Quotes from Lisa Unger

But I think how we treat any one person is how we treat the world

The truth is that we're all essentially alone. The lucky ones have a crew to share the load from birth to death. But in the end, we go as we came—a single entity, just passing through. But that's not a thing people like to hear. The story of being surrounded and supported and loved, being a part of something, the whole, almost sacred notion that family is everything is sold hard, and bought completely.

He's dead, Annie. But as long as you haven't dealt with the memories of the things he has done to you, he'll live on. We'll always have to face these times when you think he's returned for you. You'll never be free." It

Fear holds on. Love lets go. "Yes

Sometimes it seems like Florida is trying to kill its residents, doesn't it? It wants us to go away so that it can reclaim its swampy self, be left alone to its darkness—alligators, snakes, and roaches free from pavement and walls of condo buildings, and wildlife corridors butting up against superhighways.

But his efforts were fractional compared to hers; and her praise was equal in measure to the encouragement she doled out to the children for their drawings that showed little talent, their stilted piano playing, or middling efforts on the soccer field. Not lies, exactly.

Wasn't there some belief about how if you drop a frog into boiling water, it will jump right out? But if you put it in cold water and turn up the heat gradually, it will allow itself to slowly cook to death?

And how the connections between them were as terribly fragile as they were indelible.

it's the good and open hearted people, those with the most to give, who are the most vulnerable. Because they think everyone is honest as they are.

I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed, For where I am closed, I am false. Rainer Maria Rilke

Did that ever happen to you? Do you have dreams that you are not in, in which you are only the observer. It's probably just me.

Motherhood was a widening circle of good-byes.

Harry Houdini had a saying that came back to Ian now and again: For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. For those who don't, none will suffice.

The knowledge. Of life and all its pain, the decision to stick around and do better. That's what heroism is, you know?

But then again, we're all on death row, aren't we? Most of us just don't know it.

Selena loved the liminal spaces. Those precious slivers of time between the roles she played in life.

Who you marry, what you choose as your profession, how you were raised—yes, that is the big picture. But, as they say, the devil's in the details.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles. Seminal coming-of-age tale. Intense adolescent friendship gone awry. Having to face yourself because of your own ugly deeds. Did Gene bounce the branch on purpose? Of course he did. Whether he realized it or not. No one else in class wanted to believe it. "It was an accident," the pert and pretty Jenna said. She sounded almost desperate. "He couldn't. He just wouldn't. They

But that was the hypocrisy of adulthood: You never wanted the children you cared about to do things you'd done when you were heedless of the fragility of life.

restaurants. Bailey liked New York City better before its Disney-fication, when it was still messy and dangerous, full of style, outrage, art, underground clubs. When you might easily get mugged on the Bowery, or offered drugs on Tenth Street, or propositioned in the Meatpacking District. Now things were homogenized, gentrified. Safer, prettier, Instagrammable. Better, some would no doubt say. But not real, somehow. Somehow packaged and sold. The idea of New York City, the dream of it.

That's how predators work. They give vulnerable people what they want or need, at first. They see a need, a desire, then they exploit, manipulate. When you're hooked, that's when the abuse starts.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

There's stardust in our bones.

She did love him, in that way that teenage girls love, like a lemming. Which is not love, of course.