all must live inside of you. You must be capable of everything.”

“But a good life is knowing people care about you, knowing you can take care of the people that count on you.”

“Too much self-sufficiency was sort of mean to the people who loved you, Kit thought. You robbed them of how good it feels to give, of their sense of value.”

“Our parents live inside us, whether they stick around or not... They express themselves through us in the way we hold a pen or shrug our shoulders, in the way we raise our eyebrow. Our heritage lingers in our blood.”

“Nina didn’t hate Carrie Soto for stealing her husband because husbands can’t be stolen. Carrie Soto wasn’t a thief; Brandon Randall was a traitor.”

“Small boundaries broken, snapped like tiny twigs, so many that June barely noticed he was coming for the whole tree.”

“That is the thing about the water, it is not yours to control. You are at the mercy of nature. That’s what makes surfing feel like more than sport: It requires destiny to be on your side, the ocean must favor you.”

“But they were in love, the kind of love that hurts. They hit highs so high neither of them could quite stand it, and lows so low they weren't sure they'd survive them.”

“Accept accept accept. For so long, Nina had believed it was her greatest strength—that she could withstand, that she could endure, that she would accept it all and keep going. It was so foreign to her, the idea of declaring that something was unacceptable.”

“She was a woman, after all. Living in a world created by men.”

“Your whole world can be falling apart, she thought, but then Springsteen will start playing on the radio.”

“What a gift it was to know so clearly what you were not, who you did not want to be. Nina wasn’t sure she’d ever asked herself that question.”

“She missed the parents who had never truly understood her, missed the man who had never truly loved her, missed the future she thought she had been building for herself, missed the young girl she used to be.”

“Why take a chance on another book when I already know I like this one?”

“And I’ve been really sad,” Nina added. “That I…that I meant so little to someone who had made me believe I meant so much.”

“When there is only you, you do not get to choose which jobs you want, you do not get to decide you are incapable of anything. There is no room for distaste or weakness. You must do it all. All of the ugliness, the sadness, the things most people can’t stand to even think about, all must live inside of you. You must be capable of everything.”

“Hud would love his child the way his mother had loved him: actively, every day, and without ambiguity.”