“Her thoughts speed up and become less rational; her mind makes fantastic leaps. It's not that things don't make sense to her when she's like this — sometimes they make 'more' sense. They make sense the way dreams do. It's only when the dream is over that you see how odd it all was, how it actually didn't make sense at all.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“...nobody makes that much money without taking advantage of somebody. It's much easier to make money if you don't care who you hurt. If you have scruples, it's much harder to get rich.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“The wife is always the last to know, right?”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“She knows how judgemental mothers are, how good it feels to sit in judgement of someone else.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“Everyone is faking it, all of them pretending to be something they’re not. The whole world is built on lies and deceit.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“She knows she can’t survive this on her own.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“Anne remains in the living room, cradling her sleeping”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“He stares at her back and thinks about how much she has changed since the baby was born. It was entirely unexpected. They'd looked forward to the baby so much together--decorating the nursery, shopping for baby things, attending the birth-preparation classes, feeling the baby kick in her tummy. They had been some of the happiest months of his life. It had never occurred to him that it would be hard afterward. He hadn't seen it coming.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“I was crying when I fed her because I was sad about being fat and unattractive, and Cynthia—who is supposed to be a friend—had been flirting with my husband all evening.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“They will be judged, by the police and by everybody else. Serves them right, leaving their baby alone. She would think that, too, if it had happened to someone else. She knows how judgmental mothers are, how good it feels to sit in judgment of someone else.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“when a wife goes missing, the husband is usually the prime suspect, and probably vice versa.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“She makes things work the best she can, but it isn’t easy. Marco”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“listening to music. When we get home, we have to wake her. So no, I wouldn’t recommend her.” Rasbach nods, makes a note. Then he looks up and says, “Tell me about your husband.” “What about my husband?” “What kind of man is he?” “He’s”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“he wouldn’t be driving an Audi –”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“She glances at the baby monitor sitting at the end of the table, its small red light glowing like the tip of a cigarette.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“rapidly around the second floor of the house while”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“Who goes to a dinner party next door and leaves her baby alone in the house? What kind of mother does such a thing? She feels the familiar agony set in – she is not a good mother. So what if the sitter canceled? They should have brought Cora with them, put her in her portable playpen. But Cynthia had said no children.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“He must remain objective. He can’t afford to become emotionally invested in his cases. He would never survive.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“Whenever there was an opening for a new show, she would invite him; there would be champagne and hors d’oeuvres, women in smart dresses and men in well-cut suits. Anne would circulate around the room, stopping to talk with the people clustered in front of the paintings—wild, abstract splashes of color or more somber, tonal works. Marco didn’t understand any of it. The most beautiful, the most arresting thing in the room, for him, would always be Anne. He would stay out of her way, stand over by the bar eating cheese, or off to the side, and watch her do her thing. She had been trained for it, getting her degree in art history and modern art, but more than that, she had an instinct for it, a passion. Marco had not grown up with art, but it was part of her life, and he loved her for it.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“has learned in his years on the job, it is that people are capable of almost anything. Rasbach”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“Sometimes I wonder if it was right for us to keep things from him when you were younger.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“Marco hurries up the front steps of the house he’d left just hours before and bursts into the living room. He sees Anne on the sofa, cradling their tiny daughter in her arms. A uniformed police officer is standing behind the sofa, as if protecting her. Anne’s father and mother are not in the room. Marco wonders where they are, what has happened.”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
“clumsy fingers, feeling faintly guilty about going through his wife’s purse. It feels private. But this is an emergency. He dumps the contents onto the middle of their neatly made bed. Her wallet is there, her change purse, lipstick, pen, a tissue packet—it’s all there. Not an errand then. Maybe she stepped out to help a friend? An emergency of some kind? Still, she would have taken her purse with her if she was driving the car. And wouldn’t she have called him by now if she could? She could borrow someone else’s phone. It’s not like her to be thoughtless. Tom sits on the edge of the bed, quietly unraveling. His heart is beating too fast. Something is wrong. He thinks that maybe he should call the police. He”
― Shari Lapena, quote from The Couple Next Door
Shari Lapena
Born place: in Canada
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“I’m not going to pick her up and carry her screaming to the basement,” Trent said. “It’s a workday. Besides, she has a crutch.”
“Crutch or no, she’s hurt!” Ceri protested.
“I mean,” Trent said intently, “she can hit me with it if I do something she doesn’t like.”
― Kim Harrison, quote from A Perfect Blood
“True perception is the means by which the world is saved from sin, for sin does not exist. And it is this that true perception sees.”
― quote from A Course in Miracles
“[об американцах]
— Я понимаю, они — туристы, не отличающиеся очень уж развитым воображением. Вспоминаю, как училась там в школе. Ребята там казались мне гораздо более открытыми, по крайней мере в том, что касалось личных пристрастий. Всегда рассказывали, что чувствуют.
— Да дело вовсе не в том, что они об этом не рассказывают.
— А в том, что недостаточно чувствуют?
— Да и не в этом тоже. Недостаточно знают. Не позволяют себе много знать. Как с этим Грамши, о котором ты говорила. — Он помолчал и добавил: — Всё всегда делают по правилам.
Джейн помолчала немного.
— Питер писал о чём-то вроде этого в одном из писем. Как вначале тебе нравится их прямота… а потом начинаешь тосковать по извивам.
— Я испытал то же самое. Прозрачность — прекрасная вещь. Пока не начинаешь понимать, что она основана не столько на внутренней честности, сколько на отсутствии воображения. И эта их так называемая откровенность по поводу секса. Они просто не понимают, что утратили.”
― John Fowles, quote from Daniel Martin
“It struck me that Lee was in many ways our true hero. Lee was the one who did the dirtiest jobs, quietly, without fuss, without going into big emotional scenes. He was so efficient, so reliable, so brave. Whenever we fell short, he made up the gap. I'm not just talking about the red hot moments, when enemy soldiers were shooting at us, when we were within a moment of death. I'm talking about the sourer times too, when we were so tired we could hardly remember to breathe, or we were so bored we'd pick at each other just for something to do, or so distressed we'd wish a soldier would come along and blow us into oblivion with an M16. At all those times Lee stood strong. He was like the Wirrawee grain silo. You could see the grain silo from miles away, tall and reliable. It stood for Wirrawee, and it gave you a safe comforting feeling to know it was there. That was how I'd felt about Lee during the war.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Other Side of Dawn
“Well, I was thinking this very thing. I was thinking: I am going to die today, but Jesu also died, so he knows how it is with me. And I was thinking, would he know me when I came to him? Yes! Sitting in his hall, he will see me sail into the bay, and he will run down to meet me on the shore; he will wade into the sea and pull my boat onto the sand and welcome me as his wayfaring brother. Why will he do this? Because he too has suffered, and he knows, Aeddan, he knows.” Beaming, Gunnar concluded, “Is that not good news?”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, quote from Byzantium
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