“There is one indisputable way to identify a cult, one characteristic they all share...it is the notion that anyone who does not agree with the group's beliefs or choices, who expresses concerns, who simply dares to ask questions, is deemed "unsafe.””
“For knowing too much, rather than too little. For a woman, neither was an acceptable way to be.”
“That‘s the problem with trauma. You can decide to change how you think about it, time can fade it, but it‘s never going to disappear.”
“We all wear masks. We all have something to hide at one point or another.”
“How many ways, I think, can a girl be assaulted? I never got to live my life. I never got to live to be old enough, to be unattractive enough to be left alone. To finally just be.”
“The notion that a crime could be clearly gendered was rooted in European models of criminology, but such models of criminality struggled to account for a female criminal. Within the prevailing models of the human mind, women were seen as somewhat less evolved than men and with a corresponding lack of rational control over their actions—barely protected from their underlying degeneracy by male control, especially over their sexuality.”
“Rule number one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
“It‘s entirely possible I‘m imagining things, but my gut tells me there was recognition in that man‘s eyes when he looked at me. And my gut is rarely wrong.”
They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“The love stories sold us the wrong thing. The best kind of love doesn‘t happen on moonlit walks and romantic vacations. It happens in between the folds of everyday life.”
“The bad are the few, but often they shout louder than the many. Don‘t mistake silence for weakness.”
“Torturing and killing small animals, pets especially, is experimentation in controlling and killing another living thing for pure pleasure. It is practice, the last step before graduating to humans.”
“Sometimes people think if they love a broken person enough, they can be what finally repairs them, but the problem with that is the other person just ends up broken, too.”
“the greatest indicator of life span wasn‘t genetics, diet, or the amount of daily exercise, as many had suspected. It was lung capacity.”
so-soIt‘s not the book, it‘s me. The book was filled with twists and turns and I loved how the chapters alternated to the different characters‘ point of view. I gave this book a so-so rating because I typically find things to be a bit farfetched when it involves children and violence.
“There's an old saying: The first lie wins. It's not referring to the little white kind that tumble out with no thought; it refers to the big one. The one that changes the game. The one that is deliberate.”
“But more and more, I wonder about his past. I wonder what he has done and what he is capable of doing.”
“I have made an incredibly bad judgment call. I have underestimated an extremely dangerous person. And now I will pay the ultimate price.”
“She‘s got what you might call an elastic relationship with the truth… When she doesn‘t like the reality of things, she finds a reality she prefers.”
“There‘s no point in regretting something that can‘t be changed. Regret is a wasted emotion.”
“I would not attempt to guess at the nature of true love, except to say that when I was immersed in it—swimming through it, breathing it in, holding that breath, exhaling—in those short, extraordinary days and nights I shared with your father, true love was absolutely clear to me. Jack was clear to me. Jack was me, and I was him, and you, sweet child, are now us both.”
“Reading lets us live in someone else‘s shoes. Literature builds bridges; it makes our world larger, not smaller.”
“The thinking that women of all shapes and sizes can be beautiful is still hugely problematic, because it is predicated on the idea that the most important thing a woman has to offer the world is her appearance. Men are raised to worry about their legacies, not their upper arm and thigh fat, stretch marks, crows-feet, saggy elbows, ugly armpits, thin eyelashes, and normal-smelling genitals.”
“Women got that feeling about him, that funny one we all get when we know something isn't right, but we don't know how to politely extricate ourselves from the situation without escalating the threat of violence or harassment. That is not a skill women are taught, the same way men are not taught that it is okay to leave a woman alone if what she wants is to be left alone.”
“How segmented life is. It splits so easily into friendships and addresses and life phases that feel endless but never, never last.”
“Sometimes, what doesn‘t kill you simply doesn‘t kill you, and you spend all your time wishing it had.”
“She who only looks inward will find only chaos, and she who looks outward with the eyes of critical judgment will find only flaws. But she who looks with the eyes of compassion and understanding will see complex souls, suffering and soaring, navigating life as best they can.”
pickMichelle Williams did a phenomenal job narrating the book, it really felt like Britney was retelling her story. I couldn‘t stop listening and was so upset when it ended! I‘m a huge fan of reading physical books, but in this case you have to go with the audiobook. It‘s an experience that shouldn‘t be missed.
“She knows that it‘s not necessarily the ones who seem different that you need to be afraid of—it‘s the ones who can carry off normal without anyone suspecting a thing.”
“The average human spends 33 years of their life asleep… don‘t you ever wonder what you might have done when you‘re asleep?”
“That‘s what it takes to catch your prey. Patience. We can all learn a lot from the soft-shelled turtle.”
“Even a prison becomes comforting if it‘s the only thing you know.”
“Like those before him, he holds on to the hope of a miracle. He doesn't realise that, to them, he is not human. He is an everyday, ten-a-penny object…”
“It was easier to believe she was lying than that lightning loves a scarred tree.”
“There‘s a difference between taking care of someone because you love them and taking care of someone because you want them to love you.”
“In that moment, reading those passages, I understood completely how some of the Lackses could believe, without doubt, that Henrietta had been chosen by the Lord to become an immortal being. If you believe the Bible is the literal truth, the immortality of Henrietta's cells makes perfect sense.”
“Never take anything you haven‘t earned, my father used to say. You always end up paying for it one way or another.”
“Like a lion hunting her prey, she waited for the lucky Stanford winner to reveal her good fortune.”
“Because while you can reinvent yourself, you can‘t outrun yourself. As a woman once reminded her a long time ago, the common denominator in all the terrible things that have happened to you is you.”
“Sometimes you can‘t simultaneously be smart, brave, and careful. Sometimes you need to choose one.”
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” -Voltaire
“At night, from the inside,… the only thing you can see is your own reflection.”
