Ask Again, Yes Quotes
"Later, she’d figure out that the kids played the games their parents had played growing up in the city."
"She’d agreed to the trip because it was something to do."
"You saw the train? There’s also a bus that goes to Midtown."
"Every moment Francis spent there, he said, he felt like he should be offering to help with something, do something."
"They’d socked away the cash gifts they’d gotten at the wedding plus most of their salaries and had enough for a down payment."
"She stopped working at twenty-five weeks because her mother was driving her crazy."
"For the first time she wondered if she’d known him well enough to marry him."
"You’re a dote," Francis would say to the baby.
"His father didn’t seem to notice when she began to skip meals."
"You think you’re so smart," Anne said finally.
"You’re not going back there," his mother said, cutting across his thoughts.
"You are not going to see that girl again," she said.
"Didn’t I tell you?" George asked. "Didn’t I tell you—what?—fifteen years ago?"
"You okay, sweetie?" Brenda asked Peter after a while.
"You can’t reason with a person who won’t be reasoned with," Brian said quietly.
"I thought I left a book out there," Kate said, and her mother shuffled on, bleary-eyed without her first cup of coffee.
"No you’re not," She rushed across the kitchen and tore the handset from the phone.
"You can tell your wife that her son is no angel either. This was his idea, them sneaking out."
"She’ll tell you," Lena said as she gripped Kate by the most tender part of her elbow and pulled her back toward their house.
"It’s called adolescence," Lena had said. "It’s called life."
"Be good," Brian said. "I’ll see you soon, okay, Pete?"
"We’ll have to live in public housing for a while and then we’ll get our own flat."
"She mentioned so many people and so many grievances that it sort of diluted the mention of you."
"For your father, Kate. Don’t you go looking for trouble. Okay?"
"All you had to say was one pretty funny thing and you made a friend."
"I’m saying that what happened is no one’s fault, really. Not even hers when you think about it."
"Sometimes, she’d try to conjure up the feeling of Peter walking beside her."
"All day, all week, all summer, he’d felt in himself a weather vane swinging around wildly to face one direction, and then another, whenever the wind blew."
"It’s only the sunrise crowing people notice, because the world is so quiet at sunrise."
"You might try again in a few weeks. You could arrange a particular date, give her some advance notice. That way she might prepare."
"He should have been so wild that George would have had to hunt his father down and make him come back, so wild he would have had to get his mother’s lawyer involved to figure out what could be done."
"You committed a crime, yes, but you were found not responsible due to your mental state at that time."
"Life isn’t fair, Kate. I don’t want you seeing him. Period."
"You’re going to be fine, Lena," he said eventually, her at the top of the stairs, him at the bottom. It was an order. He once had a dozen men in his command."
"I knew he would not be trying again in a few weeks."
"It’s just temporary," he must have said a dozen times around the apartment that first weekend.
"He’d put on a lot of weight and his face was weather-beaten, haggard. He looked ten years older than Peter."
"Sorry," Peter said, though he wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for.
"He couldn’t stay in George’s potpourri-infused room forever."
"You’re stubborn, Peter. You’re a great kid, but you’re stubborn."
"You love her. Okay. It’s a strong feeling, but think about it all the way through."
"Better face the music," she said to Peter, and picked up.
"The world had just a few more months to organize itself before the century changed and all files were lost."
"Everything that happened had happened to their parents."
"I don’t know," Peter said. This, at least, was the truth.
"I’m not my father. I don’t even know him anymore."
"I’ve never done a single thing wrong. I’m the one who’s applying."
"You’re sure?" she asked. "You’re certain this is what you want?"
"It’s the job," George always said, before Kate even got a whole sentence out.
"But it was he who wasn’t understanding, Kate knew."
"He’d never blamed him. He was fourteen years old. Why would I blame him?"
"But to come all the way here and raise a child who became a cop (how Irish, how typical) and fall in love with any old girl—what was the point?"
"It was like running too fast down a steep hill, his legs flying out in front of him. He could not stop."
"He didn’t know what he wanted, he didn’t know which way to root."
"There were years when it felt important to hate her, but those years had passed, he realized now."
"How could she ever have thought that they might not make it?"
"If those weren’t bad times, what were they? And they were doing fine."
"How many people get a chance to start over again?"
"He’d kept it together through the assessment."
"First time? So they all assumed there’d be a second time?"
"Whenever their sitter canceled in those years, she’d spend a whole day at the lab with Molly strapped to her chest."
"They were both lonely for Ireland in some ways, or maybe it was loneliness for their own childhoods, before they knew decisions had to be made, before they knew regrets would pile up."
"You won’t be buried there," Anne said. "Will you?" It struck her again how odd it was that they were sitting there together."
"The ones who did okay were the ones who gave over almost immediately, who showed up to group and participated and tried their best."
"I thought I was going to have to bury it and then tell you guys it flew away."
"I’m just looking for something. I’ll be right up."
"I have one," Peter said. He went back to the day they decided to get married."
"And then the thought she hadn’t seen coming, a cry from so deep within that she felt weak with it, had to sit back down. Don’t leave him, she begged Kate, silently, desperately."
"Things are meant to change, Peter said. Because life changes and people change. As long as we change together, we’re okay."
"I have to think about it more, but, no, I’m not angry."
"We’re born, we get sick, we die. Beginning, middle, end."
"All of the things that had happened in their lives had not hurt them in any essential way, despite what they may have believed at times."