The Family Game Quotes
"After all, that’s what love is, isn’t it? Who, in love, doesn’t hope for a lassoed moon?"
"They say the human body can do incredible things in a crisis. People walked for miles to hospitals on broken legs after 9/11, women give birth in war zones."
"I carefully ease up onto my forearms, the dark stone of my engagement ring shifting moodily in the light. A sleeping creature woken."
"I hope that’s true. Since you showed up, I have so much more to lose, and so, so much more to gain."
"You can’t choose your family but they’re wrong. You can. It just takes way more effort than most people are willing to put in."
"I’m no shrinking violet but too much noise, too many faces, trigger old wounds and set my senses to a different frequency."
"I would be lying if I said Edward’s background, his habits, his rituals—so alien to me—hadn’t lent him a strange additional attraction."
"I’ve survived a lot more than most, but you can’t underestimate the overwhelming power of someone swooping in to save you after a lifetime of having to save yourself."
"You can read any story in a million different ways but I think my family and the world in general will understand the story of us. Don’t you think?"
"I know I should be nervous; this man, so much more powerful and self-possessed than me, has me on his own ground. And yet I’m not."
"I have a secret; a warm cozy secret that I hold close to me, like a comforter in situations just like this."
"I know I can do what I need to do when my back is to the wall."
"There’s a chance Robert might have given me the wrong tape. He retrieved it in the half-light, after all."
"We all have something inside us that we fear would repel the world if it ever came out."
"But fantasies are fantasies, and I haven’t actually done anything wrong."
"The truth is I am pleased with it, come what may. It might be the best thing I have written."
"I can’t deny that part of me is so glad she did."
"I know from writing research how search results can be made to disappear."
"The past is gone, my family is gone, and right now, I need to think of the future."
"He was tired. He had bitten off more than his still-adolescent mind could chew, more responsibility than he could shoulder unaided."
"If I think on it long enough the blame always lands on me."
"A hasty word to you, a lack of malleability in myself, my poor show of example."
"I am not a bad man. But my family is sacred to me."
"To the wolves because that is where she would have thrown us."
"It’s hard to know if the story is even real."
"Mindfulness works best for me when panic sets in."
"He wants me to know he won’t let me hurt his family."
"Edward lied to me. Bobby jumped; he didn’t die from a drug interaction."
"The thing about us orphans is that we find it incredibly hard to relinquish control, don’t we?"
"I am under no illusions that you have not done your homework."
"But whatever you fear, do not fear exposure from me; do not fear the things you have heard on this tape."
"Necessity is often the only real motive anyone can hold in their head and act on."
"We both have much to prove to each other. Perhaps we will get there. Perhaps we will not."
"You will not know what is real and what is not; it only works on the imagination this way."
"People have died, Harriet—not because of bloodlust; I think you know that."
"You have done things out of necessity—as have I."
"Do not be scared; accept it and have faith in the knowledge that I keep those of value close to me."
"Games take us as close as is acceptable to the strategies we use in life."
"A game is only a game if you do not fully understand it."
"Follow your clues, watch your back, and when you find what I hope you will find, all will be revealed."
"You can tell a lot about a person from the mess they leave behind."
"If anything was to happen to me out here, the trail is laid and it will lead straight back to Robert Holbeck."
"Being the eldest has been hard. If I don’t mention it then it didn’t happen and if it didn’t happen then it can’t happen to me."
"It’s not the winning that counts, right? It’s just the taking part."
"What could be more in the spirit of Christmas than offering everyone in the family a chance to do the right thing?"