Maureen Walls Quotes

No one expected you to amount to much," she told me. "Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard.

The wonderful thing about reality is that it is highly flexible. One minute, all is doom; the next, everything is abloom with possibility.

Look! A riddle! Time for fun! Should we use a rope or gun? Knives are sharp and gleam so pretty Poison’s slow, which is a pity Fire is festive, drowning’s slow Hanging’s a ropy way to go A broken head, a nasty fall A car colliding with a wall Bombs make a very jolly noise Such ways to punish naughty boys! What shall we use? We can’t decide. Just like you cannot run or hide. Ha ha. Truly, Devious

Anxiety does not ask your permission. Anxiety does not come when expected. It's very rude. It barges in at the strangest moments, stopping all activity, focusing everything on itself It sucks the air our of your lungs and scrambles the world.

My moose,” she said in a low voice. “I finally got it. The universe paid me in moose.

Izzy, are you—” he began. His eyes flew wide, and he backed up fast enough to smack his head into the wall behind him. “What is he doing here?” Isabelle tugged her tank top back down and glared at her brother. “You don’t knock now?” “It—It’s my bedroom!” Alec spluttered. He seemed to be deliberately trying not to look at Izzy and Simon, who were indeed in a very compromising position. Simon rolled quickly off Isabelle, who sat up, brushing herself off as if for lint. Simon sat up more slowly, trying to hold the torn edges of his shirt together. “Why are all my clothes on the floor?” Alec said. “I was trying to find something for Simon to wear,” Isabelle explained. “Maureen put him in leather pants and a puffy shirt because he was being her romance-novel slave.” “He was being her what?” “Her romance-novel slave,” Isabelle repeated, as if Alec were being particularly dense. Alec shook his head as if he were having a bad dream. “You know what? Don’t explain. Just—put your clothes on, both of you.

Are you trying to make me have an emotion?...Because I've spent by whole life learning how to repress and deflect and you're kind of ruining my thing

Anxiety, her therapist had told her many times, never killed anyone. It felt like death, but it was an illusion. A terrible illusion that inhabited your body and tried to make it its puppet. It told you nothing mattered because everything was made of fear.

Brian told Mom we needed to keep Maureen away from those nutty Pentecostals, but Mom said we all came to religion in our own individual ways and we each need to respect the religious practices of others, seeing as it was up to every human being to find his or her own way to heaven.

She looks like a jumper to me. Jumpers do that a lot, stand on the edge and stare out. Never kill yourself in a Tube station. Tip number one. You might end up down here forever, staring at the wall." Stephen coughed a little. "Just giving advice," Callum said.

It turns out I'm really good at this stuff." "I always believed in you," Stevie said. "Did you?" "No," Stevie said. "But you have a nice ass, so I let you slide." They smiled at each other from a thousand miles away. Stevie had never felt closer to him.

Every contact leaves a trace.

According to a Wall Street Journal article some 59 percent of Americans don t own a single book. Not a cookbook or even the Bible.

Fun fact," Stevie said, trying to lighten the mood in the vast, gloomy space. "This fireplace? Henry the Eighth had one just like it, in Hampton Court. Albert Ellingham had an exact copy made." "Fun fact," Nate replied, "Henry the Eighth killed two of his wives. Who wants a murderer's fireplace?" "I'm not sure, but that's the name of my new game show.

Growing up is like taking down the walls of your house and letting strangers in.

If Gertie van Coevorden had two brain cells, each would be amazed to know of the other's existence.

Charles had a look on his face said, "I'm not angry, but I am disappointed." Dr. Quinn's expression said, "He's passive-aggressive. I'm not. I am aggressive. I have killed before."

Stevie, how many stories -" "It's all one story," Stevie said, and the confidence in her voice surprised her. "It was about money then, and it's about money now.

Slippers always seemed like kind of a nonsense item until she came to Ellingham and felt the bathroom floor on the first proper day of wintry weather. Once skin touched tile and part of her soul died, she knew what slippers were for.

She didn’t want to be brave anymore. It was exhausting. Anxiety crawled under her skin all the time, like some alien creature that might burst through at any moment. Stevie

Hello, Alice," Stevie said. "It'd okay. It's over.

