The Stranger Inside Quotes
"Younger families live on this block. SUVs are hastily parked. Basketball hoops tilt in driveways; bikes twist on the lawn."
"I can’t muster any compassion for him. And I know that you aren’t shedding any tears."
"But it’s not so. Not always. Sometimes justice needs a little push."
"You know how it wafts like smoke from the black spaces beneath tables and chairs."
"I think about it long and hard. Because it would suck to be wrong."
"Money, if you don’t protect it, is flammable. It goes up in flames and floats away like ash."
"We all believe that story, that cheaters never win, and justice will be done."
"But it was also obvious to Rain that her child was trying to kill her. Slowly. With an adorable, gurgling, two-tooth smile."
"She wanted to nurse Lily, loved the closeness of it, those soothing quiet moments with her baby."
"She was only half listening to the news broadcasting from her phone as she wiped down the quartz countertop, though it was already clean."
"Someone killed Steve Markham. He got away with murder, until he didn’t."
"The idea of the other, the stranger, the destroyer who breaks into your home and kills your family, or takes your child? It does happen. But not as often as a man kills his wife."
"Rain could tell. Outside her window, the manic chirping of birds."
"She sank back into bed, closed her eyes. But her brain—as manic and chirpy as her starling neighbors—would not stop chattering."
"That love, it changed her—just like everyone said it would. In myriad ways."
"How could you be sexy, hot, erotic when you didn’t even own yourself?"
"The world swirled around her the way it used to, when a story got its teeth in her."
"A shadow, waiting to destroy the pretty life she’d built with Greg."
"Gillian’s gathering had been a rare—only—solo night out for Rain, baby and hubby back at home."
"In news it didn’t matter so much. But in story—Story with a capital S—it was heart and soul."
"Freedom of speech. Not speech controlled by whoever happens to be paying the bills."
"A good verbal sparring session was one of the most satisfying encounters you could have with a man—especially when you won."
"Rule number one of news investigation: just keep asking questions."
"It was enough, wasn’t it? Maybe. If this room, pretty and safe, was the whole world. But it wasn’t."
"The quiet of the room, the warmth of her child, that flood of oxytocin, the low sound of waves from the noise machine. Her frustration eased; the belly of fire cooled."
"Remember how people stood around the small store, how hot it was, how the line snaked outside and down the street? His flop of white hair, those round specs. I thought he was the coolest man alive."
"Because that’s what you do when you’re a writer, I guess. You just keep writing, no matter what they say about you."
"Everything Rain had done since that day was about what happened. How could it not be?"
"That’s instinct. That’s the brain picking up on something, a note out of the symphony of normal life."
"I see it in you, too, Lara. That look, the one I see in the mirror. A kind of emptiness behind the eyes, a strange flatness."
"My own house is empty. There’s no one waiting for me at home, no one to hold me when the ghosts come to call."
"Didn’t your mom teach you to be nice?" "My mom," she snapped, "told me not to talk to strange men in the woods."
"Even though the world always wants girls to be nice and sweet, quiet, hold it all in, you don’t always have to be that. Own your feelings. Speak your mind. Know your boundaries. Protect them."
"When the road isn’t laid clear before you, her mother always said, forge your own path."
"I am not that girl. I am not in that place. It is behind me, part of my past. I survived."
"We can’t change the choices we made or the consequences of our actions. So why do the memories never fade?"
"But there’s no point in going back, is there? Isn’t that what you said?"
"Friendships change. Girls and boys, there’s another layer suddenly. Adults, their focus shifts to work and family. Friendships become a lower priority. But as kids, those relationships define us. We love each other so fiercely."
"Women make choices, said Gillian, single and childless, by choice. We must. Do you want a Pulitzer Prize? Or do you want a happy kid? Men don’t have to make those decisions."
"The most important thing a woman could have: the ability to walk away from a shitty man, an exploitative job or any other situation in which she felt helpless and trapped."
"Don’t be angry with him, her mother said once. He is only the man he knows how to be."
"It doesn’t matter, Dad," she’d said. "She knew you did your best."
"All-consuming," she said. "Wonderful, exhausting, frustrating as hell and totally blissful."
"Life is a river, it washes over you, washes the past away if you let it."
"I’m going to tell them the truth," she said, surprising herself.
"You’re okay," But it wasn’t true, and she knew it even then. There was who she was before and who she was after. She would never be that other girl again.
"Life goes on. It’s such a pat phrase, such a well-worn truth that you almost don’t even hear the words. It’s only when your own life has come to a grinding halt that you understand the cruelty of it."
"Maybe I was reading too much into it. Seeing what I wanted to see. But I suspect you’ve never loved him the way he loves you."
"In my center, there was a burning core of anger that no amount of therapy could extinguish."
"Someone who protects you, someone who’s there."
