Rose Madder Quotes
"The pain has swallowed her as the whale reputedly swallowed Jonah, that holy draft-dodger."
"There has never been any pain like this pain, not that she can remember."
"Her hand on her belly registers flesh that is no longer like flesh at all; it is as if she has been unzipped."
"Oh God please, she thinks. Please let the baby be okay."
"The eyes in that face are as expressionless as shards of glass twinkling beside a country road."
"He might be comforting a child who has dropped her ice cream cone."
"She can't look at him anymore, not right now. She feels she'll go mad if she does."
"I'm going to need all the rest I can get."
"I've seen too many women crawl in here broken and walk out whole not to believe it."
"Taking the bank card doesn't make you a thief. That was your money as well as his."
"The best she could do was a weary sort of embarrassment: why had she never realized before?"
"Some things call to us, that's all. It's as if the people who made them were speaking inside our heads."
"I didn't buy it because it was beautiful to me. I bought it because it seemed powerful to me."
"Does a picture have to be beautiful to be good, do you think?"
"The way it stopped me in my tracks was powerful."
"You saved your own life when you took a chance and walked out on the man who was hurting you."
"I hate the idea that everything we do gets done because of the things people have done to us."
"In life, Rosie, people sometimes do things, both bad and good, just-because."
"If you should see a version of yourself walking down the street someday—a woman who looks lost and afraid—just pass it on."
"I hate to cry. It's my deepest, darkest secret."
"A little of me goes out with every woman when she leaves."
"What a wonderful place a waiter's Utopia would be—a place where every choice was excellent, very good, marvelous."
"I can't forget her. This is something I've seen in the movies and occasionally read about in the kind of magazines you always find in the doctor's waiting room, but I never really believed it."
"She was hot all over (except for her feet, which were cold as ice)."
"Actually, it was more like this. And I'm like Roger Clemens—I have excellent control."
"This lady comes in to sell me her engagement ring, which she thinks is a diamond... except way down deep, where she knows better."
"You know you're beautiful? That's not a come-on or a line, it's plain old curiosity."
"I'll always tell you what I see. That's a promise."
"I've had a few guys stroke mine over the years."
"He's just calling lunch half an hour early, that's all."
"If you really believe that, Rosie, you probably ought to go see a doctor."
"Anything more than that and I ruin half a dozen perfectly good takes by burping, anyway."
"If you don't eat, you'll probably faint dead away around three o'clock."
"What if, when she met with Mr. Lefferts tomorrow, he decided to give her her notice instead of a contract?"
"Except Rosie knew. Her heart knew. It was Norman."
"He calls people like that 'daddy's little helpers.'"
"How in God's name could he have found this guy Slowik in the first place?"
"I've heard what they talk about, and I know how they look at the rest of the world."
"She's already started. She faxed a women's group back home."
"It's a ghos place, no doubt about that, but even in the Temple of the Bull there ain't no ghos can hurt a livin woman."
"She told him about Anna's call, which Anna had made in a hurry."
"I'll be your back-door man, gobble you like a toasted-cheese sandwich."
"Ahead were three free-standing stone walls facing her edge-on and running away into the gloom."
"You know damned well what that is, she thought."
"It felt good to be angry, to be anything other than terrified."
"Now Rosie decided to see if she still had it in her repertoire."
"After perhaps three minutes, the passage she was following emptied into a T-junction."
"She was Gretel underground, with no brother to share her fear."
"Her eyes were swollen with crying and her cheeks were wet with tears, but she had fallen quiet again."
"She decided she didn't care about the answer to those questions, at least not now."
"That's all right,' Rosie said, patting the tiny, blanket-wrapped back gently."
"I've buried my children, and their children, and their children's children into the fifth generation."
"Listening to the bull Erinyes charge blindly through the maze brought that memory back with amazing clarity."
"She thought of the man in Portside, the one with the handsome, unreliable face and the game of three-card monte."
"Go on, little Rosie Real. Thank you for saving my baby."
"Don't make me look at you! Don't make me look at you! Don't make me!"
"Bill isn't a beast, Rosie thought, and knew she would never dare say that aloud to this woman."
"She put the clock back on the nighttable, swung her legs out of bed—"
"She pushed down the sheet and light blanket. Her bottom half was as bare as her top half."
"She had stayed for a long time with a bad man, but had left him and met a good one."
"Norman Daniels drove out of longterm parking at almost exactly the same moment that Robbie Lefferts was offering his fugitive wife what he termed 'a more solid business arrangement.'"
"He made a quick trip to the gift shop, then left."
"I won't be able to stop without suffering a most severe case of blue balls."
"I wanted to make sure you'd have something that you liked, that's all."
"He's here! If you're still there, run and get help!"
"It's happening because I'm in love with you."
"If you want to complain about how the games are rigged, or something of that nature, you just toddle on down to Customer Service and—"
"You give the term eat me a whole new meaning, don't you, fagboy?"
"I think we got time for one more tango before the men in the white coats show up to take you away to Sunnydale Acres, or wherever they store weird fucks like y—"
"You sound like the woman in the painting. You sound like Rose Madder."
"He's my husband, he's a police detective, and he's crazy."
"I'm going to find her, and then I'm going to teach her how to do the hanky panky. My version of it."
"It's as if she had somehow raped him, and left him with the fertilized seed of some malformed and freakish child."
"We go on because we have to convince ourselves that we can't be beaten out of our lives."
"All you smell is last night's spaghetti sauce!"
"Mind me, goddam you!" He took another step toward her.
"Come forth, little Rosie! Come forth and be of good cheer! The bull is no more!"
"I'm glad he's dead," she said, softly and unemphatically. "It's a relief."
"Dorcas gave me what you wanted me to have. It's in my pocket."
"Wash the dye out of your hair," Rose Madder whispered. "You weren't meant to be a blonde."
"You're very welcome," Rose Madder said composedly. "Repay me by treating her well."
"It's such a pretty man," Rose Madder said thoughtfully.
"Take him while you still can, Rosie Real! While you still can!"
"But give me what's mine before you go!" Rose Madder screamed.
"That was no dream," he said. "Jesus, we were in the picture!"
"Don't," she said. "What good would it do? Whatever happened is over now."
"Hey," he said, with a kind of numb insouciance, "don't sweat the small stuff."
"I love you, Rosie. That's the only thing I'm sure of anymore."
"It doesn't matter as long as I remember the tree," she said.
"We'll find him," Hale said. "I promise you that, Ms McClendon—we'll find him."
"Those who don't learn from the past are condemned to repeat the bastard."
"I'll take it, of course I will, I'll forget, and that'll be for the best—who needs dreams like these?"
"All promises should be so easy to keep," he said, smiling.
"But if he was going to flip one of them, I wonder why he didn't—"
"For a couple of seconds there I couldn't remember who you were," he said.
"I'm really Rosie," she sings, "and I'm Rosie Real... you better believe me... I'm a great big deal."