Karin Slaughter Quotes

You can take my heart, but I can't let you take my dog.

Reading is not just an escape. It is access to a better way of life.

Considering what Pauline's been through . . ." Will began, then stopped himself. "She's not very nice." "She's a cold-blooded bitch." "I'm surprised I haven't fallen in love with her.

You didn't realize what was passing you by until you slowed down a little bit to get a better look.

Because I said so." She paused again. "Sweetheart, I know you're an adult, but adults are like vampires. The older ones are much more powerful.

Nothing ever truly faded. Time only dulled the edges.

Everyone had a reason for everything they did, even if that reason was sometimes stupidity.

Optimism is a sliver of glass in your heart.

There is kindness in so many unexpected places

Your mother and I had always been secretly pleased that you were so headstrong and passionate about your causes. Once you were gone, we understood that these were the qualities that painted young men as smart and ambitious and young women as trouble.

A man who has grown up in an orphanage cannot take a dog to the pound. Even if it is a Chihuahua.

He said that children always have different parents, even in the same family.

Her father always said that the price for hearing gossip was having someone else gossip about you.

Anybody could be smart. It took a special somebody to be clever.

I’ve always preferred crazy to stupid. Stupid can break your heart

I’ve got to figure out before I die whether I want to be happy or I want to be right.

What a rapist takes from a woman is her future. The person she is going to become, who she is supposed to be, is gone. In many ways, it's worse than murder, because he has killed that potential person, eradicated that potential life, yet she still lives and breathes, and has to figure out another way to thrive.

It is a father’s job to love his daughter in the way that she needs to be loved.

It's the truth. I'm sorry to be blunt about it, but girls don't like guys who are doormats. Especially pretty girls, because there's no novelty in it. Guys are hitting on them all of the time. They can't walk down the street or order a coffee or stand on a corner without some idiot making a comment about how attractive they are. And the women smile because it's easier than telling them to go fuck themselves. And less dangerous, because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her.

Love doesn't keep you in a constant state of turmoil. It gives you peace.

A trial is nothing but a competition to tell the best story. Whoever sways the jury wins the trial.

You can only make decisions with the information you have at the time

People did not change their basic, core personalities. Their values tended to stay the same.

because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her.

Many people must have told you that you are lucky to be alive. I think you would have been lucky had you not been shot in the first place.

Having a teenager is like having a really, really shitty roommate. They eat all your food and steal your clothes and take money out of your purse and borrow your car without asking.

sometimes, your world turns upside down, and you need somebody to show you how to walk on your hands before you can find your feet again.

He had always told her that winners only competed with themselves.

a Democrat is a Republican who’s been through the criminal justice system.

Sometimes, even if you know the answer, you've got to let the other person take a shot. If they feel wrong all the time, they never get the chance to feel right.

Sara studied him. "Is that a Chihuahua behind your back?" "No, I'm just happy to see you" Sara gave him a confused smile, and he reluctantly showed her Betty.

I want you to know that this is what happens when you meet the person you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with: that restless feeling dissolves like butter.

When somebody dies, you forget they're an asshole.

She took him for granted sometimes. That was the luxury of a long marriage. But she knew that she loved him. She needed him. He was the anchor that kept her from drifting away.

You couldn't turn on the TV without hearing about the missing teenage girl. Sixteen years old. White. Middle class. Very pretty. No one ever seemed quite as outraged when an ugly woman went missing.

No matter what happened to you, no matter what horrors you endured when you were taken away, you will always be my pretty little girl.

A woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can with his pants down.

They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds. —Mexican Proverb

He always took lateness as being rude. It said to the other person that their time was more valuable than yours.

Given enough idleness & time, she could talk herself into either loving or hating the man

Forever was never as long as you thought it was.

I loved him. I know you don’t want to believe that, but I really, truly, giddy, heart-breaking, longing, achingly loved him.

You could only ever see a thing when you were standing outside of it.

Marriage. That’s what he called it, though men like Paul do not marry women. They own them. They control them. They are voracious gluttons who devour every part of a woman, then clean their teeth with the bones.

