Unapologetic Love Story Quotes

“He probably relied on AI for all of his conversation starters tonight and you’ve just shut him down entirely. He’ll be licking his wounds over the girl who played hard-to-get all night now.’
‘Woman. And I don’t play hard to get,’ Raina said, regarding him coolly. ‘Men play easy-to-resist.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“Hey, I’ll save us both the time. I can’t get involved with you, Harry. For two very good reasons. One, you’ve got a wedding ring on. Two, people who believe that artificial intelligence can replace creative people? They’re always bad in bed.’
A stunned silence met this remark, though Raina could see Tom Branimir smiling against the rim of his glass. Harry made a strange spluttering sound and so Raina held up her hands in a gentling gesture.
‘Let me explain,’ she said sweetly. ‘People who want a machine to make art are not interested in the creative process. They see art as a product. An end goal rather than a soul. You skip the essential creative part so you can market it and sell it. But that defeats the entire purpose of making art. Furious, flawed, utterly human art. With all its imperfections. Art is as much about the journey and the process as it is about the finished design.’
‘Uh…’ Harry was staring at her as though she were a lizard person. ‘But I don’t see how—’
‘See, it’s like expecting sex to be purely about making children. Someone who rushes the journey to get to a specific ending? That’s not what I want. I want someone who can savor the process, you know?’
Harry’s eyes drooped hungrily to her breasts, and it was clear he’d stopped listening.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Raina added, taking a minuscule step back. ‘I’m maybe in favor of AI that can help doctors find cancer cells. But not the kind that kills our planet to make shitty, inhuman art without a soul. Sorry, Harry. I kind of want a man who can use his own mind.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“As Pepper Cousins stepped away from the bar, she approached another young woman. This one in rose-gold sequins and blonde hair streaked with pink. Pepper leaned in to say something to her, something that made the other girl throw her head back and laugh. It was such a genuine reaction, so full of life. A completely unapologetic sound, like a bell ringing in a quiet chapel.
Tom frowned. He told himself to look away, but for some reason, it was hard. The friend of the heiress accepted her drink and sipped it, taking in the room with wide eyes. She watched her friend with loving indulgence as the heiress recounted a story with vaudevillian facial expressions.
She was different. There was a vulnerability and an openness to her that no one else in the room had.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“Laid out on the queen-sized four-poster was a backless rose-gold dress made with a ton of sequins.
‘Pep!’ Raina called, knowing her friend wouldn’t hear her. ‘This is too good for the likes of me!’
Raina was drawn to it, though. She knew Pepper was thorough— it would fit like a glove with shoes to match. She smiled gently and stroked the fabric. A little shimmering strip of a life that seemed far away.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“Being autistic meant she was a vegetable in the fruit bowl. Social interactions could be dire if the other person was able to sense she was different. Events like the Hathaway Dinner were full of hungry piranhas and Raina didn’t fancy being a nice juicy morsel for them to devour. She’d learned to mask but, at best, that only made her feel like a piece of crystallized fruit in the bowl. Something that looked exactly the same, but don’t bite into it. The inside isn’t what you’re expecting.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“My current special interests are obscure Saturday Night Live sketches, Marilyn Monroe, humpback whales and, as ever, mermaids. Because I, a watery autistic, identified with the moment in Splash when Daryl Hannah is hunched over in the tank. That’s kind of what it feels like to be an autistic woman. That and Ariel, the little mermaid who saved every rock she’d ever seen.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“There are literally six million ways to be neurodivergent, every single case is different, but my God, don’t believe what these neurotypicals say about us— it’s so without imagination.’
Laughter rippled across the crowd of girls.
‘I’d like you all to forget everything that you think you know about autistic women. Statistically, some of you will be neurodivergent. You may know it already, you may not. That may be ahead of you. Maybe some of you know something inside is different. I’m sorry you have to listen to people talk at length about how tragic and terrible it is to be us, or to be in our lives. Or how we’re not real. Don’t listen to it. It’s a crock of shit. There are nasty rumors out there about people like me and I don’t know who started them— male scientists maybe— but you should take us on a case-by-case basis.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“So, you’ve heard from the zookeeper,’ Raina went on. ‘Now you’re going to hear from the tiger.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“Her topaz rings caught the stage lights and glittered. Her rose-water scent filled the space she occupied. Her lipstick matched the red of her nail polish.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“The date of birth she’d given when signing in set her age at twenty-eight but she looked younger. Her hair was long and blonde with streaks of pink, a soft cerise that happened to match the fluffy cowgirl boots she was wearing.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story

“This is for the autistic women who have a special interest in romance. Who have been chronically misunderstood or given a million labels before finding one that truly fits. For the ones who love love. Who know that there is resistance in joy.
This is for autistics who fuck, basically.”
― Elle McNicoll, Unapologetic Love Story