Pieces Of Her Quotes
"Your life was stagnating. You had to start making decisions rather than having life make decisions for you."
"You’ve fallen into the habit of feeling low. You can get used to anything, especially bad things. But the only direction now is up. You can’t fall off the floor."
"You are talented, and you are beautiful, and you’ll find your way, my love, and it will be the right way, no matter what, because it’s the path that you set out for yourself."
"Normal people have very meaningful lives. Look at me. It’s not selling out to enjoy yourself."
"Don’t talk to the police. Don’t sign a statement. Tell them you can’t remember anything."
"Whenever people in New York asked Andy what her mother was like, she always thought of something Laura had said about her own mother: She always knew where all the tops were to her Tupperware."
"You are magnificent because you are so uniquely you."
"The only direction now is up. You can’t fall off the floor."
"She must’ve been one of the first people to buy here."
"She’s lived in Belle Isle for twenty-eight years."
"Got a parking ticket three years ago that she paid online."
"Did your mother ever take any self-defense classes?"
"I’m showing you this because it’s already on the news."
"Objectively, the hat was ridiculous; too large for Helsinger’s head."
"The gun went up. A puff of smoke from the muzzle. A loud pop."
"She patted her hands down the same way she used to tuck Andy into bed at night."
"Laura’s left hand was pinned to the left side of his neck like a message tacked to a bulletin board."
"Laura’s mouth moved. One or two words, her lips barely parting."
"From the video, it looked like Laura had willfully pulled the knife out of Helsinger’s throat."
"The hinge of Palazzolo’s jaw stuck out like a bolt on the side of her face."
"The only people who are quiet are the ones who have something to hide."
"I thought we could go together. Unless you want to take someone else."
"You were so good taking care of Mom. So good."
"Mom’s right that you need to start your life."
"There’s no such thing as a coward in that kind of situation."
"She could’ve taken the gun out of his hand. She had time to do that, to reach down, but instead she reached up."
"It doesn’t take much to pull a trigger, right?"
"But from the front—you see Mom’s face, and you wonder if she did the right thing."
"Why was she letting everyone believe that she had deliberately committed murder?"
"Neither one of them wanted to say something that could not be taken back."
"Your mother is a murderer. Yes, she had a choice. She chose to kill that boy."
"Everything felt especially dangerous right now."
"I have no idea how your mother was able to do what she did."
"I just don’t know her. I can’t comprehend her motivations."
"That’s a lot of alcohol on an empty stomach."
"I thought she was a puzzle. A fascinating, beautiful, complex puzzle."
"You can always talk to me, sweetie. I just wish you didn’t have to get tipsy to do it."
"Next year will be better, Andrea. Time puts everything into perspective."
"The shooting had a name now, an after that calved her life away from the before."
"You don’t have to do this. We can work something out. I have money."
"Everything I’ve ever done is for you, my Andrea Heloise. Everything."
"Her heart was thumping against the side of her neck as she approached the bridge."
"How did people locate businesses before they had the internet?"
"Suicides ran in families. Was it the same with killing?"
"She was not considering her own safety. She was not thinking about her mother’s life or death. She was just acting."
"The questions seemed pointless after over an hour of searching."
"The glowing screen made her feel oddly at ease."
"Martin Queller’s children were spoiled in that quintessential American way. Too much money. Too much education. Too much travel. Too much too much, so that the abundance of things had left them empty."
"The nervous way she kept twitching her fingers as if they were floating across invisible keys."
"Don’t listen to the first five words he says to you, because none of them will make you feel good about yourself."
"I’ve staked my reputation on contradicting him."
"Men never have to be uncomfortable around women. Women have to be uncomfortable around men all of the time."
"If you love music—really, truly, love music—then you play it for yourself."
"Men can always reinvent themselves. For women, once you’re a mother, you’re always a mother."
"Using emotion or hysterics to interpret the datum opens up the entire field to ridicule."
"Everything was vibrating. Her brain felt like it was being squished onto the point of a juice grinder."
"That way you can go right back to sleep when you’re finished."
"Andy longed for the time when her biggest concern was that her mother held a cigarette between her finger and thumb like a junkie."