Leo approved of poets, generally, but it was very important not to let them get started on the subject of their work if you wanted to continue enjoying poetry.

I haven't felt like part of the living world these last years. I go out and walk around, but it's hard when you feel the best times of your life have happened already. —Eloise Munn

Once skin touched tile and part of her soul died, she knew what slippers were for.

I am out of ideas and need to conserve my energy so I can freak out more efficiently.

And then, it arrived. Anxiety does not ask your permission. Anxiety does not come when expected. It's very rude. It barges in at the strangest moments, stopping all activity, focusing everything on itself. It sucks the air out of your lungs and scrambles the world. Her vision went spotty around the edges. The ringing in her ears swelled again. Her knees buckled.

That's what she gets, if she gets anything at all," Stevie said. "All of this starts in late May and goes on through June. What dose this suggest?" "Morning sickness," Nate said, his eyes widening. "Morning sickness," Stevie replied, smiling. "You terrify me," Nate said quietly.

Stevie's other big interest outside crime was disaster, so she had seen Titanic many times. It was clear to her that there was plenty of room on that door for two people. Jack was murdered.

Her attention was drawn to a movement in the woods in the direction of the river. The trees were slowly coming back into bud, but they were still bare enough that she could make out a shape. "Moose," she said, almost in a whisper. "Moose. Moose." She tugged Nate's sleeve. "Moose," she repeated. The object moved away, out of sight. Stevie blinked. It had just been there, the massive antlers moving through the trees. "My moose," she said in a low voice. "I finally got it. The universe paid me in moose." With one backward glance at the magical spot, Stevie Bell resumed walking toward her class. Anatomy was still ahead of her. Lots of things were ahead of her, but this one was the closest. "That wasn't a moose, was it?" Janelle said when Stevie was out of earshot. "That's a branch, right? It moved in the wind?" "It's a branch," Nate replied. "Like, that's obviously a branch," Vi said. "Should we tell her? She seems really invested in this." "Definitely not," Nate said as Stevie vanished in the direction of the classroom buildings, earbuds already in her ears. "Let her have her moose.

Even if our survival skills have become impediments we would like to let go of because they have ceased to serve us, we can still love ourselves with them. In appreciation of our survival, we can be awed at how our resources brought us through, even when these resources were things like indifference, a wall of rage, a cold heart…We learn to embrace ourselves as humans with faults and problems.

There were night sounds that Stevie had still not come to grips with - the rustling on the ground and above, the hooting of owls - things that suggested that far more happened here at night than during the day. (And yet, Stevie had yet to see the one creature that had been promised in sign after sign along the highway, the ones that read MOOSE. One moose. That's all she wanted. Was that too much to ask? Instead, there were these suggestions of owls, and all Stevie ever heard about the owls was that they liked shiny things and would eat your eyes given half the chance.)

I'm trying to figure out if this is the stupidest thing I've ever done," Nate said as he kept up the rear with Stevie. "I don't think it is, and that worries me." "It probably isn't." "I mean, the thing with the files is crazy. I honestly don't even know if I'm going to look at them" "Then why did you stay?" she asked. "Because," Nate said, tipping his head toward David, "when you and he get together, something bad happens to you." Stevie swallowed down a lump in her throat. She wanted to reach over and grab Nate's hand at that moment, except that Nate would probably receive the gesture with as much enthusiasm as a handful of spiders.

Brace yourselves,” the driver shouts from the front. “We’re going through the wall.” I grab one of the handles above my head, bracing for whatever comes.

would rather eat bees than share her tender inner being with anyone else—she didn’t even want to share it with herself.

Yeah. She said that there was weird shit in the walls at Ellingham. Things and hollow spaces. Stuff. She’d found things. Shit in the walls.

because displaying real emotion would be gross.

It’s good to be home,” Iris said, putting her head on Albert’s shoulder. “We’ve been gone so long.” “We are all home,” Albert said. “And here we will stay.

Falling down a hole is easy. Everyone should try it. You just let the ground go away and allow gravity to do its thing.

