Starling House Quotes
"I dream sometimes about a house I’ve never seen."
"It’s just that, sometimes, God help me, I want more."
"It’s been eleven years and forty-four days since I last opened that book."
"People like me have to make two lists: what they need and what they want."
"I figure dreams are like stray cats, which will go away if I quit feeding them."
"The only thing she left behind other than The Underland was that house, hidden in the trees."
"I’m a high-school dropout with a part-time job at Tractor Supply, bad teeth, and a brother who deserves better than this dead-end bad-luck bullshit town."
"But sometimes, right before I fall asleep, I see the black shadows of trees rising up the motel walls."
"And everyone in this book needs a long sitdown with Mr. Cole."
"I despised the job fair when I was at school."
"I’ll call Miss Hudson and say you have a fever, screw the job fair."
"I graduated with a 4.0 from the School of Fuck You."
"I figure if you call someone a stray, you should expect a consequence or two."
"I don’t go in for palmistry, but Mom ate all that shit with a spoon."
"The biggest lies are always for the ones you love the most."
"The truth comes easily, sweet as honeysuckle and just as hard to get rid of."
"I award myself a point, refusing to wonder what game we’re playing or why I would get points for making him smile."
"The evening air has a springtime hum to it, the silent sound of live things unfurling, emerging, surfacing, sprouting."
"Mom was always trying to turn frogs and beasts into handsome princes, but it never worked out for her. I should know better."
"Her eyes are wide and sincere. They’re always inviting Jasper on family vacation and posting pictures on Facebook."
"I’m neither a kid nor a parent, an awkward grown-up orphan who exists outside the comforting hierarchies of church and town."
"I bet if you saw them in the light their feathers would have a queer iridescence, like used motor oil."
"It was a defect in the turbine. There was a whole report."
"I wouldn’t trust a one of them. That young man—Alexander?—is likely just as bad as his parents, and twice as ugly, if you ask."
"I pick up the package in the motel office, and run into Charlotte. She’s leaning over Bev’s desk, her face intent."
"The only awful thing about this town is the people who live here, if you ask me."
"I open my new fancy phone and shove the packaging in the dumpster."
"The ISC Group is committed to finding solutions to every problem."
"Arthur turns away so abruptly that I suspect the corner of his mouth is misbehaving again."
"I listen for his steps all day, hoping for a chance to stash his keys back in his desk drawer."
"But Elizabeth Baine and her consulting group must be getting something out of it, because they keep texting."
"The digital shutter sounds much louder than it should."
"I waver, worrying about debts owed and the food of fairy kings."
"But I can ignore it, because I have to. Because I learned a long time ago what kind of person I am."
"I'm sick of stories. My antecessors were obsessed with them. Myths and fairy tales, folklore, parables. What I've been studying—what I've been assembling—is history. The facts."
"Every culture seemed to have its own defenses against them: silver bullets, crosses, holy words, hamsas, circles of salt, cold iron, blessed water, wards and runes and rituals, a hundred ways of driving back the dark."
"I take care of my own shit, okay? I don’t need anybody’s charity."
"It didn’t even occur to you to ask for help."
"All this time, I still thought Arthur was trapped, cursed to carry on his mother’s work. But he wasn’t."
"Nobody—not you, not that house—is going to tell me what to do with my life."
"It sounds okay at first, even sort of noble: a house for the unhoused, a home for all the people whose homes were stolen from them. It’s like a fairy tale, a dream. But then it eats them alive."
"The Wardens chose that place. And that means we can choose, too."
"I wonder if I’m truly angry, or just scared."