What Lies In The Woods Quotes
"Some spoke of the bravery of the two of us who had stumbled to the road to find help, who despite the shock gave the description that would lead to the attacker’s arrest."
"Others focused on the monster himself, fascinated by his wickedness and his brutality, the darkened corners of his soul."
"Knowing that three of us had gone into the woods. Not knowing which two had returned."
"He spotted the small form lying sprawled over the rotting hump of a fallen tree, as if she’d tried to climb over it with her last failing strength."
"They remember the television image, the girl in a wheelchair with a scar twisting up her cheek like a knot in a tree."
"I should be happy, right? The man who’d attacked me was dead. A little less evil in the world."
"I hadn’t been brave, just obedient—and terrified."
"Once Cassidy Green was fixed on a thing, there wasn’t a force in the world that could dissuade her."
"I know that we’ve all tried to put what happened that summer behind us. There are things we haven’t talked about. But that’s changed, hasn’t it? Stahl is dead now."
"Sometimes I was glad that I was the one who had been attacked. People understood my trauma."
"You turned my whole reality upside down. I lost all my friends, my house, my life. My dad. The man I thought he was turned out not to be real at all. He wasn’t my loving father, he was a monster."
"We knew the world was cruel and dirty and dull, and it was all so brutally unfair that we refused to accept it. There was magic in the world. We only had to find it."
"Fear raked its teeth across my tender throat and tore my breath away."
"If I was going to die, the part of me that once yearned for magic insisted, it would be here."
"The past wasn’t the past anymore. We were eleven years old again, and we were still playing the game."
"It couldn’t be real, I thought—but of course it was."
"She’s always going to be your priority."
"It was her hand I saw first, fingers bent."
"Hold on, hold on, I thought, logic left behind me on the shore."
"She had lived, and she would live now, if I could only get to her."
"You promised, I shouted, but the words lodged in silence."
"Liv was gone. She’d broken her promise to me."
"Except this wasn’t right. It didn’t make sense."
"The exhaustion gone and the grief hardened into a knife’s edge."
"We pushed her to this. We were afraid and selfish and we wouldn’t listen."
"Don’t turn a tragedy into a conspiracy, Naomi."
"It won’t bring her back. It’ll just cause more hurt."
"We’d all rot among the roots and stones eventually."
"The familiar shame of the lie shivered with new hope."
"I wished I had listened to her about Persephone."
"Don’t waste any energy fretting over Stahl. He’s dead and the world’s a better place without him."
"I felt that sense of vertigo again—teetering on the edge of a fall."
"I ruined this man’s life. Destroyed his family’s lives."
"There was an edge of fear in her voice."
"Stahl was the worst monster from my childhood. Oscar had been the first. But I hadn’t run from him."
"I lost myself in the work, capturing the moments of heady bliss and wild energy and the soft, tender seconds in between."
"Sometimes, surrender was the kindest thing of all."
"No going anywhere alone. He could have killed you."
"The truth belonged to me, and I would be the one to find it."
"Just be careful, Naomi. Keep in mind that his interests and yours may not be the same thing."
"I think I preferred it when your version of protecting me was punching people out."
"That kind of girl doesn’t end up with a happily ever after."
"The only reason my life wasn’t a mess of drama was that I packed up and left everything behind every time things got hairy."
"I made my own decisions every step of the way. They were terrible decisions, but they were mine."
"That’s statutory rape. It doesn’t matter that it was your idea. It was his job not to be a f*cking rapist."
"I stumbled through the prayers and hymns, losing the sense of myself as voices merged in recitation, only to jar free of the unity and feel all the more alone."
"No amount of faith could fix Olivia. No amount of friendship. And in the end, I gave up. I failed her."
"I’m going to see this through to the end, even if it destroys me."
"Sentiment requires sincerity, and that requires vulnerability. Cynicism and sarcasm are way safer."
"It’s almost as good as being well adjusted."
"Ethan isn’t who you think he is, Naomi."
"Let me go back to the beginning. Let me stand in the woods where I’d bled, where I’d almost died, and let me unweave everything that had followed."
"We’d never treated her like a person. Like someone who would be mourned and missed."
"Seventeen times I’d been stabbed. Chest and stomach and ribs. Seventeen times, and I hadn’t died."
"I’m done being lied to. And I’m done lying."
"I couldn’t condemn my best friend based on the murky memories I could dredge up. I needed to be sure."
"That summer, we found something. It was a skeleton. A human skeleton."
"We called her Persephone, and we visited her every day. We brought her offerings. We did things for her. It was a game, but it wasn’t. We believed."
"I spent my whole life trying to heal from something that never happened."
"You destroyed her. She was wonderful, and you destroyed her."
"I wish I didn’t know what a liar you are."
"Just stay awake and keep breathing. You’re going to be okay."
"You’re basically a soup of antibiotics and narcotics with a few chunks of meat to provide texture."