My parents t-trust me." Stevie and David looked at her blankly. "What's that l-like?" David asked.

Written on the wall calendar in big, tragic letters was “September 17th: Maureen Dies.

When she thought of old Stevie, the one in Pittsburgh, she had two separate ideas that never met up. The first Stevie was antisocial and underachieving. She didn’t participate in any clubs,

Stevie had never put these Stevies together to assemble a portrait of herself—her choices had not been failures. They had been choices. It was all one Stevie, and that Stevie was worthwhile.

The security system is about to go down. Ready? Three, two, one." He put his phone back in his coat pocket. It was impossible for Stevie to ignore the fact that security-shutting-off David was sexy.

Is there kissing?” she asked. “I hate you.” “You can’t write anything?” “Let’s just say that I needed to have Moonbeam fight something and the only thing I could come up with was called the Pulsating Norb. It’s like a wall that jiggles.

Oh my God,” he said. “What are you, a saint or something?” “I stole this mug,” she said. “So, no. Besides, if the school closed down, you’d have to go home and finish your book or something. I did it for you. I’m not even telling anyone else. I mean, aside from my friends. Like you.” “Are you trying to make me have an emotion?” Nate said, his eyes reddening a bit. “Because I’ve spent my whole life learning how to repress and deflect and you’re kind of ruining my thing.

Think about what you could be stopping—someone who uses racist policies to hurt or kill people. Someone who could do untold damage to the environment. Someone who could start an illegal war to distract from his political problems. You know, Vi, that he’s capable of that.

I did it," she said. "Yup." "You made fun of me when i first got here," she said. "But I did it." "I was being friendly." "You were being a dick," she said. "Why do you think we like each other?" Stevie asked. "Does it matter?" "I don't know," she said. "I don't know how these things work." "Neither do I. Neither does anybody." "Some people seem to. I thin Janelle does." "Janelle," he said, "may know everything, but she doesn't know that. And I like you because . . ." He rolled up to his side and onto one elbow, gazing down into her face. He traced her jawline with one finger, sending such shivers down her body that she struggled not to squirm. ". . because you came to do something impossible and you did it. And you're smart. And you're really, really attractive." There, on the floor that had been scuffed by a thousand dance shoes, under the eyes of the masks on the wall that had seen decades go by, they kissed, over and over, each one renewing the last.

Two students had approached Leonard while he was staring at the painting, a boy and a girl. The boy was beautiful - his hair genuinely golden, a color poets wrote about but rarely saw. The girl had a smile like a dangerous question. The first thing that struck Leo was how alive they looked. In contrast to the surroundings, they were bright and flushed.

This is a two-way road,” the driver said. “You’re American? You have quite wide roads in America, don’t you?” This was not a two-lane road. This was a tiny, tiny, tiny path surrounded by a high wall of greenery that blocked the view. It was a deathtrap, a meandering thread of madness. It suggested that there was something about English people that she may never understand.

You didn't improvise that speech back there," she said. "How long were you working on that?" "Day or two. Got a bunch of it from The West Wing. That was the only show I was never allowed to watch when I was a kid, so it's my favourite. I wonder who my dad will have as VP if he gets into the White House? I'm rooting for a cloud of bats. What about you, Stevie? You know him better than I do.

And yet, there was another, bigger Stevie. This Stevie spent her time online reading everything about murder. She studied criminology textbooks. She believed, really believed, that she could solve the crime of the century. And she had. Stevie had never put these Stevies together to assemble a portrait of herself—her choices had not been failures. They had been choices. It was all one Stevie, and that Stevie was worthwhile

She strode across the room like she had meant to be here all along and busied herself in the kitchen for a moment, filling the electric kettle to make herself a hot chocolate. She dumped two packages into a mug and looked at the pile of chocolate dust she intended to consume. Was this supposed to make up for something, this dust? Was it supposed to repair whatever in her that had ripped in two? That was a lot to ask of a mug of cocoa dust.

Charles was dressed more casually than normal, in a heavy fleece and sweatpants. Dr. Quinn rose to the occasion in a rose-gray cashmere sweater, a sweeping wool skirt, black cashmere tights, and tall black boots. No amount of cold was going to rob her of her queenly graces. Charles had a look on his face that said, "I'm not angry, but I am disappointed." Dr. Quinn's expression said, "He's passive-aggressive. I'm not. I am aggressive. I have killed before."

