The Whispers Quotes
"What I increasingly felt, in marriage and in motherhood, was that to live as a woman and to live as a feminist were two different and possibly irreconcilable things." - Rachel Cusk
"He is looking for familiarity to ground him. To bring him back."
"From across the yard, Blair watches as Ben and Rebecca find subtle ways to touch while they listen to Whitney orate, like they still find in each other every last thing they need."
"Where she’d once felt motherhood had given her so much more than she’d had before, now she could only see it as having taken everything away."
"Sometimes she wishes she’d had more children to justify how little else she has going on in her life."
"She wants to tell him she feels unseen. And unimportant. And that she doesn’t know what being loved by him feels like anymore."
"Tombstones should be etched with total number of days lived instead of dates, she thinks; the dates mean nothing."
"She read somewhere that a mother should look at her baby with genuine delight, a nourishment as valuable as milk."
"She loves all three of her children, of course she loves them. But she is not always the best for them. And they are not always the best for her."
"She knows most people recoil at the idea of women like her pursuing wealth with the same vigor men do all the time. Even if they don’t admit it. That it’s off-putting for a woman to want more money than society thinks she’s worth."
"He can no longer bear the burden of so little hope. But she cannot live without it."
"Whitney is the kind of mother with whom other women try to find fault."
"She had been holding on to more hope than she'd realized."
"Whitney is the strong one, the controlling one, the one who gets exactly what she wants at all costs."
"Jacob couldn’t even see the problems. There were no lists, no afternoons of back-to-back errands that kept them all functioning. Whitney was a conductor; Blair was a grinder."
"The problem wasn’t that she didn’t know what to do. It was that she didn’t want to do it. She didn’t want them anymore."
"God, it’s unthinkable, an accident like this. Right at home."
"Hundreds of hours she must have spent with the Loverlys and their children over the years they’ve lived on Harlow Street. The idle time that fills family life, the daily back-and-forth that makes one privy to the rhythm of another’s week."
"The exhaustion of carrying that every day, whittling away at the resilience she relied on to survive, while she gave and loved and listened desperately for his voice like the wind whistling through the trees."
"Unlike him, she didn’t have the luxury of hardening into stone."
"Miscarriage goes on and on, follows a woman through her days and her dreams, and then she will have blissful split seconds when she forgets, when her brain can still feel the gratification of having that baby, until she remembers the baby is not hers anymore, and hasn’t been for days or even weeks."
"Both things can exist at the same time: the resentment, and the comfort. The despair, and all that love."
"This was how Blair lived when it came to her marriage. On alert. She had trained herself to spot danger everywhere she looked."
"Something about the moment is telling her, calmly, rationally: this marriage is going to end."
"She understood in that moment something about him that she had not wanted to be true."
"But sometimes it’s the good ones who do the very worst things."
"She is lonely, desperately and achingly lonely, the way a mother with a family is not supposed to be."
"And this is what happens when she fantasizes about a separation; she always flips back. To the security of living diminished."
"The scale of their friendship had never tipped in her favor like this. She’s never felt this kind of power."
"The hope hurts, and she knows they can both feel it."
"She couldn’t have prepared herself for how it feels to be the only one left."
"She had kissed him on the head, and let her lips stay there in the part of his chestnut brown hair. In that moment she let herself believe they could both feel like new people."
"Close your eyes and count. It’ll be okay."
<p>"Well, let’s keep fingers crossed, Dr. Menlo had said. I have some cases to get to upstairs, but I’ll be back in an hour. We’ll see what happens."</p>
<p>"She will take herself to the hospital across the street. She will answer their questions. Five pregnancies. No children. She will write her mother’s number as her emergency contact. She will stare at the clock on the wall until they call her name, she will lie down on a gurney behind a thin blue curtain, she will pull her knees into her chest and rock through the pain, and she will not hope, and she will not pray, she will do the only thing she can. She will wait."</p>
<p>"Marriage isn’t about love; it’s about choices."</p>
<p>"Unsullied, virtuous Blair. She’d been someone Whitney aspired to be—the kind of mother she could learn to emulate. She should have known that attempt was futile."</p>
<p>"Life could explode at any moment."</p>
<p>"A growl of strength. Like she could reach inside herself and carry the sleeping baby out in the safe, warm palm of her hand. Like she is a mother."</p>
<p>"That thing Louisa told me on the phone yesterday. About how upset Xavi was on Wednesday after Chloe treated him like shit at school."</p>
<p>"You haven’t asked because you don’t trust that I have nothing to do with it. You don’t believe I wouldn’t hurt him, despite how desperately you want to."</p>