Quotes from Janet Fitch

Her gut ached, as if love was being dug out of her with a dull knife.

What was the point of the Devil if there was a God like that? Maybe there was just the Devil, the real God of this fucking world. Or maybe there was just nothing at all.

That fucking crow-bodied thing had won. How gleeful it was now. All because he'd wanted to live, forget genius and destiny, and simply be happy. And it wouldn't let him.

Wat was trouwens onkruid? Een plant die niemand plantte? Een zaadje ontsnapt aan de jas van een reiziger, iets wat er niet thuishoorde? Was het iets wat beter groeide dan wat er had moeten staan? Was het niet gewoon een woord, onkruid, met een sliert aan vooroordelen? Onkruid, onding. Onnuttig. Ongewenst.

He was obsessed with obituaries. She'd never read them before, he couldn't believe it, to him it was like someone who'd never read the funnies...Michael always wanted to know what they died of- accidental gunshot wounds, overdose, cancer. 'Was it suicide?' That's what he really wanted to know.

Death like a lover, caressing him, promising him peace, running its fingers through his hair, its tongue in his ear.

She was tired, her nerves stripped like wires, the red and white. She felt like a saint with the arrows shit through, she was bleeding to death.

Michael hated this, it was the worst thing he could imagine, disappearing into the mass- he didn't know how to submerge himself, he was the puzzle piece that fit nowhere.

Now it seemed unbelievable, the innocence of a girl in a fairy tale.

She was a woman for whom a man would buy a diamond ring or a new car, just to cheer her up.

He'd known where he was going to end up. The pyre was just a fantasy. Whatever he did, he couldn't have escaped this rectangular hole in the ground, this pile of dirt covered by its blanket of Astroturf. If she'd married him, she would be buried in there, and if they'd had a baby, their child too. There was some ming for you. There was some fucking destiny.

But she understood, even lies could be true, if you knew how to listen.

When anybody could tell, nobody was ever going to give fucking peace a chance.

Her beauty was like the edge of a very sharp knife.

his hands, shedding actual tears. The silky cold dirt and sharp pebbles of the road

If you didn't have anything truly great to offer, something truly amazing, then you should just shut the fuck up.

She couldn't help but think how Michael would have loved this old man. He loved when people talked to him like this, just regular people. It made him feel human, connected, if someone was comfortable talking to him, saw him as an ordinary man, perhaps he wasn't as estranged from the world as he felt himself to be.

It's a rotten deal, the house always wins. Just sit at the table and play for all you're worth.

Other boys were happy enough to enjoy the show, they just wanted to be entertained in the body's shadow theater.

Once the worst had happened to you, all the rest was just stuff and absence.

Four was difficult and misunderstood, a genius before its time, it belonged to the planet of unexpected disaster.

They'd retreated to the country with two passports only. From the outside it looked like death. People could pound the walls all they wanted, but they'd never find the door. Nobody could guess at the gardens inside.

That was how you did it. You let go, you left all that behind, you refused to remember. You let the dark in.

It didn't much matter where the path went, she wasn't the least bit curious, she just needed a direction.