“You don't need to talk to someone to know them. All you need to do is watch. See how they carry themselves. See how they treat others.”
“...It's better to feel the world around you. People let themselves become too desensitized. How can you write if you don't feel anything?”
“My mother always said that love is an entanglement. If you get too tangled, you lose yourself. It’s just a distraction. A way of escaping into someone else because you think that’ll be what finally makes you happy. Like a drug.”
“Moments later, the cowbells clattered, and Rachel Anderson, the creative-writing teacher from the community college, walked in. Rachel, wearing a floor-skimming lavender skirt, her long, blond hair pulled into a neat French braid, scanned the diner. Settling her sunglasses on the top of her head, she went to the counter and politely addressed the group.”
“Rachel was nowhere in sight. She was the one who comforted him with her warm smile and silent laughter. He could tell that she loved her family. She was the mother bird of the nest, the nurturer.”
“He was sure that people liked him because of the person he pretended to be.”
“We’re having such a hard time, Daddy,” she told him. “Everyone’s so miserable without you. I just want so badly for things to go back to the way they were.”
“You don’t need to talk to someone to know them. All you need to do is watch.”
“be. It just didn’t make sense. She thought about Haley. The rumble of an eighteen-wheeler grew closer, and she opened her eyes. The rig pulled”
“OPENING THE DOOR to her mother’s bedroom, Haley was stunned to see that her mother was awake. Crisp, dog-eared black-and-white photos and hundreds of newer color photographs were scattered all over the bed and floor. An empty scrapbook lay on her mother’s bureau next to a box of tissues.”
“Allie was so fragrant, just like an oleander, its beautiful pink blossoms disguising its fatal venom. Like the flower, she was poison. Most women were—except for Rachel Anderson, of course . . . and very few others.”
“Months of built-up hurt and frustration needed unleashing.”
“She’d shed tears until there were none left.”
“ballerina lay toppled over on her vanity table. A can of hairspray lay on its side on top of her bed, and clothes were strewn all over the carpet. The room smelled moldy. Wondering if there was a wet towel in Kelsey’s closet, Rachel walked across the room and opened the door. “What are you doing in here?”
“Lying was what kept him safe, alive, and relatively sane when he was little and”
“The asphalt was agonizing but also therapeutic in a way. A Southern antidepressant.”
“I realized that people's reactions had more to do with them, more to do with who they were, than anything about me”
“They don't believe in anything either. You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren't interested."
"They don't want communism."
"They want enough rice," I said. "They don't want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don't want our white skins around telling them what they want."
"If Indochina goes--"
"I know that record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does 'go' mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I'd bet my future harp against your golden crown that in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but they'll be growing paddy in these fields, they'll be carrying their produce to market on long poles, wearing their pointed hats. The small boys will be sitting on the buffaloes. I like the buffaloes, they don't like our smell, the smell of Europeans.”
“They would jeer him, and, if practicable, pelt him with missiles.”
“Surely if we knew what bitterness fate held in store, we would shrink back in fear and let the cup of life pass us by untasted.”
“Lies," Mr Solomon said the next morning as he walked into the classroom. "We tell them to our friends," he said. "We tell them to our enemies. And eventually...we tell them to ourselves.”
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