Julio Alexi Genao > Quotes

“I loved you even when you forgot me.

And—for a little while—you loved me back.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I gave you all my secrets, and you lost them all. You lost a lot of things.

But the treasure of it was in the giving, not the keeping.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“So. Monday. We meet again.

We will never be friends—but maybe we can move past our mutual enmity toward a more-positive partnership.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao

“You don't get to choose who turns you into a maniac.

They just do, and you're just fucked, and the rest is just damage control.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao

“I know you’ve forgotten me, but I’ll remember you as long as I live.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“the only thing worse than a bigot is an “ally” who can’t stop congratulating themselves on their enlightenment.”
― julio alexi genao

“Love is blind.

Also: deaf, dumb, and on fire.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao

“You were the monster, but all I could see was the boy.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“this world is larger than your heart

still larger than your pain—

but know this:

everything ends

so let what remains of us all

be love.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao

“But it turns out Joy is a house built from the same bricks as Sorrow. Pleasure is a poem, and it uses the same words as Pain.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, Taking the Long Way Home

“You won't remember me. You won't need me anymore.
You will leave me again.
I forgive you. I forgave you. I will always forgive you.
You should know that for a little while, you were not alone.Not alone.
I loved you when you were pixels on a screen.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“For one unbelievable moment, the emptiness— the ache —that terrible hollow of desolation I’d lived with all this time was just – gone.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I watched you roll off me and step away from the bed in silence, but when the heat of your body was gone, I wanted it back.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“what it is

is the memory of a dance

a song you heard long ago

to hear it is to be young again

and for once

for once you are happy”
― julio alexi genao

“That’s why I was calm. When you woke me in the middle of the night with your hand around my throat, and I thought I was going to die for bringing you home—that I had given my life to lie down next to a murderer—that’s why I was calm.

Because all I was thinking in that moment was that it was worth it.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“people say life is short.

life's not short—it's long.

the memory of a human being: that's what's short.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, Collected

“I couldn’t make myself move from the bed. To reach for you. I’d known this moment was coming, and now that it had arrived I found I had no strength in my limbs.

Only my voice. Only words.

Asking you to stay.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“They’d come for you, and this time they’d come with weapons.

I was afraid of that. For you. But not of you.

Never afraid of you.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“You’re safe, here.”

“But you are not,” you whispered. “Not ever. I forget. I forget and then I’ll—I could kill you.”

When I didn’t reply, you dropped your head again.

I almost missed it when you murmured, “I always kill them, in the end.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“The only good Monday is an Almost-Tuesday.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao

“You should know that for a little while, you were not alone.

Not alone.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I drink too much. I smoke too much. I eat like a college student, and I don't exercise enough. I do drugs and I give my love to boys who hate me a little bit and I don't always wash my hands after I clean the litterbox. But I'm absolutely certain the thing that will one day stop my heart for good is the inchoate rage I feel when I read over something I've published and discover a typo.”
― Julio Alexi Genao

“All the enormous machines that keep full Citizens comfortable far above us in their glittering towers, all the infrastructure of power, of fuel, of commerce and industry—all of it happens below. Made possible with our hands. With our bodies.

With our lives.

I would have done anything to escape.

I got my chance. I made it out—but the price was loneliness.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“If my life were like the novels, this would be the dark period in act two after my one true love rejects me, where I reel off to do things I have to apologize for in act three.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao

“It's like a—like a video panel, you know that? Your face. I don’t think you realize how much of what happens inside you that can be seen in your face.

Maybe it was just me. I paid attention to you.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I’d removed all but my underclothes, that night I took you home. Took off all the drab corporate synthetics as if stripping my armor to uncover the vulnerable man I was underneath it.

The man who needed to be near you.

I’d pressed my back into your solid length, eyes wet as I fell asleep.

That’s why I was calm.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“If the worst you can say about an otherwise sweet-natured and pleasant romance novel is that the main characters are just too wholesome to suit you and your bitter, bitter, cat-infested, 7-years-friendless-and-romantically-barren life, you should probably just eat a fucking cupcake and settle in to wait for El Señor to take you away from this place on the wings of angels who all bear a marked resemblance to a young Rob Lowe.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao

“The second day, I watched you suffer through one of your nightmares, but this one was worse than I’d seen before.

You called out another man’s name.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“I was asked a series of questions.

What did you see? Why are there no files in the video archives? How did the assassin escape?

I lied every time.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels

“My skin hungered for you. You were warm, and alive, and in my bed, and I wanted you so bad I could feel the ripple of need on the pads of my fingertips, on the palms of my hands, on the skin of my back, at the base of my cock, inside my ass—

I wanted the taste of you in my mouth.”
― Julio-Alexi Genao, When You Were Pixels