“All these matters absorbed his mind, drawing the world inside, into the large, chaotic space that each of us carries within like an invisible piece of luggage that we drag after us all our lives, without knowing why. Our true self.”

“Anxiety is the fruit of ignorance.”

“But maybe he was just doing what he knows how to do to stay safe, how you‘re doing what you know how to do to stay safe. That‘s how most of us end up hurting people we care about without ever meaning to.”

“[…] everything we see is a fraction of what our eyes take in. Our brains make executive decisions about what we need to see, creating our reality for us.”

“While I enjoy nature, I‘m not a fan of metaphorical weather.”

“And I‘m sure my hair won‘t do well with all this humidity. But we just gotta show up and be ourselves. What‘s the worst that can happen?”

“She has no idea what he‘s saying. It‘s so loud, she can‘t hear a thing, but she doesn‘t care because when it‘s this loud and this late and you‘re this drunk, you‘re not supposed to be able to hear anything.”

“I‘m careful, which is how I know my problem is mild, if I even have a problem, which I maybe don‘t.”

“Sometimes life calls on you even when you don‘t raise your hand.”

“It was an odd sensation to be thinking of someone and have her unexpectedly appear. Like thoughts come to life. It must be fate, Virgil thought. He didn‘t know if he believed in fate, but it made sense.”

“He‘s superstitious, though, inclined to subscribe to the idea that coincidence does not exist, that when one encounters the unexpected or uncanny it‘s important to spend a few extra minutes considering the why.”

“[…] the last gardener had finally retired. Carl had only a small amount of experience with gardening, but he had a library card.”

🙌🏻🙌🏻

After a long waitlist, diving in

Wow. At times disgusting, brutal, and ridiculously difficult to read. At times absolutely heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, and hopeful. Everything I‘ve come to expect from Eric LaRocca and more. Far exceeded my expectations. 10 out of 5 stars.

So excited to dive into this one
#netgalley

So excited to dive into this one
#netgalley

“There are so many different kinds of quiet, and only one word for them. The quiet in the house has matured from quiet as lack of noise to something else, a textured, grainy quiet, a thickness to stumble through.”

I can‘t believe there are no posts about this book on here?? I read this probably around 2008/09. I remember loving the book and it having such a strong impact on me at the time. Over the years this book continues to just pop into my mind at the most random times and I‘m hit with this wave of nostalgia and longing, but I‘m not sure for what. I want to reread it but don‘t want to risk breaking its ethereal hold over me. Or maybe it will only deepen

“There are people we come across during our lives who, after they drift out of our worlds, drift out for good. Even if we see them again, it‘s a quick, meaningless hi and how are you? There are other people, though, with whom things pick up right where the relationship left off, whenever we run into them. The level of comfort — it feels like no time has passed.”

“What I wanted to tell you is that there are lots of ways to love people and I know that you‘ll love someone else again. Even if it‘s not the same, some of it might be better.
“‘I don‘t want to,‘ I whispered. I wanted to love only you. And I couldn‘t imagine anything could be better than that.”

Jill Santopolo ripping my heart out over here 🥺😭💔

“There‘s something about death that makes people want to live.”

“You taught me to look for beauty. In darkness, in destruction, you always found light.
“I don‘t know what beauty I‘ll find here, what light. But I‘ll try. I‘ll do it for you. Because I know you would do it for me.”

“Once she hit thirty-five everyone started to look either like a child or like they had one foot in the grave.”

“There is nothing in the world more tragic than an undeserved hangover.”

“Unfortunately, those who are the most sensitive are sometimes also the most troubled.”

“I almost dropped her in the snow but I didn‘t because the fierceness with which we love gave me enough strength.”

“Fate can bring you together, but it can just as easily tear you apart.”

“‘Do you know where you are?‘
“Never before had I heard such certainty in a voice. ‘I‘m in my bones,‘ she said, and she rolled back onto her side.”

“For days after hearing that story, I felt strange. There was this history I was a part of, but I never knew it. It made me wonder how much I didn‘t know.”

“But one thing is for certain, I thought: you are who you are, even if you don‘t know it.”

“And we‘re just dumb enough to have listened to her.
“Desperate […]. We‘re desperate. There‘s a big difference.”

“The road, Grandma says, can make a tribe out of anyone.”

“Yes, well, a bit of a headache. But I have a firm rule: no hangover of mine is going to stop me from doing what I planned to do. If hangovers broke my plans, I‘d become a hermit.”

“Today mama and me saw a lady who is a spycologist (sic) who asked why I wanted to die. I said I don‘t but it hurts to live.”

“To say goodbye is to die a little.”

“We are silent, frozen. A walk-in refrigerator in a cavernous underworld, two girls lying here in milk fat.”

Excellent book, highly recommend

SO excited to start this one !

“It wasn‘t what I thought it would be at all. It didn‘t put an end to me as a person. It think … it gave me a basis for comparison, finding out you could still exist inside the pain, in spite of the pain.”

“He knew that real loneliness was a smeary red: the color of the taillights of the car ahead of you reflected on wet hottop in a driving rain.”

“Right as a trivet, Freddie Firestone would have said, and Bill wondered — not for the first time — why a person had such weird thoughts at times like these.”

“That was an odd thought. He supposed it must have come from his own head — where else could a thought come from? — but it somehow did not seem like his own thought at all.”

“A frightening possibility suddenly occurred to him: maybe sometimes things didn‘t just go wrong and then stop; maybe sometimes they just kept going wronger and wronger until everything was totally fucked up.”

…back at It

“You know you‘re supposed to put money in the tin for every candle. This is the Catholic Church, Anna, prayers ain‘t free.”

“Everything is fun if you are fun.”

“But I knew full well how there was some unnameable urge rooted in every human being that compelled us to drag others into our suffering, our despair.”

“The worst thing a person can do to you after they‘ve hurt you is let you live.”

“Baking bread, holding a weapon — somehow they both make sense when it comes to Kendall.”

“I fell in love with him easily, and now I have allowed him to break me.”

“Our heartbeats rattle against one another. And with his hands braces against me, I wonder if we will tear each other apart someday.
“If love like this — deep and painful and reckless — can last.”