There was a bowl of tuna salad. She grabbed two slices of the closest bread and smacked on a gob, squashing it flat. She sliced it with one long cut and dropped down into a chair at the far end of the table. David sat at the other end, one of the old tablets next to him, facedown. "I don't eat tuna salad," he said, grabbing a piece of bread. "It's too mysterious. People sneak things into it. It's a sneak food." "I like it," Hunter said. "We make it at home with sliced-up dill pickle and Old Bay Seasoning." "Good to know," David said. "Nate, where do you come down on tuna salad?: Nate was trying to read and eat some cold mac and cheese in peace. "I don't eat fish," he said. "Fish freak me out.

It wasn’t about the money,” she said. “If I even tried to claim it, think of the lawyers and the creeps I’d have to deal with. It would ruin my life.” “Seriously?” he said. “You’re not going to fight for seventy million dollars?” “What can I buy for seventy million dollars?” “Anything. Almost literally anything.

Day or two. Got a bunch of it from The West Wing. That was the only show I was never allowed to watch when I was a kid, so it’s my favorite. I wonder who my dad will have as VP if he gets into the White House? I’m rooting for a cloud of bats. What about you, Stevie? You know him better than I do.

she felt badly.

Six months later, Maureen stabbed Mom.

Mom and Dad rented a great big U-Haul truck. Mom explained that since only she and Dad could fit in the front of the U-Haul, Lori, Brian, Maureen, and I were in for a treat: We got to ride in the back. It would be fun, she said, a real adventure, but there wouldn’t be any light, so we would have to use all our resources to entertain one another. Plus we were not allowed to talk. Since it was illegal to ride in the back, anyone who heard us might call the cops. Mom told us the trip would be about fourteen hours if we took the highway, but we should tack on another couple of hours because we might make some scenic detours.

Now that the weather had turned more chill, he could cheerfully—or what passed as cheerfully in Nate-adjusted terms—pile on oversized sweaters and baggy cords and scarves until he was a moving pile of natural and synthetic fibers.

...her choices had not been failures. They had been choices.

I step to the front of the bullpen, pacing in front of the bank of monitors mounted to the wall. Mo looks up from the files spread out on her workstation, then checks something on the computer screen in front of her. Maureen Weissman—otherwise known as Mo—

Let her have her moose.

When I was in my early thirties I wrote a profile of Maureen Dowd. She was the sole female columnist at The New York Times then, and had been the second female White House correspondent in the paper’s history. She had started her career as an editorial assistant in 1974, the year I was born, and now she was fifty-three, had won the Pulitzer Prize, looked amazing, and lived alone. I remember sitting in the insanely decorated living room of her brownstone in Georgetown—the walls were blood red, the bookshelves were crowded with feathered fans, old Nancy Sinatra record jackets, a collection of bubbling motion lamps, another of mermaids, a dozen vintage martini shakers, all kinds of toy tigers—and being intoxicated by her peculiarity, independence, and success. I asked if she’d ever wanted children. She told me, “Everybody doesn’t get everything.” It sounded depressing to me at the time, a statement of defeat. Now admitting it seems like the obvious and essential work of growing up. Everybody doesn’t get everything: as natural and unavoidable as mortality.

His devotion to his wife and child was admirable. Most men in Albert’s position had dozens of affairs, mistresses in every city. Albert seemed loyal, which meant he probably only had one.

There is the mistaken notion that wealth makes people content. It does the opposite, generally. It stirs a hunger in many—and no matter what they eat, they will never be full. A hole opens somewhere.

[Anksiyete izninizi istemiyordu. Gelirken haber de vermiyordu. Bu çok kabaydı. En tuhaf olan da paldır küldür içeri dalıyor, her şeyi yarıda kesip büyün ilgiyi kendi üzerine çekiyordu.]

She had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. And so easily too! She had jumped right into that gaping maw. She had solved the case—she had done the impossible thing—and now, she was a freezing reject in a hallway, the world crashed, her limbs numb with sadness.

