The Only Survivors Quotes
"Our house, like most things, came down to luck."
"Luck that the beachfront rental belonged to Oliver’s family, and, that first year, after Clara’s funeral, when we were panicked and desperate and made that pact, Oliver had said: I know a place."
"The house was the perfect haven for us, the lucky ones: survivors of the crash, and then of the raging river, the unrelenting storm."
"In a room full of people, a bus full of strangers: Who do you save? A thought experiment playing out in real time."
"Sometimes, alone, in the dark of night, I’d wake from a dream still tasting the river, storm water, a gritty soil in the back of my throat."
"The geography was constantly shifting out here."
"A mistake. That’s what the school kept saying."
"We were already part of it, whether we called it a pact or not."
"I couldn’t remember how to breathe around them."
"Eight years of secrets locked away inside those rooms."
"The official report had a sharp delineation, a before and after. Victims and survivors in an instant."
"We kept each other’s secrets, and we kept each other safe."
"Who could fault us, really, for doing what it took to survive?"
"The sound of a door slamming shut jarred me fully awake."
"You’re back. You’re here, at The Shallows. With them."
"You know, sometimes I have a dream that I show up, and no one else is here. That you’re all out there, happy, living your lives."
"Maybe all it took to feel understood was us admitting it out loud."
"It’s all fucking terrible. His poor family."
"You always were the most generous one, with how you saw us. Saw me."
"The school had decided to settle quickly with each of the families, instead of dragging things out in a publicized hearing."
"I don’t, really. Since we were admitting things, I might as well come clean."
"You know, there are rumors. About what you all are doing here."
"I’m not sure I would’ve left for college, if not for the fight we had, right before."
"We’ve already been through the worst of it. We had. And we had survived."
"This was a mistake," Brody said, but Oliver remained silent. I knew he wanted to see too.
"She should be back with us," Brody said.
What should we do?" Oliver said. "Go knocking on motel doors? Look at this place.
"If even the storm wouldn’t bring Amaya back to us, I couldn’t imagine anything would."
Not gonna lie," Brody finally said, "this is looking pretty ominous.
"It’s just rain," Oliver said, as much to himself as to us.
There’s a nasty weather system moving up the coast," he said. "Just wanted to make sure you were keeping an eye on it.
"How to say: the storm is already here. I’m in it. There’s no way out right now."
"I just miss you, I guess. And then I saw the storm on the news and hadn’t heard from you in a couple days…"
"We waited in the dark now, listening to the storm."
"We’re not sociopaths, Cass. We did what we had to do to survive, no one would fault us for that."
"Do you really think that we did it out of kindness?"
"It’s been ten years, Cassidy. A decade. We’re all different people now."
"What could be worthy of a tell-all, if there was nothing new to tell?"
"You are not the worst thing you’ve ever done."
"He was alive when we left. We’re not killers, Cassidy."
"This was our pact, really, when it came down to it, what showing up every year really meant: I promise not to dig. I promise not to go back."
"I knew exactly why I had continued to avoid the town of Long Brook. The danger here was the same as a danger anywhere you had left behind."
"It’s probably for the best. He really spiraled after Clara’s death."
"He was such a great uncle. Those kids adored him."
"You don’t understand, it’s been nine years. Please, stop this—it’s torment."