What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles And Tragic Death Of An All-American Teen Quotes
"Over the years, father and daughter had spent countless hours in the car together, driving to and from school and practices, Maddy always doing something on her phone, posting photos or sending texts."
"She couldn’t shake the feeling that something had shifted dramatically—something she couldn’t quite name."
"Second semester will get better, had to get better, Madison thought."
"I can’t abide the idea she has just introduced into the space between us."
"I have to be strong for everyone around me. And I’m choosing to be happy."
"But I just think you can’t let the demons get you."
"And no one in my immediate family deals with significant mental health issues."
"I wanted to understand, as best I could, what this monster looked and felt like."
"I learned long ago that a good day for me is not the same as a good day for most people."
"Though it defies logic, many young athletes, on signing a college letter of intent, convince themselves that the hardest work is behind them."
"Most of college athletics is: ‘Can he run, can he jump, can he shoot?’ And the whole part of the kid is lost."
"How do you survive those less-than-perfect situations when discipline isn’t enough? When grittiness gets you through the workouts but can’t seem to get you through the rest of the day?"
"I am not imagining this… this is actually a big issue."
"In life, counterintuitive correlations exist between a number of behaviors."
"The more polished and put-together someone seems—perhaps the more likely something vital is falling apart just offscreen."
"I am sick and tired of hearing the facile, tired response that my generation is 'soft'."
"What if a cyber airbrushed persona started to elbow out the real you?"
"This isn’t a goodbye letter/Even if Emma wanted to say bye I wouldn’t let her/Because she is a friend forever, that I can bet her."
"I will never forget all the crazy times we spent together starting in the third grade on the Americans."
"I hope friends tend to drift apart after high school, but I hope that never happens to us. IM TRYNA BE FRIENDS FOR LIFE OK!!!!"
"It was during these one-on-one interactions when Lorraine best understood her daughter’s closest friend."
"Emma saw Maddy from up close, as if looking in a mirror, while her parents and other adults were able to watch them both from afar."
"Madison, unfortunately, was never good at understanding why she was feeling a certain way."
"Her demeanor in the kitchen at Emma’s house was Exhibit A: she could not, or chose not to, name exactly what was happening with her at Penn."
"That felt like a problem Maddy could solve: stop running track."
"She was skinny, drained. So beautiful you couldn’t stop staring, and yet in that moment all you could notice was the emptiness in her eyes."
"The conversation among the three of them continually circled back to one potential fix: Madison should quit track."
"Maddy’s imagination, her free spirit, kept snagging on the hook of practicality."
"If you quit during a drill, you were lazy and weak. If you quit in the middle of a season, maybe you were not only lazy and weak, but selfish, too."
"Anticipation is one of the best parts of life."
"That night, hours later, we decided to go see a movie, and at some point in the darkness of the theater, I could feel the fear start to seep out of my body."
"For most of us, understanding how much of this path we’ve traveled is impossible: it’s a road of unknown length."
"She had actually bought the gifts earlier in the day, at the U of Penn Bookstore. While she was there her dad had called, which was not unusual: everyone was worried about her and checking in several times a day."
"Madison never called Dolan. Ingrid believed she was meeting up with Maddy that night after each of them continued rush, which was set to begin at 6 p.m. at Houston Hall."
"‘I don’t know who I am anymore. Trying. Trying. Trying. I’m sorry. I love you… sorry again… sorry again… sorry again… How did this happen?’"
"I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out, and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in."
"I don’t want to bore all of you with the nitty gritty details of why I ultimately decided to leave, but I thought I owed it to my teammates to give some sort of explanation..."
"Amid chaos, order and understanding feel paramount. We feel we must find a reason for why she jumped—a reason that makes sense to a healthy mind."
"We can do this, learn everything we can, how to talk to others about their pain or our own, in the hope that fewer people get caught in this same, fierce swirl."