Quotes from Jennifer McMahon

thoughts and words have power, and if you allow your worst fears to form fully, you run the danger of bringing them to life. As

People loved a good creepy story. The need was almost primal: to hear them, have them chill you, then pass them along, embellished with your own details. Fear was a drug, and these stories were a delivery method.

Feeding the chickens was one of his favorite chores of the day—he enjoyed the way they greeted him with clucks and coos, the warmth of the eggs taken from the nest boxes. The chickens gave them so much and asked for so little in return.

He eyed me with practiced suspicion. Great, a small town amateur detective – look out, Angela Lansbury.

Ruthie had found the idea that we were only a series of neatly constructed puzzle pieces or building blocks vaguely unsettling—even at eight, she wanted there to be more to it than that.

The wind blew, rippling the water, making everything waver as if none of it were real.

Reggie had always been a quiet kid, even with her own family, and part of the reason for this was that she never knew the right thing to say. Words didn't come easily to her, they were stumbling blocks rather than lines of connection. And only later, after the fact, when she was replaying conversations in her head late at night, did the right words come—a cruel joke, too little, too late.

I wasn't a big believer in closure. In my experience, both in my life and working with my clients, solid resolutions to conflicts, problems, or grief were elusive. I believed it was more beneficial to recognize emotions and learn to deal with them appropriately; to find ways to live with the loss rather than tie everything up with a neat little bow and pronounce you've had closure.

Because that's what our family does. Pretends that if we don't talk about a thing, it didn't happen. As if we could shape the truth with our stories, or lack thereof.

But occasionally, someone will climb the hill, someone who has lost a husband or a child, someone who has somehow learned the secrets of sleepers, of the presence of a portal

It would be nice if you could have some control over it, deciding which memories would stay, which would be banished to the netherworld. Poof. Just like that.

Lexie didn't like the way alcohol slowed down her thinking, said it was like putting on a thick, fuzzy bear suit that was hot and uncomfortable and made the world seem muffled. She claimed that marijuana leveled her out, helped slow her racing thoughts so the rest of her could catch up.

Nate seemed to live in a world where unpredictable things didn't happen.

The truth was, she liked the sparse look of bare countertops and shelves; the empty white walls felt like a clean slate.

But what truth would that be? There were so many to choose from.

It's odd, really. Trying to impose order on nature. The garden is a living, breathing thing; sometimes I'm quite sure it's got a mind of its own.

life and the hold it had over you. It might seem extreme, but it works. Time after time.

I come to school and pretend that I'm not one of them. That I'm this alien, from way off in some other galaxy. I've just been sent here to observe.

I don't have a point. I'm just curious. It's an area I don't know much about." He nodded. This he understood. The need to learn whatever you could about the things you didn't know, to fill in the gaps, to be constantly supplying your brain with new information and facts.

Everyone's looking for something, she thought. Ghosts. Scientific explanations of the world around us. A new and different life somewhere else.

Sometimes you listen with your ears; sometimes it's like your whole body becomes this antenna and you pick up on everything.

Sometimes what a person needs most is to be forgiven.

If snow melts down to water, does it still remember being snow?

Ain't no point worrying about what's been or what's gonna be. You just gotta do your best right now. And trust everyone else is doing the same.