Where She Went Quotes
"Every morning I wake up and I tell myself this: It’s just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through."
"I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I’ll get through today."
"It well may be that in a difficult hour, pinned down by pain and moaning for release, or nagged by want past resolution’s power, I might be driven to sell your love for peace, or trade the memory of this night for food. It well may be. I do not think I would."
"These days, you’ve gotta milk a dollar out of every dime."
"Life happened. And it took us a while to write the new stuff."
"I have the kind of life a lot of people would probably sell a kidney to just experience a bit of. But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day."
"I try to rationalize it. Sixty-seven nights is nothing. I try to divide up the number, to fractionalize it, to do something to make it smaller, but nothing divides evenly into sixty-seven."
"Needle and thread, flesh and bone. Spit and sinew, heartbreak is home."
"Mia woke up after four days, but we didn’t tell her until the sixth day. It didn’t matter because she seemed to already know."
"And before I know what I’m doing, before I can argue myself out of it, rationalize what a terrible idea this is, I’m walking toward the box office. I don’t want to see her, I tell myself. I won’t see her. I only want to hear her."
"The brain is a fragile instrument and we may not know for a few weeks what specific regions have been affected, but young people are so very resilient and right now her neurologists are quite optimistic."
"Physical and occupational, speech and whatever else you need. We'll assess where you are in a few days."
"Once you're through your nonelective surgeries, provided there aren't any complications—no infections from the splenectomy, no pneumonia, no problems with your lungs—we'll get you out of the hospital and into rehab."
"No, that's not it," the social worker quickly reassured. "The brain can only handle so much, so it filters in a bit at a time, digests slowly. She'll take it all in, but she'll need help."
"The world might look different in a year or two. You might still want to go."
"We don't really get how music heals the brain," one of her neurologists told me one day as he listened to her play, "but we know that it does. Just look at Mia."
"I'll be your mess, you be mine. That was the deal that we had signed."
"Everyone wants their cut. You get used to it."
"If there's a patch of green, those little guys will find it and light it up. They only come for a few weeks a year. I always wonder where they go the rest of the time."
"The more it all piled on, the more the scene was making my skin crawl."
"Sometimes, after Bryn’s had a couple of glasses of wine, she’ll claim that Mia’s what’s between us."
"I’ve come to realize there’s a world of difference between knowing something happened, even knowing why it happened, and believing it."
"In the calculus of feelings, you never really know how one person’s absence will affect you more than another’s."
"Rock star. The words are so full of smoke and mirrors that it’s impossible to find a real person behind them."
"I’ve lost my right to discuss such things. I’ve relinquished—or been relieved of—my seat at the Hall family table."
"But the end, when it finally came, was quiet."
"In the sound of my footsteps slapping against the pavement, I can almost hear the word, reprieve, reprieve, echo through the city streets."
"It’s like one epic Easter egg hunt. You’re always finding these little surprises around every corner."
"Everyone has hardship in their life. Everyone has pain."
"We will smother your talent. Do you want us to do that?"
"And I can hear them answer me. Like they’re right there in the room with me. Like they never really went away."
"I thought I was going to totally lose the ability to remember what they even sounded like."
"If you stay, I'll do whatever you want. I'll quit the band, go with you to New York."
"You were so busy trying to be my savior that you left me all alone."
"Quitting's not hard. Deciding to quit is hard. Once you make that mental leap, the rest is easy."
"But still the question is gaining momentum and volume: How does she know?"
"Resting peaceful in desolation? It’s the final tie that binds us, The sole source of my consolation."
"But I’m still standing. I’m still breathing. And somehow, I’m okay."
"I didn’t lie before when I said I didn’t remember anything about the accident or after," she begins. "But then I did start remembering things."
"The question is out of the blue. Yet she seems to know exactly what I’m asking about. 'Oh. That,' she says. 'That’s complicated.'"
"It’s morning now. We find a bench on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade... We sit in companionable silence, sipping our coffee, eating Hassan’s still-warm croissants."
"My heart is pounding, my blood is grooving, my whole body is thrumming as I’m remembering: Concert doesn’t mean standing up like a target in front of thousands of strangers. It means coming together. It means harmony."
"You know, I thought about that a lot these last couple of years. About who was there for you. Who held your hand while you grieved for all that you’d lost?"
"First you inspect me, Then you dissect me, Then you reject me, I wait for the day, That you’ll resurrect me."
"I want to spare Mia the circus, I don’t care if the whole world knows we’re together."
"Hate me. Devastate me. Annihilate me. Re-create me."