The Castaways Quotes
"He was a lightning rod for information, a conduit. Everything went through him first."
"This was the stuff of his days: accidents, crime, people fucking up in big ways and small. Mostly small, he had come to realize after seventeen years on the force."
"They were living in a miasma of strawberries."
"She was getting fit, getting tan, and exercising her mind by reading all those thought-provoking novels."
"She was the kind of mother who was always doing things with the boys."
"She was happy. The afternoon she went to see the Hoover Dam remained one of the singular afternoons of her life."
"Life was messy. It did fart and burp, it left a stink in the bathroom and bloodstains on the sheets."
"They hadn’t known, then, what was coming. They didn’t know about September 11, Phoebe’s twin brother jumping from the hundred and first floor; they didn’t know about lost pregnancies; they didn’t know about the pharmaceutical cornucopia targeted at post-traumatic stress disorder; they didn’t know about the ways their marriages would fall apart and then be saved; they didn’t know about affairs or love realigning; they didn’t know about a girl named April Peck or the shitstorm she would create; they didn’t know they were going to leave and be left. They didn’t know they were going to die."
"Money couldn’t help him. Money didn’t matter."
"For the past six months, it had been just the two of them in a make-believe world, a carefully preserved fantasy."
"Everything he’d done, everything he’d seen, everything he owned, had meant nothing until she became his."
"Her trust in Greg had been destroyed. She didn’t believe in anything anymore: not marriage, not friendship."
"Life was out there waiting for Phoebe, but it was not waiting for Reed, and therefore Phoebe would not, could not, take advantage of it."
"He loved her more than he had ever loved anyone else, including fiery Mary Rose Garth, including Phoebe, including his own daughter."
"She was everything to me, Addison thought. And no one will ever know it."
"The fascinating thing had been her exhibition in the restaurant parking lot. She had emoted like a regular person—screaming, yelling, crying."
"The drugs were Phoebe’s life support, they were the bubble wrap that kept her from breaking."
"So, really, really really, it had started then, with Tess’s renegade decision to throw caution to the wind and drink wine at lunch with Addison."
"We’ve been married eleven and a half years," Tess said. "Andrea tells me not to let one measly night ruin so many years of hard work and devotion."
"I want to leave him," she said. "And go where?" Addison said. Tears dripped down her face. "I don’t know," she said. "Paris?"
"I may have just fallen in love with you. Okay?" And she said, "Okay."
"No, I’m not," April said. "You just graduated from high school. I know who you are, April, and I know how old you are."
"You have no idea how much I love you," she said.
"She was a person having fun. She was getting better."
"Right, she thought, when was the last time either of them had been home for dinner? They were putting themselves outside the house on purpose. They didn’t want to be at home with their deranged mother."
"You’re seven years old! And you can’t tie your shoes?" Mom always did it, he said.
"No. Just the Christmas decorations and the hideous fur that Andrea had inherited from her mother."
"Delilah’s heart was a berry, crushed underfoot."
"Executoring for Dummies did not exist. He checked."
"I wouldn’t mind being dead, if I could still be with you."
"The Chief said, 'That may be. But you have to think of the kids. They need closure.'"
"The fireplace was the house’s best feature; it was made of stacked fieldstone."
"She kissed Chloe’s temple. Delilah had never wanted a little girl; she had been too afraid that the girl would turn out to be like her."
"It was a one-way ticket on the Heartburn Express."
"She realized that if the guitar were anywhere, it was probably in Eric’s room."
"You’re taking it hard?" "Is there another way to take it?"
"I’m sure everyone thought Phoebe would collapse, this would be the last straw, but she’s great."
"I want to be attached to a machine that would erase my memory, obliterate my guilt, wipe me clean."
"I am going to miss them so much! But not really."
"I was her safety net, a security blanket, protection from the marital whiplash."
"It’s my party, and you’ll dance if I want to."
"I gave Tess a pill. Only one. But it was a doozy."
"I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted to… I don’t know… give her a shove."
"You didn’t kill her. You gave her the pill to calm her nerves. You were trying to help her."
"People were predictable. They always acted like themselves; no one was truly capable of change."