The Devil You Know Quotes
"The devil on my shoulder is summoned every other Monday."
"When we enter today’s meeting it’ll feel less like David versus Goliath, and more like Churchill versus Hitler. To be clear, I’m Churchill in this scenario."
"They think it’s a slur when they refer to me as a castrating bitch, but all it says to me is that they’ve finally realized I’m not someone to fuck with."
"I take a vicious sort of pleasure in being the one thing he can’t buy."
"I was someone who was fucked with a lot, once upon a time. It won’t happen again."
"Someone has to be, to make sure women like my mother aren’t absolutely screwed by men who promise not to turn on them, and do it anyway."
"Unlike shoes, which just exist to cradle you in their green suede bosom."
"I guess it’s possible that there are worse things than sharing this case with him. Not many, but some."
"I want the world to be a different place for the women who come after me. And the only way to make that happen is to ignore the fact that it isn’t different yet."
"But I’m so goddamned tired of staying silent just to get the things I deserve."
"Nothing is a bigger lie than pretending we're okay when we're anything but."
"The best defense is a good offense. It's a principle that works in court as much as in life."
"There’s a fallacy you tell yourself, sitting in an upholstered chair in a high-rise, looking at shoes online, and it’s that people like Victoria are different from you in a fundamental way."
"If you put someone on the stand and ask about their worst moments, you can make anyone seem like a monster. The trick is knowing enough about them."
"I sometimes wonder if I'm not already a monster, because the only way to defeat one is to become one yourself."
"Not caring is so much easier than caring. And then you realize what bullshit it is, those distinctions you’ve made."
"It is, as always, the loneliest period of the whole day."
"Sometimes it feels like all my joy is treasure buried so deep and far that I have no clue where to start looking for it."
"The thrill keeps me going, chasing the truth even harder."
"I manage to make it through the morning behaving like a reasonable human being and not, as Terri suggested, an alien inhabiting human form."
"You were so angry at your father over the divorce. You seemed so broken by how far he took things."
"I used to only want to watch things about happy people."
"I have other pleasures in life. I have you, and I have all my memories of your childhood."
"I’ve been telling her I’m happy for years now. I’ve been telling myself that too. But this is the first time I’ve realized that neither of us believe it."
"A better person might argue that even our heroes, even Martin Luther King and Gandhi, would look a bit flawed under a microscope."
"Why should I have to be a better person when no one else is?"
"I'm too busy. I'll worry about it once I've made partner."
"We just got the results of the financial inquiry of Fiducia. They spent a significant amount of money on corporate retreats."
"The devil on my shoulder, though? His crowing, in this moment, nearly deafens me."
"I haven’t come this far to fuck it all by sleeping with colleagues, and I’m not going to fuck it up by playing games afterward either. It’s done."
"My God, Gemma," Keeley says, entering my apartment. "It looks like you just moved in. Are you never going to decorate?"
"I have a couch and a TV," I tell her. "What more do I need?"
"I push the button to call the elevator since he apparently doesn’t plan to do so, then walk in ahead of him."
"I thought his presence at FMG was a glaring, obnoxious light. But maybe it was simply the only bright spot in my day."
"I’m not interested in giving up on the boys’ club—I want to sit at their table. When they’re holding men to a different standard than they do women, I want to be the one who tells them no."
"I guess none of that matters now, however. What matters is getting Ben out of trouble, which requires a strategy."
"I see some guys I know over there," Ben says, nodding to the right. "Let’s get a drink and I’ll introduce you."
"I realize, to my surprise, that I sort of wish we hadn’t."
"You’re the only one he…you know, seems to chat with."
"I force a smile. "Great," I say. "I’ll let you get back to it, then."
"He’s still kissing me as he rolls me to my back, as his hands graze my rib cage, my breasts, before gripping the hem of my tank. "Take this off," he demands, pulling it overhead."
"I walk away, wondering what the hell I’m going to do here for another two hours."
"I make a weak attempt at doing my job, but I’m distracted, and bored."
"He laughs but the sound is muted and unhappy. "I can’t believe you just thanked me," he says, running a hand over his face. "Get back in bed."