Every place always has somebody who doesn’t fit in. That’s what makes them fit in.

She was so quiet, but she noticed everything. Her eyes tracked the world like it was a book written in a language she could not understand

Dyadic completion,” Paul would’ve told Claire. “The human brain tends to assume that, if there’s a victim, there has to be a villain.

If you wanted to know shit about a woman, all you had to do was ask the woman who was pretending to be her friend.

. . . he was about as forthcoming as an amnesiac with lockjaw.

You don’t understand how the world works. That there are consequences you can’t predict. That bad choices, bad deeds, can corrupt you.

I've always preferred crazy to stupid. Stupid can break your heart.

Sweetheart, I know you’re an adult, but adults are like vampires. The older ones are much more powerful.

Proactive interference,” Paul would have explained. “It’s when previously acquired information inhibits our ability to process new information.

It’s very important for your life to have meaning. Even on the days it makes you unhappy, you still need a purpose.

A man has to prove himself once. A woman has to prove herself every day.

A few years ago when she'd read Paul several passages from Fifty Shades of Grey, they'd both giggled like teenagers. "The biggest fantasy in that book," Paul had said, "is that he changes in the end.

I can’t—” Lena repeated. “I can’t do it. I can’t live without him.” Sara gently pulled her hand away from Jared’s. She smoothed down the sheet, tucked it in close around his side. She looked at Lena—really looked at her straight in the eye. “Good,” Sara told her. “Now you know how it feels.

somewhere on earth, there was always a book with an answer in it, and the best way to find that answer was to read every book you could get your hands on.

As hard as it was to hold on to things, it was even harder to let them go.

Men can always reinvent themselves,” Laura said. “For women, once you’re a mother, you’re always a mother.

It didn't take a Harvard economist to figure out that it'd be a hell of a lot cheaper spending money on helping keep kids safe when they were younger than it was to put them in jail when they were older. That was the American way, though. Spend a million dollars rescuing some kid who's fallen down a well, but God forbid you spend a hundred bucks up front to cap the well so the kid never falls down it in the first place.

In a rare moment of candor, he had once told her that being in a library was like sitting down at a table laid with all his favorite foods but not being able to eat any of them. And he hated himself for it.

I miss anonymity. People have a right to disappear if they want to. It’s a personal decision, isn’t it? Everyone should have autonomy. We owe it to them as fellow human beings to support their decisions, even if we do not agree with them.

In her defense, her helicoptering tended to revolve around making sure that Dee could take care of herself. LEARN HOW TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH OR I WILL KILL YOU. LOVE MOM.

Lydia supposed his headstone had been ordered. Something large and garish made of the finest marble and phallic shaped because being dead didn't stop you from being a dick.

Broken: Never underestimate the power of a shared history.

That's the problem with life, Sam. If you're not rising, you're falling.

I’m not sure,” Callie said. “As you know, cats choose not to talk because they’re afraid we’ll make them pay taxes.

You can’t choose something if you don’t know you have a choice.

If you love someone, you don’t go out of your way to hurt them. You don’t torture them. You don’t terrify them or make them live in constant fear. That’s not how love works. It’s not how normal people work.

He had always said there was nothing that a list couldn’t solve. Conquer the details and you conquer the problem.

You didn’t help chop up a two-hundred-fifty-pound man and still graduate at the top of your class without learning how to compartmentalize.

Will had found out the hard way that it’s nearly impossible to go to sleep with a flatulent Chihuahua sharing your pillow.

Will always assumed that when people insisted they weren’t lying about a particular thing, that meant they were lying about something else.

And now, when she looked in the mirror and saw a new line on her own face,a new wrinkle, all she could think was that she was growing old without him

I still want it to die. Like immediately. With fire.

He was playing chess and she was sucking at checkers.

Neither of us will ever move forward if we are always looking back.

Men never have to be uncomfortable around women. Women have to be uncomfortable around men all of the time.

She had dozens, even hundreds, of friends, but not one single person knew all of the pieces of her.

I told him before all of this happened was that holding on to that kind of grudge was like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Some people are born with a hole inside them. They spend their lives trying to fill it. Sometimes it's pills, sometimes it's Jesus.

