A Secret Kept Quotes
"I think, I should call our father now, I should call him before it gets too late."
"The minutes click by. I watch the round face of a grimy clock above the door."
"How many people have waited here? I think. How many people have sat where I am sitting now and waited for news of their loved ones?"
"I flinch. I keep thinking I am going to wake up."
"I try breathing calmly. I manage to do this for a couple of minutes. Then the helpless, awful feeling takes over and swamps me."
"I simply cannot imagine myself telling them, 'Your aunt is dead. Mélanie is dead. My sister is dead.' The words make no sense."
"It’s okay," the doctor says. She grips my arm. She has small, square hands."
"Why Noirmoutier? Because they had spent unforgettable summers there."
"Yet the crinkled eyes in the rearview mirror were those of a man in early middle age."
"Since the divorce there had been a string of women. And a string of disillusion."
"But how can I pronounce the words Mélanie uttered before the car veered off the highway?"
"Can I see her?" I ask Dr. Besson at last, breaking the silence between us. "I can’t stand sitting here and not seeing her."
"She is, now. She will need time to get over this."
"I remember calling out to her, yelling her name at the top of my lungs."
"I relish the small power I now have, the tiny power I can at last wield over our aging, domineering, tyrannical father."
"I remember the interesting contrast they made: small, delicate, dark-haired Mélanie, and Astrid, with her fair hair, pale blue eyes."
"I hadn’t seen her for months, probably since last Christmas at the avenue Kléber."
"The day I had to leave it. The day I stood on the doorstep and turned around and looked at it for the last time."
"I remember when Le Figaro printed an entire page about François Rey, the young, impudent lawyer who dared take on the Ministry of Finance without a qualm."
"Aneurysm deaths usually look good. This young lady is lovely in death. I hardly had to work on her."
"Sometimes it’s easier not to know. Sometimes truth hurts."
"You men. You just can’t say things outright, can you?"
"I feel like I have no idea who my mother was."
"The last thing I do, which is what I was working on when you knocked, is makeup. It has to be natural."
"Did you see her in death?" "No. I closed my eyes at the last moment."
"I don’t know how to say this," she says simply. "I think it will be a shock to you."
"You are the only person I know, apart from me, who has told him to go to hell."
"This could have been our daughter’s funeral."
"You better tell me how Clarisse died, right now."
"You’ve got to hear about my new boss, Parimbert."
"I want you back, Antoine. I want our old life back."
"You’ll regret this, this is the stupidest thing to do right now, it will hurt both of you."
"The only thing we now have in common is that his wife left him for a younger man."
"I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you anything until your grandmother was no longer here."
"For your mother’s sake. Because I revered her."
"Going back into the past never does any good."
"I want to know exactly how and where my mother died."
"She was the only person who really understood me."
"The brunette. She looks so much like Mélanie."
"You have just left your room, and I am slipping this under your door."
"I pray you get it before you catch your train back to Paris."
"I feel a piercing sadness learning that June Ashby is dead. I would have liked to know this woman, the woman my mother loved."
"I sigh. 'My mother died in 1974, Mathilde. I was ten years old.'"
"I miss her tonight as I lie there in my empty bed, so many questions whirling around in my head."
"The true way to make a man feel anything but virile? But when I think of Serge and his hairy buttocks on Astrid’s camera, I somehow feel that nothing could be worse."
"I can see her ringing the Rey doorbell, tall and formidable in her fury, her grief."
"Clarisse and June fall in love that summer. This is not just sex. This is love. A hurricane-like, unexpected, twister of a love."
"I think of my future workload. Rabagny was in the process of clinching a lucrative deal for me concerning the Think Dome patent."
"I feel sheltered, as I did that afternoon, knowing that this woman, whom I may or may not spend the rest of my days with, has given me the kiss of life."