"Did you know that I’ve loved you since kindergarten? Did you know that I’ve never loved anyone else?"
"God help me, I almost wept. You brought me right back to the me I used to be. Someone I’d almost forgotten."
"Violence is never the answer. I believe that with all my heart."
"It’s pathetic to say that there has never been anyone but you."
"Not everyone can be cured—some people suffer and make others suffer until the day they die."
"Fidelity is more than what we say, it’s even more than what we do, it’s who we are in our relationship, it’s about sharing the nether regions of our hearts."
"If your mind has created a blank space for you, it’s because you can’t handle what’s there. Be grateful."
"Within us, there are layers of self. If things go well, the whole and healthy self, the flawed but basically decent self emerges, grows, is nurtured and heads out into the world."
"Sometimes we need them, those dark ones within. We can’t survive certain circumstances without them."
"We all lose a part of ourselves when someone we love dies, but we can heal and go on living."
"Life has promise. Love. The joy of just being alive—food, music, the sky, the stars."
"You can’t be watching every second. But shouldn’t you be watching every single fucking second? Because that’s all it takes. One second."
"Trauma can get its hooks in. It takes time to find wholeness again."
"The human psyche doesn’t always fit in a tidy little box."
"He wanted to be good, deep inside, he wished he was a good dog. But he wasn’t. He was a beast."
"His handwriting was neat and beautiful, still somehow masculine. His sentences, about his isolated house, his work, were somehow soothing as if he was writing about another place and time when things were quieter, more peaceful."
"The common mode of modern communication, especially among the dating set, is texting... This hollow, stripped-down way we talk to each other now."
"But Hank’s writing letters—long, detailed, personal... Communication is important to him. He’s kind of a throwback, too. No smartphone. He had a flip phone when I knew him. He didn’t text."
"People want to be seen, to be understood, accepted. Hence the cultural social media addiction—everyone vying for attention, creating a persona posted for approval."
"Part of him is still back there, he's still trying to understand what happened to us."
"Because he’s lonely... And because part of me—a big part—wishes I could go back and save him."
"You’re trying to understand... Because monsters live and thrive in the dark."
"It quiets the other pain... Maybe for a while. But there’s always more pain."
"I am enough. I am more than enough. I don’t have to be anyone else but who I am."
"We can’t always protect each other. All we can do is love each other."
"Monsters live and thrive in the dark. Hank, too, I think. I think we’re both trying to understand, to fix, to prevent."
"If we never understand it, we can never lift that next Kreskey out of his circumstance, or save the next Hank, Tess and Lara."
"I’m here. With you. With her. I promise. I love you."
"The brain—they didn’t get this for a long time—it does what it needs to do to keep the rest of you living. It’s not about will or bravery or any of that."
"We’re not just throwaways, you know. Because our parents didn’t want us, or they were too fucked up to raise us. We’re people."
"We can only try to help her make better choices. Give her the tools to deal with her anxiety."
"Kids have always struggled to find their place in the world."
"It’s perfectly okay to be the flawed, quirky, awkward, unique individual you are."
"No matter what you think, or how things appear on the surface, everyone around is grappling with similar issues."
"So few of my stories have a happy ending. I want this to be one of them."
"These are nice people, kind and wide open, not a whiff of dysfunction."
"But it also means she knows my history. It’s awkward, isn’t it? When they know, and you know they know but it hasn’t been acknowledged."
"Mind your own business, I can almost hear him bark."
"The ocean is going to heal us, Hank, my mother would say as we floated in the salt water. We’re going to swim every day and wash away the past."
"It’s this, too, you know. There’s chaos and pain, son. War. There’s evil in this world. But there’s this, too. Always."
"But nature is perfect in its design—life, death, decay, rebirth. It heals."
"I have so much shame still for not being stronger that day. My rational mind understands the concept of shock, that I was a child, that I was badly injured and of no good to anyone. But the part of me that always wanted to be a hero, that wishes desperately that things were different—that doesn’t go away."
"Why didn’t she leave? Why didn’t she turn around? She couldn’t; she just kept moving toward the door as if it was her that day, coming back to save her friend."
"Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, I have found."
"Thank you for keeping on this when others might have given up or discounted a troubled girl’s allegations."
"Most people think that a mother’s greatest fear is that something will happen to her child, and that’s true. But of equal horror to most mothers was that something would happen to her, and that she wouldn’t be there to care for her baby."
"Trauma victims spend a lot of time looking back, trying to unstitch the fabric of the past."
"It’s not about Angel’s trauma, or even about Tom and Wendy Walters. It’s about finding Billy Martin."
"I have to admit that my conversation with Tess (or myself, depending on what I think she is) has me a bit rattled."
"Beware of self-destructive impulses, they are shadows in the psyche. We often aren’t even aware of them until they’ve burned our lives to the ground."