Claire had realized a long time ago that if you lie with enough conviction, you can usually fool yourself.

Your relationship with a person doesn’t end when they die. It only gets stronger.” He winked at her. “Mostly because they’re not there to tell you that you’re wrong.

Then again, Paul had once told her that there was no such thing as coincidence. “The Law of Truly Large Numbers provides that given a large enough sample size, any outrageous thing can happen.

Maybe that's why Claire had perfected the art of invisibility. It was a form of self-preservation. You couldn't resent what you could not see. She was so quiet, but she noticed everything. Her eyes tracked the world like it was a book written in a language that she could not understand. There was nothing timorous about her, but you got the feeling that she always had one foot out the door. If the situation got too hard, or too intense, she would simply disappear.

Talking of the local Sheriff, Jake Valentine, tall and skinny and his wife Myra, "She was a short woman, maybe five feet tall in her socks, the top of her head not quite reaching Jake's chest. What she lacked in height she made up for in girth. Jeffrey guessed she was at least a hundred pounds overweight. Standing side by side, the Valentines looked like the living embodiment of the number ten.

Sara was reminded of yet another one of Will's traits, which was that he had an uncanny knack for keeping his mouth shut when he didn't know what to say. This resulted in the sort of awkward moments that made Sara's dating life look downright ebullient.

The world stops for you when you’re pretty. That’s why women spend billions on crap for their faces. Their whole life, they’re the center of attention. People want to be around them just because they’re attractive. Their jokes are funnier. Their lives are better. And then suddenly, they get bags under their eyes or they put on a little weight and no one cares about them anymore. They cease to exist.

Rage had consumed her. She hadn’t wanted to just murder him. She had wanted to empty her gun into his chest. And then she wanted to fill the holes with burning oil and dance in his still-warm blood. She had felt dead inside.

Everybody felt that history was like a book, a beginning, a middle and an end. That’s not how it worked. Real life was all middle.

You’ve fallen into the habit of feeling low. You can get used to anything, especially bad things. But the only direction now is up. You can’t fall off the floor.

If there was one thing she excelled at, it was being her own inner mean girl.

Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day.

Marriages were perplexing animals, always changing, sometimes gentle, sometimes vicious.

Dr. Monroe and I realized very gradually that drug addiction is a terminal disease. It is a cancer that eats families alive.

Love, like water, always flowed down the path of least resistance.

[...]"but instead of apologizing, I said, 'It's your own fault for playing tennis.

The spiral stairs looked like a robot’s asshole.

Being dead is a bit like being stupid, isn’t it? Easy for you, but hard for the people around you.

Dee came out of her room and gave Lydia the greatest gift a teenage daughter can ever give her mother: she had agreed with her.

My court-appointed therapist would say I was trying to fill a hole.” “Is that what you call your vagina?” Claire chuckled under her breath.

Only...ever...you.

He felt about as useless as a one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest

She recited the only prayer Laura had ever taught her. “God grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man.

It’s always sad when someone dies of a cliché.

They should call it fuckapause, because you run out of all the fucks you can give.

His words hung between them, and Faith tried to pin down when exactly their relationship had gone from cooly professional to personal. There was something so kind about him under his awkward manners and social ineptness. Despite her best intentions, Faith realised that she could not hate Will Trent.

Suddenly, quite miraculously, you are a grown-up beautiful woman. You look so much like your mother, but you are still uniquely you. You have thoughts I will never know. Desires I will never understand. Friends I will never meet. Passions I will never share. You have a life. You have an entire world in front of you.

All the sneakiness her sister had exhibited as a child had been honed to adult perfection, so that Claire could be standing right in front of an oncoming train and still insist that everything was going to be fine.

he recognized Donald Trump’s picture on the jacket and assumed it was a get-rich-quick scheme. Obviously, Jake Berman hadn’t taken the man’s advice. Though, considering Berman had lost his job and declared bankruptcy, maybe he had.

People were outraged. They were glued to their televisions, to their web pages, to their Facebook feeds. They vocally expressed sorrow, horror, fury, pain. They cried for change. They raised money. They demanded action. And then they went back to their lives until the next one happened again.

