Quotes from Julie Gregory

I start to see that I surround myself with broken people; more broken than me. Ah, yes, let me count your cracks. Let's see, one hundred, two... yes, you'll do nicely. A cracked companion makes me look more whole, gives me something outside myself to care for. When I'm with whole, healed people I feel my own cracks, the shatters, the insanities of dislocation in myself.

But the memories that hang heaviest are the easiest to recall. They hold in their creases the ability to change one's life, organically, forever. Even when you shake them out, they've left permanent wrinkles in the fabric of your soul.

Books are my friends, where it's okay to be silent, where you're not a freak if you don't want to get drunk, peel out in the parking lot, tip cows.

But the memories that hang heaviest are the easiest to recall.

I am going to shrink and shrink until I am a dry fall leaf, complete with a translucent spine and brittle veins, blowing away in a stiff wind, up, up, up into a crisp blue sky.

But Dad, you were a grown man, you have got to take responsibility for what you did, too! I mean, you made me eat [snotty] Kleenex, Dad! For Christ's sake, you can't do that to a little girl! You have got to say you're sorry for the stuff you did as a grown man!' 'Well,' Dad snorts, 'I musta done something right! 'Cause you never left any snot rags lying around the house again, now, did you?

They say the truth hurts, but the only thing the truth hurts, are illusions.

I don't know why they are here but it doesn't mean that they don't belong.

Munchausen by proxy may be the single most complex—and lethal—form of maltreatment known today. It is formally defined as the falsification or induction of physical and/or emotional illness by a caretaker of a dependent person. In most cases, the perpetrator is a mother and the victim is her own child.

Then the sun would sink a little, feathering lightly into the surface of the water, and Grandma and I would climb back in the car and go off and get in a car wreck.

I am just a girl, a girl men touch without asking, a girl men disrobe without even seeing her tears.

Dad," I say, leaning across the table, "did you know that Mom made things up about me?

God, please," I scream, "help, Mom, he is going to kill me!" And she is standing just where she was three minutes ago. Three minutes ago my life was different. Three minutes ago I could have made it out of here intact, but now Ã¢â'¬Â¦

God, please," I scream, "help, Mom, he is going to kill me!" And she is standing just where she was three minutes ago. Three minutes ago my life was different. Three minutes ago I could have made it out of here intact, but now Ã¢â'¬Â¦ And my mother, arms folded, body now relaxed and loose, is wearing the curly smile of a Cheshire cat, staring right at me, holding my eyes as I go down, crack, into the corner.

Books are my friends, where it's okay to be silent, where you're not a freak if you don't want to get drunk, peel out in the parking lot, tip cows.