""Well, it’s not like he was saving orphans from a burning building," I reply."
""If you think I’d drop Hot Tamales and not eat them straight off the ground, you don’t know me very well," she says."
"Just think about it, honey. Because repeatedly hooking up with a man you’ve talked about obsessively for two years straight…doesn’t sound like hate to me."
"Red is the color of sex and I don’t need him thinking I want a repeat of Saturday night when I don’t."
"And just because he made me come in about ten seconds flat doesn’t make him a keeper."
"It’s late that afternoon when I hear a tiny smattering of applause, signaling his arrival, because he’s the only person in this office anyone would clap for."
"I want a repeat of Saturday like I want my next breath, even if it means going against every warning voice in my head."
"I’m not going to let you turn this bullshit into an excuse to have sex in your friend’s pool."
"Everything reminds me of sex: the seat beneath me, the breeze that gusts as I walk down the street, a male voice in the hallway."
"I’ve been hiding under the covers for the two years since Ben arrived."
"It’s bizarre that I’m sleeping with the terrible Ben Tate, but it’s even more bizarre that we’re sitting at my table together half naked, like an actual couple, and I’m completely comfortable with it."
"The further you open yourself to someone, the harder it is to shut it off later, when it all goes to hell."
"Hallmark-movie men are never men like my father. They won’t trade up when their wives get old, or betray someone’s trust. They just want to do the right thing."
"Petty, yes, but no one would expect more of me."
"It takes every bit of self-control I have not to laugh."
"In the future, I plan to have his mother handle most of it, and I will bring the rolls and the wine."
"His gaze cuts to me without turning his head, as if I’m a small child distracting him and the other grown-ups with my noise."
"Men will vilify you for enjoying sex, and they’ll vilify you for using it to get ahead…but they’ll punish you if you don’t enjoy it, if you don't use it to get ahead."
"If there’d been a single female partner at FMG, I’d probably have told her about the first incident with Webber."
"People are usually neither entirely bad or entirely good. There’s a piece of me tired of pretending they are."
"Even as terrible as my father was, he wouldn’t have deserved to lose custody either."
"You’re brilliant like he is, but you’re also more stubborn than is good for you, and you’re so busy looking for the worst in people that you don’t always see the best."
"Instead of thinking he tries to control you because he’s punitive, is it at least possible that he loves you also? Couldn’t it be both?"
"It’s like he’s slowly prying me open after years of being shuttered closed, and I’m emerging into the sunlight at last, remembering how good it all is."
"I missed this, I think, as he pulls off my jeans. I suppose I sort of missed him too."
"The days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve are quiet."
"It’s where John and Jackie Kennedy spent their honeymoon," Ben says, "It seemed like the kind of thing you’d like."
"You want to burn the whole world to ash, just to make sure every path she walks is cleared for her. I know the feeling."
"Men will call you weak if you’re soft, and they’ll call you abrasive if you’re not soft. They’ve set it up so there’s no way for us to succeed, and they get away with most of it."
"I’m not sure," I reply. I’m too disheartened for optimism today. "Men will call you weak if you’re soft, and they’ll call you abrasive if you’re not soft. They’ve set it up so there’s no way for us to succeed, and they get away with most of it."
"You just love to fuck with people who really want out of jury duty, don’t you?"
"You’re still coming back Friday, right?" I ask, a little embarrassed by how needy the question is. He’s only been gone for a day and it’s already too long.
"I’m very hungry. There’s been no one here to make sure I eat."
"My sweetest girl, you think you can see the future, but all you're really doing is choosing it for yourself in advance. And I wish you'd stop choosing the things that can't make you happy."
"Work, in theory, we’re getting ready to go to trial, but our hope is that we can scare them into settling. It’ll be a lot faster and cheaper for everyone involved."
"It doesn’t matter what I believe, Miss Charles."
"If I was a man, you wouldn’t call me obsessed, you’d just call me ambitious."
"I’m not sure how soon you can get started, but I have the perfect case for you."
"I’ve waited for you, Gemma Charles, for two years. Every day of two fucking years. You don’t really think I’m letting you go after all that?"
"Don’t get her pregnant! She doesn’t have time for that!"