Squirrels lose seventy-five percent of the nuts they bury. That’s how we get trees.” “Does now seem like an appropriate time for a nut metaphor?

No amount of flowers or pretty compliments could ever measure up to a man who did housework.

Jeffrey never understood how people could think a dead person was just sleeping. Death changed the air, charged it with something thick and unsettling.

The older sister could have been an overachiever who cast the kind of shadow in which nothing could grow.

He would never challenge her or scare her or infuriate her or stir up any of those fiery emotions that made it worthwhile to put up with a man’s bullshit. “Why

If you want to measure the height of a mountain, the hardest part isn’t finding the peak, it’s figuring out where the bottom starts.

around for your entire adult life, then set it the fuck down, because it doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to him.

Age is a cruel punishment for youth.

Why did it have to be her?

I know you’re an adult, but adults are like vampires. The older ones are much more powerful.

He had given weight to her life, tied her down to the world when her natural inclination had always been to float above everything, as if it were happening to someone else.

She had to start making decisions rather than having life make decisions for her.

You can’t light a match, then act surprised when your house burns down.

She had always believed—vehemently, with great conviction—that the only way to change the world was to destroy it.

Lydia took a deep breath as she prepared to sing the hokey pokey of her life story, where she put the truth in, pulled a lie out, added an embellishment, and shook it all about.

All of your friends told the sheriff that you danced because you loved dancing, not because you were trying to attract men.

Hope’ is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the words/And never stops–at all.

To all the librarians in the world on behalf of all the kids y’all helped grow up to be writers

Remember—the Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

I love how you southern women say sweetheart like a yankee woman would say dumbass.

Dogs are stupid,” Rusty said. “This is a known fact. But a cat—you have to earn a cat’s respect every single day of your life. You lose it and—” He snapped his fingers. “That’s what your mama was to me. She was my cat. She kept my compass pointing true north.

Why is it that we always neglect the things that matter most? This is a universal question, because through the days and weeks and months and years after your disappearance, I understood that I did not cherish you enough. I never told you that I loved you enough. I never held you enough. I never listened to you enough. You

There were a few things she knew about Will Trent. He was tall, at least six-three, with a runner's lean body and the most beautiful legs she had ever seen on a man. His mother had been killed when he was less than a year old. He'd grown up in a children's home and never been adopted. He was a special agent with the GBI. He was one of the smartest men she had ever met, and he was so dyslexic that, as far as she could tell, he read no higher than a second-grade level.

That doesn’t sound invisible to me.” “I’m saying it wrong, then.” Lydia searched for a better way to explain. “She was always holding herself back. She was cocaptain, not captain. She could’ve dated the quarterback, but she dated his brother instead. She could’ve been top in her class, but she’d purposefully turn in a paper late or miss an assignment so she’d fall closer to the middle. She would know about Mauna Kea, but she would say Everest because winning would bring too much attention.

Will let out a long breath. "She leaves me a lot. That's what she does. She leaves, and then she comes back. And then she stays some and then she leaves again." "Where does she go?" "I have no idea." "You've never asked her?" "No." Sara Didn't pretend to understand. "Why not?". He glanced out into the street, watching the traffic zoom by. "It's complicated.

The two women switched to their native tongue. Kate tuned them out. She understood only half of what they were saying. As with most Americans, Dutch sounded to her more like a disease of the throat than an actual language

Claire hates you now. She believes me. She will never, ever take you back. We are never ever ever getting back together. Taylor Swift. How many times had Dee played that song after she caught Heath Carmichael cheating

How I compare it to now is, at this moment we are all living through, everyone on earth is experiencing a suspension of loss. Over half a million people dead in the United States alone. The number is too overwhelming to accept, so we go on with our lives and we do what we can but, in the end, the staggering loss will be waiting for us. It always catches up to you, doesn’t it?

Clair watched the young man pour Paul's Scotch with a previously unseen professionalism. Her wedding ring, her gentle brush-offs, and her outright rejection had been minor obstacles compared to the big no of another man kissing her cheek.

