Don't You Cry Quotes
"In hindsight, I should have known right away that something wasn’t quite right."
"I should have known right away that something wasn’t right."
"I see it then as my eyes adjust to the darkness of the room: Saint Esther is not in her bed."
"It isn’t my second, third or fourth thought, either."
"The whole of Farragut Avenue is asleep, except for me."
"On, off. Like an involuntary muscle contraction."
"I’ve never seen her around here before, but for years now I’ve been imagining she would come."
"Female in need of roommate to share 2BDR Andersonville apartment. Great locale, close to bus and train."
"Esther had a secret craving to be the next Joni Mitchell."
"We help people learn how to care for themselves. People with disabilities, delays, injuries. The elderly. It’s like rehab, self-help and psychiatry all rolled into one."
"Her eyes were heterochromatic—one brown, one blue—something I’d never before seen."
"The streets are paved with setts, rectangular granite blocks like cobblestones. The two restaurants remain open, but the boutique stores—the cutesy one with baby stuff in the front window and the one that carries nothing other than novelty items and a poor selection of cheesy, overpriced greeting cards—will soon close."
"I think of my pals Nick and Adam and Percy, off at college, having the time of their lives. Meanwhile, I’m thinking of some girl I don’t even know, may never see again, likely a head case, too."
"I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, nor the brightest crayon in the box. I’ve been told as much before."
"It’s funny how we spend more time sleeping next to someone than actually talking to them."
"Seems he managed a shower, too. He’d changed out of his striped shirt and no longer reeked of the god-awful cologne or the rank morning breath as he did when I left for work that morning. Now he just reeks of booze."
"Funny thing is, she didn’t even die in that house. That’s where she lived, sure, where Genevieve lived, but that’s not where she died. So how could her spirit be there?"
"Important things worthy of names. Like Bates labels. Matters of life or death."
"But no. What I’m doing is placing hundreds of thousands of numbered stickers on a looming document production before being given the task of photocopying them three or five or ten times."
"My finger hurts and yet my heart hurts even more."
"The only thing it will do is leave a mess on these stupid financial documents—nothing a little Wite-Out can’t fix—but I’ll be just fine."
"I’m not known for my healthy eating habits, but rather one who likes to indulge on fatty, greasy things—and ice cream."
"You live and learn, I told myself, and the next day I bought my own damn dill weed."
"Esther is a great roommate. Most of the time."
"If Esther changed her name to Jane and got a passport for Jane, she’d need other things changed to Jane, as well, such as a driver’s license and a social security card."
"Is Esther walking around someplace with a driver’s license that bears the name Jane Girard?"
"Because that’s the kind of thing people around here do."
"But as far as I can tell, people like him. The man’s history is squeaky clean."
"It’s true, of course, and it’s not true. And everybody knows the reason why, though no one’s too keen to say the words out loud."
"Floss your teeth. You don’t want to lose your teeth before you turn thirty-five."
"Jot your feelings down on paper. Tell her how you’re feeling."
"Once you get your feelings down on paper, you’ll be able to move on. You’ll be able to think through your emotions. You’ll find closure."
"Everything I make at work gets handed over to Esther straightaway to cover rent and utilities, leaving only some spare change for the occasional night out or a pair of new shoes."
"It’s all just fun and games until somebody gets hurt."
"Well, I’ll be damned," I say, and I think to myself, How sad, but also, Holy shit.
"I can’t believe Esther didn’t tell me this," I say, but the thing is, I can.
"You’re telling me," says Ben as he continues his search to see what else he can find.
"In the end it’s curiosity that makes me decide to step foot inside that derelict house across the street from mine."
"The moon, a perfectly round sphere, ascends high into the nighttime sky as lazy clouds float by."
"You don’t think..." asks Ben, but he stops just short of finishing that thought out loud.
"Esther has a habit of making every task her own, of moving items from other people’s docket to hers."
"When Esther puts her mind to something, there isn’t a thing she can’t do."
