Counterfeit Quotes
"A bag is a bag is a bag, but only a Birkin is a Birkin."
"Equality is about having choices, even if my choice isn’t the one she would have made."
"What about selling a bag for ten times what it costs to make. Is that not cheating?"
"We’re on the same side here. You’re not doing anything criminal. You’re harming no one."
"I suppose a part of me was still stuck in freshman year, clinging to friends like life rafts."
"I had no idea where to begin. I settled for explaining that California was a joint-property state."
"Perhaps they’d touch hands, secretly thankful that Karina wasn’t the only one whose husband had proven to be a cad."
"Letting down my guard seemed as unthinkable as stripping naked in my aunt and uncle’s living room."
"When you grow up as I did, schooled in the supremacy of 'face'—the image, reputation, honor that must be fought for and preserved at all costs—breaking free from constraints to think for oneself becomes a Herculean task."
"We were misfits, he and I, aliens in this strange, exotic land."
"How could I be about to commit a crime when the entire city seemed, blatantly and nonchalantly, to be doing the same?"
"The bag dangled from my wrist like a graceful appendage; it transformed my basic cardigan and jeans into minimalist masterpieces; it made my heart race, like really good drugs."
"I felt invincible. Forget it, I said. I have to meet my driver anyway."
"She’s very sorry, he said. He pushed her toward Ms. Jenny. Say it like you mean it."
"Everyone knows there are ways to skirt the rules."
"I’ve never seen him turn down money, and this is a hell of a lot of it."
"I didn’t get this far by playing it safe. We’re in."
"The piece of meat in my mouth turned to gristle and I spat it into my napkin."
"You’re the one upending our lives with this so-called job."
"I’ve told you a half dozen times, but all you do is work, work, work."
"He stood there with his head in his hands, shoulders heaving with each breath."
"I told him, Clean that up before you leave, and walked out of the room."
"The guilt that gushed through me was a viscous, toxic sludge."
"My carefully laid-out argument splintered like a log."
"Oh, come now, you knew what you were getting into. No one forced you."
"I swallowed hard. He waved over the foreman, formerly of Dior, a lanky man with pockmarked cheeks."
"She looked like a movie star playing a CEO in a Hollywood rom-com."
"I thought I could cordon off my work and maintain that barrier."
"In that moment, I was sure she was an angel, an otherworldly sprite."
"These were my people, these clean, cheerful, bright-eyed souls."
"But who on earth was I to be doling out such advice?"
"The stuff that does the most good—is always the least sexy and therefore the least funded."
"Skirting conflict is the Wong family religion."
"Together my dad, my brother, and I watched that plane land just short of the runway, striking the seawall, severing its tail as cleanly as a hot knife through butter."
"The longer I sat in front of the television, the more convinced I was that this story was personal, that it somehow belonged to me."
"Heart battering my chest, I said, Importing counterfeit designer handbags."
"The pride that rises within me quickly gives way to skepticism when I spy a weary worker in the corner with a rag in hand, ready to clean up the robots’ spills."
"Everyone has a price. The trick is figuring out what it is without overpaying."
"You took him into custody before he had a chance to pressure Winnie and me to participate in his other ventures, but trust me when I say it would have happened eventually."
"I know it took a bit longer than it should have, Detective, but I did finally listen to her, and I’m here now."
"As such, I am giving you two years’ probation, plus restitutions of five hundred thousand dollars."
"It’s the absolute lightest sentence they could have wished for."
"Winnie’s the one who showed Ava her country for what it truly is: a wildfire, a head-on collision, a spooked horse that’s thrown off its rider, a motherfucking driverless car."
"That we did it," she says. "That we won the whole damn thing."