. . what you call my struggle to submit . . . is not struggle to submit but a struggle to accept and with passion. I mean, possibly, with joy. Picture me with my ground teeth stalking joy—fully armed too as it’s a highly dangerous quest.” —FLANNERY O’CONNOR

Since this wedding that never happened is my fantasy, that boy is clean-­shaven on your special day, hair combed neatly, slightly nervous as he stands by the preacher, looking at you the way I always wanted a man to look at you: kind, loving, slightly in awe

all the pickup-driving John Boys who drove down to Atlanta every day to make money, then drove back at night and railed against the godless liberals who lined their pockets and subsidized their utilities, their healthcare, their children’s lunches and their schools.

You are magnificent because you are so uniquely you

It’s hard to describe how someone has manipulated you because you’re generally not aware of it when it’s happening.

Her wedding ring, her gentle brush-offs, and her outright rejection had been minor obstacles compared to the big no of another man kissing her cheek.

A possum stared at me through the door all night.” “That’s Bill.” Charlie turned on the giant television. “He’s my lover.

Charlie watched her husband’s boss grip the sides of the podium like he was about to sodomize it.

I'm not choosing anybody but myself.' Jane was sick of men thinking they could give her ultimatums.

She had felt capable of anything.

The thing about having a bad reputation is that folks will believe just about anything people say about you.

The addict’s credo: It’s always somebody else’s fault.

Yeah?” “I miss the way you taste.” She tried to sound bored. “It’s still Colgate.” “That’s not the taste I was talking about.

women with a little bit of power can be much harder than men. Especially on other women. They have to distance themselves from the weakness of their sex. Yes?

Granted Laura spent most of her time on Nextdoor but that was because people who lived year-round in beach towns were either busybodies, lunatics, and/or possible serial killers.

Sometimes, all you could do was pray for the strength to carry on.

you can’t have a logical discussion with someone who makes up their own facts.

When you’re drowning, you don’t stop to teach somebody else how to swim.

The entire world gave men the responsibility for everything in it except for their dicks.

children always have different parents, even in the same family.

Trust me, sweetheart, there is a reason centuries of fathers have fought brutal wars to protect the concept of Immaculate Conception.

Anything’s legal if you can get away with it.” Maggie slammed the locker closed. “Welcome to the Atlanta Police Department.

This is where feminism had gotten her: locked in the back of a sticky squad car with the skirt on her tennis dress riding up her thighs.

As Kate had told her Oma the night before, there was no society more viciously controlled by rumor than your local police force.

He talked about how people always obsess about lies. Damn lies, But no one really understands that the real danger is truth.

They’ll only get your goat if you show them where you keep your hay.

Women were as mysterious to them as the origins of the planet.

You’re supposed to be my lawyer.” “You’re supposed to be a human being,

Do you realize how terrifying it is to be raped?

They thought vengeance made it easier, when, in fact, all it did was fester the sorrow.

revenge is like sipping poison and waiting for the other person to die.

Death snickers at us all, my dear. The eternal footman will not hold my coat forever.

Swimming against grief. Drowning in sympathy.

Claire was always really good at behaving exactly the way people expected her to behave—not out of duplicity, but out of self-preservation.

This is the wrong day to hit me with annoying dipshittery.

God grant me the confidence of a mediocre white man.

Madison will always be trapped between those two people. The woman we didn’t get to meet, and the girl we used to know.

Leigh was constantly amazed when rich white people assumed the system always worked until they found themselves wrapped up in it. Then, it had to be some kind of God damned conspiracy.

She had told herself when she put on her sweatpants this morning that she was going to the gym, and she had gone near the gym, but only because there was a Starbucks in the parking lot.

Callie would never understand how Bill Gates had been shortsighted enough to give everybody easy access to the internet so that some day, these jackasses could reveal all of his dastardly plans.

people found off-putting. You could not beat her at chess or Trivial Pursuit or even Monopoly. She knew all the questions on Jeopardy. She knew when to use who or whom. She could not abide misinformation. She disdained organized religion. In social situations, she had the strange habit of spouting obscure facts.