Seven clues on seven structures get water from above to rupture.

Jesus Christ,” Nate said, banging his head delicately against the mirror wall. “Is this even a school, or are we in some kind of experiment?

You'll like it here," she said. "Pix is nice." "She's an archaeologist?" "And anthropologist. She collects teeth." "Who doesn't?" he said.

As Stevie stepped outside, the cold air slapped her in the face. The magnificent cloak of reds and golds that hung from the Vermont woodland had dropped suddenly, like a massive act of arboreal striptease. Striptease. Strip trees. Striptrees? God, she was tired.

Are you going to tell him what you told me?" he asked. "About how you solved the case?" "I don't know," Stevie said as her breath puffed out in front of her like a feather of rots. "No. I don't know. Maybe. No. And if I stay, it's more time to get what I need - anything I can find to bolster the case." "Well," Nate said, "now that we belong to The Shining reenactment society, you might as well go for it. Last chance.

Maybe this was the moment everything would change for her. Maybe now the school year was beginning in earnest. That was perhaps burdening the moment with more expectation than it could bear, but, Stevie figured, something about this year had to give.

That message on the wall was someone telling her something. Someone wanted to play with her. So all right. She would play. Maybe she was anxious. Maybe she was untrained. But Steve Bell knew one thing about herself - once she had bitten in, tasted the mystery - she would not let go. She had gotten herself to this mountain. She could do this.

His painter's eye and his deviant soul told him the girl was the one to watch of this pair.

The bones were on the table, naked and chalky. The eye sockets hollow, the mouth in a loose grimace, as if to say. "Yep, it's me. Bet you're wondering how I ended up here. It's a funny story actually...."

Luck only holds out for so long,

The universe paid me in moose

That wasn't a moose was it?" Janelle said when Stevie was out of earshot. "that's a branch, right? it moved in the wind?" "It's a branch". Nate replied. "Like, that's obviously a branch," Vi said. "Should we tell her? She seems really invested in this." "Definitely not," Nate said as Stevie vanished in the direction of the classroom buildings, earbuds already in her ears. "Let her have her moose.

She was exactly who she wanted to be.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" David said. It was as good a summary of the situation as any. "oh," Stevie said. Again, this about summed it up.

Never say sorry as a greeting,

Damn if Oprah wasn't yakking with three movie actresses about what a hassle it was to be famous and have photographers snooping around, following you to the grocery and the ATM, whatever. Tool didn't feel one tiny bit sorry for her and them other gals, on account of they was rich enough to build twenty-foot walls around their mansions if they wanted. Butlers, bodyguards, the best of everything. Tool found himself thinking about Maureen, the old lady at Elysian Manor, alone and dying of God knows what kind of rotten cancer. Damn nurses won't even let her out of the sack to take a shower or go to the can. There's somebody would trade places with them actresses in a heartbeat, Tool thought, Maureen would. She'd be smilin' and wavin' at them photographers, she'd be so grateful not to be sick.

Eventually, even Mom acknowledged that I’d done all right. “No one expected you to amount to much,” she told me. “Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard.

There’s the horror-movie version: a shadow with a knife, the one who escaped from the hospital on the hill during that storm. It’s the person living in the walls. In mystery novels, it might be the smiling stranger, the one with the passing knowledge of poisons. It’s the relative left out of the will, or the one recently added to it. It’s the jealous colleague at the museum who wants to be the first to announce the new archeological discovery. It’s the overly helpful person who follows the detective around. On the all-murder, true-crime channel, it’s the new neighbor with the boat, the one in his midforties to midfifties with the tan who has no past and who recently purchased a human-sized cooler. It’s the person who lives in the shack in the woods. It’s the unseen figure on the corner of the street. On all crime shows, it’s usually the third person the cops interview. It’s the one you sort of think it is. In life, the murderer is anyone. The reasons, the methods, the circumstances—the paths to becoming a murderer are as numerous as the stars. Understanding this is the first step to finding a murderer. You have to shut down the voices in your mind that say, “It has to be this person.” Murderers aren’t a type. They’re anyone.