Quotes from Lisa Unger

She just wanted to love and to be loved. She just didn't know what love looked like

Something about her called away a piece of him, and it floated through the air and she breathed it in, and it was forever lost to her.

I'm not old, but I've misused my body and let others misuse it, and I think it shows.

But that was the world now, everyone in their little silo, broadcasting versions of their lives from a screen, onto the screens of others.

It was a secret space, a place apart from the world where all time stood still.

It's such a female thing, to reflexively apologize for everything, for your very existence it sometimes seems.

Good, according to Stella, with the books. He was well-read. He hand-sold, getting to know patrons and recommending books they might like. He's a throwback, said Stella. A real bookseller, in an industry that had stopped caring about story and only cared about numbers.

While Birdie was a guest in their home, the Crosses would find her irresistibly charming, impeccably well mannered, and delightfully funny. But when they were out of earshot once again, Birdie would tell Kate in unsparing detail what she really thought. Birdie Burke took merciless measure.

It's rare that someone doesn't have a device clutched in his hand, isn't staring at a screen all the time, relationships scrolling out in bubbles, text disembodied from voice and body, language pared down to barest meaning and, so, far less meaningful than actual conversation. How did we let them do it, separate us from each other while making us seem more connected than ever? How did we let them strip voice and touch and tone from our interactions?

Eloise knew that it was so much more complicated than that. There are no trades in this life, and depression is a dark, dark doorway some people have no choice but to walk through.

We have more patience for girls who act like boys than boys who act like girls. A tomboy is considered cute. One day she'll shuck her muddy jeans and put on a dress, and everyone will gasp at her beauty. They'll all laugh about her tree-climbing, frog-catching days. But there's no such tolerance for the boy who puts on a dress, who wants a toy kitchen or a baby doll to love.

It looked was deep, gaping like a mouth.

I've had my fill of cool, Willow. These days it's kindness, honesty, and stability that impress me.

Bailey always lived in cities, where everything was a crush and you were never really alone. He craved the buzz of people and culture, food and energy, architecture.

Say what you want about the modern world and all its evils. But the emptiness of the area was starting to press on him.

Somehow I escaped punishment in that life, and so now, lifetimes later, a very special kind of hell is being rained down on me, the full rage of karmic justice.

Sometimes a stranger was the safest place in your life.

Character gives us qualities, but it is in actions—what we do—that we are happy or the reverse…. All human happiness and misery take the form of action. —ARISTOTLE Writing

You have to incapacitate the women first. Because women are the fighters. They will go claw and teeth to protect their families.

The room was filled with the electricity of mistakes about to be made.

We're dead far longer than we're alive. Why not celebrate? Why not tell ourselves a story about what comes next?

A haunting is not what you think, Liz would tell their clients. Places, like people, have memories. Trauma and pain disrupt and change the energy of the ground or the structures. Land, houses: they remember. And, for sensitive people, those memories are communicated in different ways.

it was the dawn of a new day that Birdie prized. It was God's little reminder that no matter how dark the night, the sun always rises.

That virus, it's spreading from China to Europe. There's talk of a lockdown