Southern Cheap is, I’m gonna eat stale cookies while I serve you these fresh, warm buttered biscuits. Yankee Cheap is, I’ve got ten million dollars in the bank but I’m gonna cut off the thermostat during a blizzard and here’s my great-great-grandpa’s mothballed coat from the War of 1812 if you don’t have the character and fortitude to generate your own body heat.

Curiosity broke her earlier resolve. "Have you ever been tested?" "No." He stood behind Sara, holding the camera in front so she could see. "Zoom here," he said, flicking the toggle. "You could probably-" "This is macro." "Will-" "Super macro." He kept talking over her until she gave up. "Here's where you adjust for color. This is light. Anti-shake. Red-eye." He clicked through the features like a photography instructor. Sara Finally relented. "Why don't I point and you shoot?" "All right." His back was stiff, and she could tell that he was irritated. "I'm sorry I-" "Please don't apologize." Sara held his gaze for a few moments longer, wishing she could fix this. There was nothing to say if he wouldn't even let her apologize.

You can’t put a person in one box, Emmy Lou, especially when they get older. You’ve gotta judge them by the totality of their lives. You do bad shit when you’re young that you regret. You do good shit when you’re old that you hope makes up for it.

I must confess, sweetheart, that I have been neglecting my wall of clues. My “useless gallimaufry,” your mother called it on the one and only occasion she deigned to look at my work. I sagely agreed with her observation but of course I went running to the dictionary as soon as she was gone. Gallimaufry: a hodgepodge; a confused jumble of various people or things; any absurd medley.

Do what?” Buddy sounded flip. His eyes darted down to the wad of cash. “You got what you wanted.” She shook her head. She had never wanted this. She had wanted to feel safe. To feel protected. To have someone interested in her life, her thoughts, her dreams.

That’s when you fall in love with somebody. The lust and fucking like rabbits and letting your life fall to shit so you can be around him—that’s passion. It’s borderline obsession. And it always burns itself out. You know that, Liddie. That high never, ever lasts. But being in that hospital, taking care of him, I started to realize that what I had with Paul, what I thought I had, that was more than love. That was being in love. It was so tangible I could almost touch it with my hands. I could bite it with my teeth.

She had seen this before. She knew that you could put it all in a little box and close it up later, that you could go on with your life if you didn't sleep too much, didn't breathe too much, didn't live too much so that death came back and snatched you away for the taking.

As she limped down the stairs, she considered all the drugs in her backpack. Tramadol, methadone, ketamine, buprenorphine. Mix them all into a pint of tequila and she could get a front-row seat to Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse talking about what a douche Jim Morrison could be.

Your mother was not surprised to hear me say this. This was a time when the pendulum of hope still swung back and forth between us, so that some days she took to her bed with sorrow and some days she came home from the store with a shirt or a sweater or a pair of jeans that she would give you when you returned home to us.

I found this." He put the briefcase on the table and opened the locks. She saw a stack of papers, an evidence bag with a red seal. He pulled a college notebook with a blue plastic cover from one of the pockets. Black fingerprint powder spotted the cover. "I tried to clean it up," he said, wiping the grime on the front of his sweater. "I'm sorry. It was in Allison's car and I..." He flipped through the pages, showing her the scrawled handwriting. "I can't," he said. "I just can't." She realized that Will hadn't looked at her once since walking into the room. He had such an air of defeat about him, as if every word that came from his mouth caused him pain.

What a rapist takes from a woman is her future. The person she is going to become, who she is supposed to be, is gone. In many ways , it's worse than murder, because he has killed that potential person, eradicated that potential life, yet she still lives and breathes, and has to figure out another way to thrive....Or not, in some cases.... ....Sounds a lot like being shot in the head.

She doubted a generation that had grown up with WAP, murder hornets, Covid, cataclysmic social unrest, and being forcibly home-schooled by a bunch of depressed day drinkers really understood the threat of pool halls, but Leigh had to hand it to the drama teacher for putting on a gender-neutral production of The Music Man, one of the least offensive and most tedious musicals ever staged by a middle school.

