“You see, we‘re not like you. We don‘t think we‘re invincible. We understand strength in numbers and what we can accomplish by working together.”
“You see, we‘re not like you. We don‘t think we‘re invincible. We understand strength in numbers and what we can accomplish by working together.”
you could fool almost anyone if they thought you were well educated, especially if they believed you knew more than them, but you didn‘t overtly show it, so they saved face
I was always early as a matter of principle. Being late meant you began with an apology, weakening your position from the start. Arriving early, on the other hand, afforded the opportunity to choose where to sit, and I always took the chair with my back to the window, so my counterpart‘s face was clearly illuminated, ready to read, and mine remained a little obscured by the brightness shining into their eyes.
We‘re all a little evil on the inside. Different shades of gray depending on circumstance, character, and predisposition
If I were death, I‘d be swift, efficient, and merciful, not prescribe a drawn-out, painful process during which body, mind, or both, wasted away. People shouldn‘t be made to suffer as they died. Not all of them, anyway.
But still, she doesn‘t really understand why anyone wants to buy true crime. Why would they voluntarily soak themselves in the misery of people like her?
If she could have married Will in the Pelham library, that she could imagine—in the deep, reverential quiet, surrounded by all that humankind has ever known about love—every novel, every poem, every word.
Joey was in a dead sleep when Charles got into bed beside her. Though she often couldn‘t fall asleep when she knew he was nearby,
“Do you think it‘s possible for old friendships to evolve but stay close, even if both people have changed?”
They‘re allowed to think whatever they want. But not one of those people is allowed in this house, because I decided a long time ago that I‘m done being everyone‘s toilet. You no longer get to shit your opinions on me.
“You don‘t know what it‘s like to be born into a life of cruelty and abuse, and you don‘t know what it‘s like to have to claw your way out in order to have any sense of self-worth.
Life has a way of balancing everything out. And the only reason this moment feels so good is that what happened to Jimmy was so bad. She knows the feeling won‘t last.
But the truth is, you were the person who judged me more than anyone else ever did. My mother never had expectations for me. She thought I was nothing, and that was an easy standard to meet. But you? You had all these hopes for what you thought I could be, which were really just expectations disguised as optimism.
There were monsters everywhere. It was like playing that old carnival game, Whac-A-Mole. As soon as she pounded one monster down, another one popped up.
there was nowhere to go, and so this was her life, because it had always been her life, and it would either kill her, or she would survive it.
She no longer had the instincts other people had. Her fight-or-flight response had been stolen from her a long time ago. She was frozen.
She wasn‘t used to good things, to things being easy, to people being kind. When she was thirteen, Deborah had told her that some people were just born into hard lives, and their job was to claw their way out.
A child needed stability, not a constant push and pull of affection given and then removed.
She hated him so much. And she hated that she hated him, because that meant she still felt something, when she wished he was just a blank void inside her. A vacuum in her heart that would eventually seal itself closed.
Promises broken over and over. The absolute heartbreak of realizing he just didn‘t love you enough.
No sense getting close to people, Tyler reasoned, because it was inevitable that you were going to disappoint them.
“I know what it‘s like to have nowhere to go,” I‘d said. “I can only imagine how great it would have been to have extended family step up and take me in.”
I don‘t know anything, other than that it‘s only when something‘s damaged beyond repair that we realise how beautiful it was.
‘I just had to . . . I had to leave his death in my old life. I know that‘s impossible for you to understand, but I just couldn‘t bring myself to tell you Dad died of something I could have stopped. I‘d already caused my mother‘s death, I just . . . couldn‘t go there.‘
Life made sense again, when I met you, Leo. I remembered why people want to live.‘
Because when you‘re that lost, your only anchors are the things people tell you.