Quotes from Exit to Eden

336 pages

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“What does all this mean finally, I kept asking like a college kid. Why does it make me want to cry? Maybe it’s that we are all outsiders, we are all making our own unusual way through a wilderness of
normality that is just a myth.”
― quote from Exit to Eden


“Elegance is really a kind of control.”
― quote from Exit to Eden


“You only hurt people when you tell them the truth about things that they cannot respect or understand”
― quote from Exit to Eden


“Each of us has within him a dark chamber where the real desire flowers; and the horror of it is that they never see the light of another's understanding, those strange blooms. It is as lonely as it is dark, that chambers of the heart.”
― quote from Exit to Eden


“I have this theory actually, that after an absence you discover in that first glimpse what you really think and feel about another person. You know things you couldn't know before”
― quote from Exit to Eden



“I have this theory that actually, after an absence you discover in that first glimpse what you really think and feel about another person. You know things you couldn't know before.”
― quote from Exit to Eden


“She was standing there all right. And I was in love with her. So much for the first glimpse.”
― quote from Exit to Eden


“It's that nobody has ever been able to convince me that anything sexual between consenting individuals is wrong. I mean it's like part of my brain is missing. Nothing disgusts me. It all seems innocent, to do with profound sensations, and when people tell me they are offended by things, I just don't know what they mean.”
― quote from Exit to Eden


“You have the thing all men and women strive for: the lover from whom you do not have to hide anything.”
― quote from Exit to Eden


“El cabello me caía sobre los hombros desnudos como un manto protector. Tenía los pezones duros, y me pregunté si ese extraño, ese conocedor de los entresijos del mundo sexual secreto, había notado que mi entrepierna estaba húmeda.”
― quote from Exit to Eden



“Y el largo vuelo de regreso a casa, los alumnos en el campus, los jóvenes de mirada vidriosa, destruidos por las drogas y las ideas, que ni siquiera se fijaban en las muchachas altas y bronceadas cuyos pechos se transparentaban bajo las finas camisetas de algodón y hablaban de marihuana, sexo, revolución, los derechos de las mujeres en el mayor laboratorio social del mundo.”
― quote from Exit to Eden


“Everything is coming to an end, I thought. But what does that mean? Why do I say things to myself when I don't even know what they mean?”
― quote from Exit to Eden


Popular quotes

“I'd do the bastard, then hold the man for a lifetime afterwards.”
― Jack L. Pyke, quote from Backlash


“I stood in the corridor feeling like an angry pebble. It didn't matter where I rolled off to. The mystery and treachery of the world continued, and a pebble like me could get angry over anything it liked and it wouldn't do any good. Librarians not reading, I thought to myself. Sometimes I don't know why I bother.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights?


“You weren’t supposed to choose me,” he said.
Behind them, Ira approached, stunned and speechless for what must have been the first time in his life. He helped lift Samuel, whose cheeks had blanched as well. Camille prodded Oscar’s arms and stomach and face. It was truly him. The unbearable grief over losing him flipped inside out. Her joy ran so deep and strong she thought she might burst from it.
“The night the Christina went down, you rowed to me,” she answered, her throat knotted as she thought of her father. She forced it down. “This time, I must have needed to row to you.”
Oscar kissed her, his lips still cold but filled with life. She leaned into him and hung on as though he might disappear. Ira let out a playful high-pitched whistle. Samuel coughed. Oscar and Camille reluctantly pulled apart and blushed.
“Holy gallnipper,” Ira said. Camille grinned, not minding in the least that he was using that annoying turn of phrase again. “I can’t believe that little rock…I mean you were dead, mate. Dead as this bloke right here.” Ira kicked McGreenery in the leg. Oscar nodded, rubbing his hand over the fading red mark, as if to feel for himself that the deadly wound was gone.
“I was in the dory,” he whispered. Ira cocked his head.
“Say again?”
Camille lifted her ear from his chest, where she’d wanted to listen to the smooth rhythm of his heart. She looked up at him before hearing its strong beat.
“The dory?”
Oscar nodded again, eyebrows creased.
“I heard your voice. At the cave,” he said to Camille. “This force kept pulling me backward, away from you, like I was being sucked into the ground.”
So this was how it had felt for him to die. She remembered the way he’d looked right through her and how it had chilled her to the marrow. Her own brush with death had been different, and somehow better, if death could even be measured in levels of bad or good. The image of her father had drawn her to safety, making her forget her yearning for air. He had been there for her, but she hadn’t been able to do the same for him. All this time, all this trouble, and all she’d wanted was to bring him back, make him proud of the lengths to which she’d gone for him. In the end, she’d failed him miserably.
“And then you were gone. Your voice faded, and I was in the dory, adrift in the Tasman, the dawn after the Christina went down,” Oscar continued.
Samuel and Ira glanced at each other with marked expressions of doubt and confusion.
“But I wasn’t alone.” He gently pulled Camille away from him and gripped her arms. “Your father was with me. He was sitting there, smiling. It all seemed so real. I could taste the salt air, and…and I remember touching the water, and it was cold. It wasn’t like in a dream, when you can’t do those things.”
Camille sucked in a deep breath, trying to inflate her crushing lungs. Oscar had seen him, too. She’d give anything to see her father again, to hear his voice, to feel at home by just being in his presence. At least, that’s what she’d once believed. But Camille hadn’t been willing to give up Oscar. Did that mean she loved her father less? Never. She could never love her fatherless. So then why hadn’t her heart chosen him?
"Did he say anything?" she asked, anxious to know yet afraid to hear.
"It's all jumbled," Oscar said, again shaking his head and rubbing his chest. "I remember him saying a few things. Bits and pieces."
Camille looked to Ira and Samuel. Their parted mouths and bugged eyes hung on Oscar's every word. Oscar squinted at the ground and seemed to be working hard to piece together what her father had said on the other side.
"I'm still here to guide her?" he said, questioning his own memory. "It doesn't make any sense, I'm sorry."
She shook her head, eyes tearing up again. It had been real. He really had come to her in the black water of the underground pool.
"No, don't be sorry," she said, tears spilling. "It does make sense. It makes sense to me.”
― Angie Frazier, quote from Everlasting


“I'd rather be in danger with you than be safe without you.”
― Fuyumi Ono, quote from The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow


“No he probado la ejecución ni la reclusión perpetua, pero si se puede juzgar a priori, la pena de muerte, a mi juicio, es más moral y humana que la reclusión. La ejecución mata de golpe, mientras que la reclusión vitalicia lo hace lentamente. ¿Cuál de los verdugos es más humano? ¿El que lo mata a usted en pocos minutos o el que le quita la vida durante muchos años?”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Racconti


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