He saw the towel in her hands. "I've got this." "Let me help." "I think you've helped enough." She thought he was going to leave it at that, but Will told her, "It's been worse today than usual." "Stress is a contributing factor-when you get tired or if something emotional happens." He scrubbed hard at the plate in his hands. Sara saw that he hadn't bothered to roll up his sleeves. The cuffs of his sweater were soaked. He said, "I've been trying to dig a new sewer line to my house. That's why my laundry is behind." Sara had been expecting a non sequitur, but she'd hoped he could hold off for a few moments longer. "My father built this house with money from people who try to do their own plumbing.

It’s the truth. I’m sorry to be blunt about it, but girls don’t like guys who are doormats. Especially pretty girls, because there’s no novelty to it. Guys are hitting on them all of the time. They can’t walk down the street or order a coffee or stand on a corner without some idiot making a comment about how attractive they are. And the women smile because it’s easier than telling them to go fuck themselves. And less dangerous, because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her.

Tessa reached out and took her hand. “Can I tell you something?” “As long as it’s not advice on chasing after a married man.” She squeezed Sara’s hand. “I’m really in love with my husband.” Sara gave a careful “Okay.” “I know you think Lem is boring and too earnest and too self-righteous, and believe me, he can be all those things, but a thousand times a day, I hear a song, or I think of something funny, or Daddy says one of his stupid puns, and the first thing that comes into my head is ‘I want to tell Lem about this.’ And I know that halfway around the world, he’s thinking the same thing.” She paused. “That’s what love is, Sara, when there are so many things about you that you only want one person in the world to know.

Acid filled Sara’s mouth. It wasn’t fair. That’s what Sara wanted to say. To scream at the top of her lungs. It just wasn’t fair. Lena wasn’t strong. She would bend, not break. She would recover from this tragedy the same easy way she recovered from every other tragedy before. Even if she lost Jared, Lena would always know what it felt like to have his child growing inside of her. She could always hold her baby’s hand and think of holding Jared’s. She could see her child laugh and learn and grow and play sports and do school projects and graduate from college and Lena would always, always remember her husband. She would see Jared in her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. On her deathbed, she would find peace in the knowledge that they had made something beautiful together. That even in death, they would both go on living. “Sara,” Faith said. “What’s happening here?” Sara wiped her eyes, angry that she was back in the same dark place she’d started at this morning. “Why does everything come so damn easy to her?” She struggled to speak. Her throat clenched around every word that wanted to come out of her mouth. “Everything just opens up, and she always walks through unscathed and—” Sara had to stop for breath. “It’s just so easy for her. She always has it so goddamn easy.

I would've given up without her - not on you, never on you, but on myself. I suppose I can tell you this now, but I wasn't a very good student. I wasn't smart enough to just get by. I wasn't focused enough in class. I rarely passed exams. I skipped assignments. I was constantly on academic probation. Not that your grandmother would ever know, but at the time, I was thinking of doing what you were later accused of doing: selling all my belongings, sticking out my thumb, and hitchhiking to California to be with the other hippies who had dropped out and tuned in. Everything changed when I met your mother. She made me want things that I had never dreamed of wanting: a steady job, a reliable car, a mortgage, a family. You figured out a long time ago that you got your wanderlust from me. I want you to know that this is what happens when you meet the person you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with: That restless feeling dissolves like butter.

I guess I see your point, but there’s more to ­people than how they look.” “But you only get to know somebody because you like what you see.” He smiled down at her. “I like what I see.” Lydia wondered how many chins she had from lying on her back and whether or not her roots showed in the glow of the television. “What on earth could you possibly see?” “The woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.” Rick put his hand on her stomach. “This belly you’re always complaining about? This is where Dee spent the first nine months of her life.” He pressed his palm to her chest. “This heart is the kindest, gentlest heart I’ve ever known.” He let his fingers trace up toward her neck. “And this is where your beautiful voice is made.” He lightened the pressure as he touched her lips. “These are the softest lips I’ve ever kissed.” He touched her eyelids. “These eyes see straight through my bullshit.” He stroked back her hair. “This head is full of thoughts that surprise me and enlighten me and make me laugh.” Lydia guided his hand back to her breasts. “What about these?” “Hours of pleasure