"She used the chicken leg to eat the mashed potatoes, then she ate the chicken, then she used her fingers to go after the green beans, then she used the cornbread like a sponge to clean up any edible pieces of fried chicken skin or green bean juice that she had missed."
"She hadn’t looked closely at the photo on his license. She hadn’t looked to see what town he was from."
"Was that a good or bad thing—not the man killing people, but the news stations covering it live?"
"This was the part where Andy wondered where she would’ve fit into Laura’s disappearance because everything Andy had found so far pointed to only one person being on the lam."
"Jane shook her head again, but only to try to clear the violent images from her mind. The gun. The explosions. The splatter and spray."
"Nick could always tell when she was troubled."
"I feel like something is missing inside of me. Like an organ has been taken away. Is that strange?"
"I can't talk to you. I can't listen to you. I can't be around you because you're going to say what I've been thinking and it will end up tearing us to shreds."
"How could the kind, interesting woman whom Jane had smoked with in the conference center bar be the same woman who had taken a gun from her purse and murdered a man, then herself?"
"Everything was tight because she was pregnant and they had killed their father and they were probably going to kill more people by the time this was over."
"Jane tried not to wince as Nick ran his fingers roughly through her hair. He told Barlow, 'I met Laura Juneau in the KLM lounge at Schiphol. We were both en route to Oslo. She approached me. She asked if the seat next to me was taken. I said no. She introduced herself as Dr. Alexandra Maplecroft. She said she recognized me from one of her lectures, which could be true, but honestly, gentlemen, I was stoned out of my mind during most of my classes, so I’m hardly a reliable witness.'"
"Nick had said that the police would try to separate them, that their psyches would be poked and prodded in the hope that they would eventually turn on each other."
"He had been forced to live on the streets, then lived in a homeless shelter, while he finished school. That Nick had managed to get into Stanford despite all of these hardships proved that he was smarter, more clever, than anybody had ever given him credit for."
"Jane couldn’t keep up this façade much longer. She had to get out of here. To find Nick. To tell him what was going on."
"I'm all right." She wiped her tears. She felt foolish for making such a scene.
"Please don't tell Nick I was so upset. Please."
"I felt so selfish when I heard her story. I thought I was suffering, but I had no idea what true suffering really is."
"I will never let anyone hurt you again. Ever."
"She’s like the ballerina in a jewelry box. The second you bend her over, the music stops."
"Because I could no longer play with blood on my hands."
"I'm not going to hurt you. I'm just going to scare the shit out of you."
"Trigger warning, dumbass, I'm not going to change your grade, so you can dry your snowflake tears all the way back to community college."
"You have no idea who I am. You never have and you never will."
"She was never as timid as you. Must get that from your father?"
"You did google me, right? Found my address through the property tax records. Saw my course schedule, read my shitty student reviews?"
"You can tell a lot about somebody from their eyes."
"Good Lord, child. If I had a dollar bill every time you left a sentence hanging, I sure as shit wouldn't be living in Texas."
"Your sweet little ol' mother kills a kid in cold blood, but walks because she thought to say Please don't move instead of Hasta la vista."
"How could you bring a child into this terrible, violent world?"
"People at the school know. It’s not a secret. But I don’t like to talk about it, either. My revolutionary days are over. Hell, at my age, pretty much most of my life is over."
"You're the one who let her get untied. So much for our ransom demand. That's our leverage pissing on her own grave."
"Nothing compared to the absolute elation Jane had experienced the first time Nick had kissed her."
"Because Nick did belong to her, just as surely as Jane belonged to him."
"She wanted to give the girl all of her strengths and none of her weaknesses."
"You're carrying high, which is why I assumed it was a girl."
"You belong to me, Jinx Queller. If you ever try to leave me, I will scorch the earth to get you back."
"Let’s not talk about depressing things today. You’ve got enough of that going on in your life right now."
"The worst kind of self-aggrandizement, but you know, it’s such a strange thing—I’ve forgotten most of my performances."
"You don’t put notes on a board like that unless a person has memory problems."
"No pinks. Maybe some greens and yellows? That sounds pretty. Like the sunflowers outside."
"I’m not completely bonkers. I remember the important things. I always have."
"How could anyone walk away from something so magical?"