"People can be so selfish sometimes, don’t you think?"
"She wasn’t my roommate; she wasn’t my friend. So why, then, do I see the photos of Kelsey Bellamy and feel sad?"
"‘People don’t usually do nice things for me.’ I am silent, not quite sure what to say to that."
"‘I like it,’ she says. But then another look settles on her pretty face, a look of wonder or gratitude, or maybe even trust."
"I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be happy."
"‘What are you doing here?’ And she smiles that crafty smile again and says to me, ‘I could tell you, Alex. But then I’d have to kill you,’ and we laugh."
"It makes me feel warm all over, knowing I’ve helped her in some small, insignificant way."
"But it’s not nothing. I’ve done something good."
"We’re friends, right? You and I. We’re friends."
"Life becomes just one big waste of time until spring arrives and then suddenly everyone is in a rush."
"This is what it feels like to be part of a family."
"Sometimes things like that are easier said than done."
"It’s hard looking forward when you have trouble figuring out what you’ve left behind, or rather, what’s left you behind."
"That’s the thing about stuff like that. It festers. It’s human nature to hold a grudge."
"But as it turns out, being smart doesn’t always get you where you need to go. Sometimes you need guts, too."
"I’m happy, happy in a way that I’d never known I could be."
"It’s the middle of the night," I say, not to mention that the idea is a bit bizarre.
"Live for the moment," she reminds me then as we scale the window one at a time and return outside. "Enjoy life."
"I’d take death over abandonment any old day of the week."
"Now I lay me down to sleep," she says, and I credit empathy and compassion for the tears that drip from Pearl’s eyes, but maybe there’s more to it than that.
"I hope Priya wasn’t mad," I said when he arrived, but he shrugged it off and said it didn’t matter, anyway.
"Once a murderer, always a murderer," I say then as I sip from my plastic wine cup with shuddering hands, spilling tiny red droplets along the tabletop.
"I’ve been with her half my life," he confesses to me. "I don’t know what it’s like to not be with Priya," and I think that I get it.
"Maybe she’s just plain crazy, though it doesn’t make me like her any less."
"I’m not sure it’s the best time to be worried about Esther’s feelings, but I can’t help myself. I am."
"What kind of ninny would I be if I passed up a midnight rendezvous in a cemetery with a woman?"
"You never can be too careful about these things."
"The bile again rises up inside my chest until I feel that I could vomit."
"My heart, itself, has grown wings and can fly."
"It’s a pretty purse," she says. "Much too pretty to just throw in the trash."
"I’m not sure what I did, but I’m sure I did something wrong."
"I see the numbers in my mind’s eye, as I stood there last December, three feet back."
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s what Pearl discovered."
"You have every right to be angry, Genevieve."
"I like the way I feel as I stand there on the lake’s shore, looking at the sky, listening to the waves, reminding myself to breathe."
"The night is dark, save for the stars. The moon is foggy and vague."
"For five days she has been denied food, and only teased with water the one time her captor passed through."
"Tonight we’re expected to get snow, the first few flurries of the season."
"It’s not your fault, Esther. You were only a baby. You couldn’t have known."
"I couldn’t just abandon you like that," she says to me. "I didn’t want to leave you alone."
"I thought I had lost you," she says, and Esther’s mother, also crying, says the same. "I thought I had lost you, too."
"Heidi is not a vegetarian. But since Zoe began ranting about the fat in meat two weeks ago, Heidi made the family decision to go meat-free for a while."
"It turns out that Mrs. Peters, the seventh grade earth science teacher, wasn’t there and the sub was a total... Zoe stops herself, thinks of a better adjective than the one implanted in her brain by misfit preteens...a total nag."
"It’s rare that we get through a quick dinner without the obnoxious sound of my cell."
"My wife is a bleeding heart. Which was absolutely adorable when I asked her to marry me, but somehow, after fourteen years of marriage, the words immigrant and refugee hit a nerve for me."
"It isn’t my fault I have a coworker who’s nice on the eyes."