The Secret Keeper Quotes
"Everybody deserves a second chance, everybody is worthy of forgiveness."
"The future stretched ahead: a second chance, a new life."
"The past fifty years evaporated and Laurel saw a ghosted version of herself flying alongside the hedgerows."
"Houses did not remember people, they didn’t remember much of anything."
"It struck Laurel now, as it hadn’t before, that her mother’s description of the house might have been a self-portrait."
"The landscape of one’s childhood was more vibrant than any other."
"She was like the weathervane on the peak of the Greenacres roof, her emotions swinging suddenly from one direction to the other at the whim of the wind."
"In the meantime, she was going to read The Birthday Party again and imagine a future far away from here, a life where she was beautiful and sophisticated, grown-up and scab free."
"She wondered why Daddy didn’t open a window."
"And then my mother brought the knife down."
"Why then did she feel this way? Strange and uncertain."
"It was the time of day she associated especially with childhood."
"I thought we might even retell some of the stories she used to invent for us."
"We were lucky to have a mother like ours, weren’t we?"
"‘I love you, Dorothy Smitham,’ he said, resting his forehead against hers."
"‘It’s time to settle down now, Dorothy,’ her mother said gently."
"We love each other; we want to be together."
"You don’t need fancy clothes, Doll. You’re a thousand times more beautiful than that girl today."
"It would be silly not to, having found herself so near."
"‘Clip along, loves,’ their mother used to say, ‘don’t dilly-dally.’"
"It was the sort of face that drew strangers, that enchanted them and made them want to know her better."
"But acting isn’t about being noticed or showing off, it’s about observation."
"We are all shaped by that which came before."
"She’d had neighbours, and probably friends, she’d traded coupons for eggs and been thrilled when she came by an occasional pair of stockings."
"The way she had of making you feel, with a slight twitch of the jaw, that she too had suffered as you did."
"Her presence, her joy, her magnetism. That, and her splendid appetite for make-believe."
"It’s just so unlike her, clamming up like that; it felt as if the sun had gone behind thick clouds."
"It hurts, of course, but you’re not the first to lose your family."
"Life could be cruel enough these days without the truth making it worse."
"To be faced with danger and find oneself fearless was thrilling."
"The only thing you have to do is wish, and when you fall asleep tonight, you'll find yourself on her warm decks, about to set sail on a grand adventure."
"People change as they get older... grow wiser, make better decisions."
"I made so many mistakes... so many mistakes."
"Love, Laurel, that's the only reason to get married. For love."
"The war's not going to wait for a girl like you, now, is it?"
"It's terrible, isn't it, the way we throw people away?"
"The stars... if you ever find yourself alone in the dark, they'll show you the way back."
"I felt mortified, Dr Rufus, and very, very hurt. I don’t think I’ve ever been treated so shabbily, and by someone I used to call a friend. I really felt—"
"You’re one in a million, Dorothy, you really are."
"Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who."
"She killed him, Gerry. The man—Henry Jenkins was his name—he died there that day on our front path."
"Never discount the possibility of turning up an answer none of the current theories predicts."
"Watching her walk up the aisle towards me, sublime in her white lace, was the completion, in some ways, of a journey that started when I first arrived at Nordstrom School."
"We were both outsiders in our way. We belonged together, the two of us. I knew it the first time I laid eyes on her."
"I realised that day, as I watched a man reduced to nothing by uniformed officers, that there are weak and there are powerful people in our society, and that goodness is not a factor in determining into which camp one falls."
"Vivien had an ability, which verged at times on unsettling, to sit still for very long periods of time, her face not blank, certainly not that, rather alight with electric thought, but privately and in a manner that made anybody watching her feel excluded."
"Vivien was the sort of person others longed to be loved by, yet she did not make connections easily or lightly."
"Everything [Jenkins] did, he did to perfection. He was athletic, clever, charming... The world is made for men like him."
"What makes ya so sure there is one, if ya haven’t seen it fer y’self?"
"Vivien didn’t have many friends: she was the sort of person who needed to be kept happy, he realised. Not as a matter of selfish expectation, but as a simple fact of design; like a piano or a harp, she’d been made to function best at a certain tuning."
"The enduring question for admirers of Henry Jenkins is how such an ending could come to the man who had once had everything; an ending that bears tragic similarities to that of his character Walter Harrison, whose fate was also to die a quiet, lonely death after a life in which love and loss had become interwoven."
"The urge to tears pressing in my throat, I begged to know why she so often behaves as if she cannot hear me."
"I fell asleep beside the creek back home and I haven’t woken up yet."
"I should add that there is an uncanny quiet about her."
"Despite myself, and against the best theories of my chosen career—to observe but not absorb—I have developed strong personal feelings for her."
"Vivien is at risk of disappearing deep inside the safety of the dream world she’s created."
"It was bush magic. That’s why she didn’t wake up as she otherwise might."
"The power of suggestion is a tremendous thing."
"I worry there is much she will possess that others may seek to take."
"She draws me to her, even when she is doing nothing more than sitting on the deck and following the passing sea."
"No sooner had we cleared the gangplank...than she hopped down on all fours...and pressed her ear to the ground."
"I can’t hear the sound of the wheels turning."
"I have something else to do—somebody to see."
"It wasn’t mere physical beauty... it was an aspect of herself that comes from deep within."
"She was beginning to realise, of course, the finality of her situation."
"I tried to keep my voice steady, asking as nonchalantly as if I were enquiring the time of day what she meant by saying I was part of a dream."
"You strike me as just the sort who knows how to listen with her ears, her eyes and her heart all at once."
"He makes her laugh, and he always makes her tea."
"She felt herself at a precipice; she’d always believed in crossroad moments: this, she knew, was one of them."
"Caught within its three simple letters was the answer to a lifetime’s question."
"Her chest ached with a complex blend of burning love, and awe, and yes, finally, acceptance."
"I’m going to look out for you on those London stages."
"It was a lot to cope with, especially for someone like Rose."
"They ignored her, and she marched over, waving her arms and stomping her feet, being met with nothing but continued disdain."