Quotes from Whistling In the Dark

“...things happen when you least expect them. Things that can change your whole life.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“...things can happen when you least expect them so you always gotta be prepared. And pay attention to the details. The devil is in the details.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“Life, it is not simple like a garden, where flowers are always flowers and weeds are always weeds.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“My arms were covered in scratches and had bled a little so I licked my finger and cleaned them off and thought God would have done a better job if he made blood taste like Three Musketeers bars.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“--I wouldn't throw that cat out of bed.

--When did you get a cat?”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“Ethel Jackson was the cool side of my pillow when I had a fever.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“Let bygones be bygones because everybody knew that forgiveness was divine.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“If we could find Sara's body, we'd probably get a reward and our pictures in the newspaper like Mary Lane did when she called in that fire she set.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“Eddie's ma, that would be Mrs. Callahan, her husband got killed last winter over at the Feelin' Good Cookie Factory. They had an open casket at the funeral so you could see dead Mr. Callahan, who hadn't looked that great in life and looked even worse in death. Especially after that cookie press got to him. But Mr. Becker from Becker Funeral Homes had done a nice job fluffing Mr. Callahan's face back out again so he ended up looking like one of those waxy mannequins that you pay a dime to see up at the Wisconsin state Fair.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“When I was sure she was asleep, I got up and went into Mother's room and pulled her yellow nightie out from the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then I got Daddy's Timex from the dressing table and put it on my wrist. After I said my prayers and told Daddy I was sorry like I did every night, I laid down at the foot of Mother's bed and drifted off to the sound of rain that was strong enough to be good for the crops, and tried and tried to remember the last time I felt safe.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“Clearly, Nell was going crazy. (Well, she certainly had the hair for it.)”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer... If one of those bottles should happen to fall, there'd be how many bottles of beer on the wall?”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

“And as I watched the car pull away toward the cemetery, the little white funeral flag waving good-bye, I felt blessed to be breathing, to have my heart beating.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark

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Popular quotes

“Sometimes, it seemed, the business of a Witch or a Godmother was not so much using magic as knowing when not to use it.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from The Fairy Godmother

“You picked a lemon, throw it away lemonade is overrated. Freaks should remain at the circus, not in your apartment. You already have one asshole. You don’t need another. Make a space in your life for the glorious things you deserve. Have faith.”
― Greg Behrendt, quote from He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys

“Who are we to say getting incested or abused or violated or any of those things can’t have their positive aspects in the long run? … You have to be careful of taking a knee-jerk attitude. Having a knee-jerk attitude to anything is a mistake, especially in the case of women, where it adds up to this very limited and condescending thing of saying they’re fragile, breakable things that can be destroyed easily. Everybody gets hurt and violated and broken sometimes. Why are women so special? Not that anybody ought to be raped or abused, nobody’s saying that, but that’s what is going on. What about afterwards? All I’m saying is there are certain cases where it can enlarge you or make you more of a complete human being, like Viktor Frankl. Think about the Holocaust. Was the Holocaust a good thing? No way. Does anybody think it was good that it happened? No, of course not. But did you read Viktor Frankl? Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning? It’s a great, great book, but it comes out of his experience. It’s about his experience in the human dark side. Now think about it, if there was no Holocaust, there’d be no Man’s Search for Meaning… . Think about it. Think about being degraded and brought within an inch of your life, for example. No one’s gonna say the sick bastards who did it shouldn’t be put in jail, but let’s put two things into perspective here. One is, afterwards she knows something about herself that she never knew before. What she knows is that the most totally terrible terrifying thing that she could ever have imagined happening to her has now happened, and she survived. She’s still here, and now she knows something. I mean she really, really knows. Look, totally terrible things happen… . Existence in life breaks people in all kinds of awful fucking ways all the time, trust me I know. I’ve been there. And this is the big difference, you and me here, cause this isn’t about politics or feminism or whatever, for you this is just ideas, you’ve never been there. I’m not saying nothing bad has ever happened to you, you’re not bad looking, I’m sure there’s been some sort of degradation or whatever come your way in life, but I’m talking Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning type violation and terror and suffering here. The real dark side. I can tell from just looking at you, you never. You wouldn’t even wear what you’re wearing, trust me.
What if I told you it was my own sister that was raped? What if I told you a little story about a sixteen-year-old girl who went to the wrong party with the wrong guy and four of his buddies that ended up doing to her just about everything four guys could do to you in terms of violation? But if you could ask her if she could go into her head and forget it or like erase the tape of it happening in her memory, what do you think she’d say? Are you so sure what she’d say? What if she said that even after that totally negative as what happened was, at least now she understood it was possible. People can. Can see you as a thing. That people can see you as a thing, do you know what that means? Because if you really can see someone as a thing you can do anything to him. What would it be like to be able to be like that? You see, you think you can imagine it but you can’t. But she can. And now she knows something. I mean she really, really knows.
This is what you wanted to hear, you wanted to hear about four drunk guys who knee-jerk you in the balls and make you bend over that you didn’t even know, that you never saw before, that you never did anything to, that don’t even know your name, they don’t even know your name to find out you have to choose to have a fucking name, you have no fucking idea, and what if I said that happened to ME? Would that make a difference?”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

“There is a connection between Dal mations and gipsies. Many people believe that it was the gipsies who first brought Dalmatians to England, long, long ago. And nothing like as long ago as that, there were gipsies who travelled round England with Dalmatians trained to do tricks. And these performing dogs earned money for the gipsies.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from The 101 Dalmatians

“My beloved, you have chosen me. You have been courted by my adversary, and you have chosen me. You have answered my call to the Circle, and today I call you my bride.”
― Ted Dekker, quote from White: The Great Pursuit

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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