The Last Thing He Told Me Quotes
"In my own way, I have raised losing things to an art form."
"He’d called them the could-have-been boys. He raised a glass to them and said, wherever they were, he was grateful to them for not being what I needed, so he got to be the one sitting across from me."
"It was overwhelming, what seemed to live between us, right from the start."
"How much I don’t want to open it. I don’t want to know what the note says."
"Watching my grandfather work taught me that not everything was fluid. There were certain things that you hit from different angles, but you never gave up on."
"I’m not saying it was love at first sight. What I’m saying is that a part of me wanted to do something to stop him from walking away."
"I have no idea where my husband is. I haven’t seen him since yesterday."
"He wouldn’t leave Bailey. He would never leave Bailey unless he absolutely had to."
"How can I be so sure of this? How can I trust myself to be sure of anything when I’m obviously biased in what I’m willing to see?"
"If I was still able to have children—that was how she said it—I was going to have to be careful not to let them rule the roost."
"It’s a terrible thing to know everything about someone long after you want to."
"Everyone at school seems to agree with you though. They all think I know why my father is doing whatever he’s doing."
"It wasn’t just about shaping a block of wood into what you wanted it to be. It was also a peeling back, to seeing what was inside the wood, what the wood had been before."
"But saying someone’s innocent makes you sound like an idiot. Especially when most people are guilty as fuck."
"My guess is he was trying to keep you safe from something, Bailey."
"And I mean, some people say it’s just a conspiracy theory, but look at it. The building looks like an owl! How can that be an accident?"
"We are a hundred feet from the closest stadium entrance, GATE 2, but it is up to Bailey."
"If you’re running from something, it’s usually yourself."
"Right. All we know for sure is that he lied to me," she says.
"It feels like everything hinges on her believing that."
"It’s hard for me to even hold her gaze without breaking down."
"You learn it in the moments when everyone’s too tired to be sweet, too tired to try hard."
"So . . . it wasn’t just him, right?" she says.
"Like my birthday’s not really my birthday?" she says.
"That seems like something a person should know about themselves," she says.
"I need to know what’s going on, Grady. What’s really going on here," I say.
"You’re getting some faulty information from your friend," he says.
"We are here together and we both want to keep going."
"And what did he do, Grady? Before all of this? Before The Shop?"
"Well, class is half over, but if you want to sit in on the rest of it, I guess I can take you down there . . ."
"I think that might just be the single best thing anyone has ever said to me," he said.
"I need some new photographs in here. They were five in this photo," he says.
"You think you can just pop in here whenever you want?" I said.
"It doesn’t matter how many times I say the same thing. Avett doesn’t want to hear it," he said.
"You know you can’t have that chair," I said. "Someone commissioned it."
"Good luck to her," he said. "Possession is nine-tenths of the law."
"I don’t know. I don’t think so," she says. "I never paid attention, why would I?"
"I need to know why you’re lying to me about Owen calling you when he obviously did not."
"He was just too focused on one of the women in the class. He wasn’t the only one. In a class of mostly men, she stood out."
"Is there anything else I should know?" I asked. "Before this plane takes off?"
"He loves to tell this story about how he struggled in your class and, after killing himself studying for the midterm, you told him that you were going to keep his exam in a frame in your office as a lesson to future students."
"This is my family you’re messing with," he says. "Who sent you here?"
"People don’t tend to work that way. We have our opinion and we filter information into a paradigm that supports it."
"There is nothing worse than losing your child. Nothing."
"I think it’s his hypocrisy that I find the most staggering."
"I’d like to tell you a little story, if you’ll indulge me."
"This is the thing about good and evil. They aren’t so far apart—and they often start from the same valiant place of wanting something to be different."
"You cannot make a deal with the devil and expect it to turn out okay."
"I think you’re still hoping for a happy ending. But this story doesn’t end well. It can’t."