Eileen Quotes
"It’s easy for me to imagine this girl, a strange, young and mousy version of me, carrying an anonymous leather purse or eating from a small package of peanuts."
"I deplored silence. I deplored stillness. I hated almost everything."
"There’s no better way to say it: I was not myself back then. I was someone else. I was Eileen."
"I’ve lived with many alcoholic men over the years, and each has taught me that it is useless to worry, fruitless to ask why, suicide to try to help them."
"I liked books about awful things—murder, illness, death."
"Life was one long sentence of waiting out the clock."
"That car was the one thing in my life that gave me any hope."
"I preferred cold weather over hot. Summers I was restless and cranky."
"I wasn’t interested in fun or popularity back then."
"I knew there was something wrong with the exhaust, but at the time I couldn’t think of dealing with such a problem."
"I was a live young woman in his vicinity, after all."
"I never wore perfume, and I always preferred the scentless soaps and lotions."
"I wasn’t looking for anything in particular."
"I didn’t always want to live, but I wasn’t going to kill myself."
"It’s insulting. And the stories are all so hard to believe."
"I was afraid of that. I didn’t believe in heaven, but I did believe in hell."
"Fashion’s for the fools, I know now, but I’ve learned that it’s good to be foolish from time to time."
"Why do you waste your time reading? Go for a walk outside."
"People act like everything's OK all the time. But it isn't."
"We're in hell, aren't we? This is hell, isn't it?"
"To hell with God. And to hell with your father."
"A friend is someone who helps you hide the body."
"A grown woman is like a coyote—she can get by on very little. Men are more like house cats."
"Being tall has its advantages, but most men are just too short for me."
"Hard to find a real man, or at least a man that looks like one."
"I had always been waiting for my future to erupt around me in an avalanche of glory, and now I felt it was really happening."
"I’ve heard having weak brows is a sign of indecisiveness. I prefer to think it is the mark of an open heart, an appreciation of possibility."
"Only a desperate soul would feel remorse for his sins, and if the remorse was deep enough, the boy would surrender and hence he’d be pliable."
"Love can vanish in an instant. It’s happened since, too. A lover has left the warm rapture of my bed to get a glass of water and returned only to find me cold, uninterested, empty, a stranger."
"The last people on Earth I’d put in charge of transforming anyone were that warden and Dr. Frye."
"I was a shoplifter, a pervert, you might say, and a liar, of course, but nobody knew that."
"My heart went out to him, I guess, because I was in a good mood and he was rather short and plump for his age."
"There was no reason to hide anything from her. She accepted me—liked me, even—just as I was."
"All the while the corrections officer stood behind the boy with crossed arms, waiting to witness his signature."
"I thought I would have preferred to be a teller in a bank, but no bank would have taken me."
"I desperately hoped I could avoid ever having to resemble a grown woman."
"There was something moody, greedy about the heart, I suppose."
"It was rare that my father dared to make an appearance outside the house like a normal person."
"I would miss that old library. I couldn’t realize at the time how those books had saved me."
"Nothing could have added to the pleasure of my anticipation on that drive through X-ville on my way to Rebecca’s house that evening."
"People truly engaged in life have messy houses."
"If you’ve been in love, you know this kind of exquisite anticipation, this ecstasy."
"I’ve realized some things over the years," she said, licking her fingers. "I don’t believe in good and bad."
"Violence made much more sense to me than any strained conversation."
"Those perfect, neat colonials I’d passed earlier that evening on my way through X-ville are the death masks of normal people."
"I was a fool to be with a man like him. I was a fool about men in general."
"My heart pounded. The basement seemed to go black but for Mrs. Polk’s blubbery body vibrating on the floor."
"I watched out the open window as I passed guests arriving at one house, a child carrying a pie in a glass pan, parents bearing gifts of wine wrapped in red cellophane and ribbon."