“That was our mistake, I think. One of many mistakes. To believe that boys were acting with a logic that we could someday understand. To believe that their actions had any meaning beyond thoughtless impulse. We were like conspiracy theorists,… — Emma Cline Copy Share
“The only teenagers in town seemed to kill themselves in gruesomely rural ways—I heard about their pickups crashing at two in the morning, the sleepover in the garage camper ending in carbon monoxide poisoning, a dead quarterback. I didn’t know… — Emma Cline Copy Share Image
“Let's just give her a ride into town," Suzanne said. She spoke briskly, like I was a mess that needed to be cleaned up.… — Emma Cline Copy Share Image
“None of this was rare. Things like this happened hundreds of times. Maybe more. The hatred that vibrated beneath the surface of my girl’s… — Emma Cline Copy Share Image
“Money is ego, and people won't give it up. Just want to protect themselves, hold onto it like a blanket. They don't realize it… — Emma Cline Copy Share Image
“There are survivors of disasters whose accounts never begin with the tornado warning or the captain announcing engine failure, but always much earlier in the timeline: an insistence that they noticed a strange quality to the sunlight that morning or excessive static in their sheets. A meaningless fight with a boyfriend. As if the presentiment of catastrophe wove itself into… — Emma Cline Copy Share
“The possibility of judgment being passed on me supplanted any worries or questions I might have about Russell. At that age, I was, first… — Emma Cline Copy Share Image
“Mislila sam da ljubav koju prema nekom osjećaš djeluje kao zaštitna mjera, pa će ta osoba razumjeti raspon i snagu tvojih osjećaja i onda… — Emma Cline Copy Share Image
“A rock, I thought crazily. He'll pick up a rock. He'll break open my skull, my brain leaking onto the sand. He'll tighten his hands around my throat until my wind-pipe collapses. The stupid things I thought of: Sasha and her briny, childish mouth. How the un had looked in the tops of the trees lining my childhood driveway. Whether… — Emma Cline Copy Share
“The built-in preventative of another person meant I couldn’t indulge the animal feelings, couldn’t leave orange peels in the kitchen sink. I dressed right after breakfast instead of haunting my robe all day. Swiped on mascara from a mostly dried-up tube. These were the cogent human labors, the daily tasks that staved larger panics, but living alone had gotten me… — Emma Cline Copy Share
“I was already starting to understand that other people's admiration asked something of you. That you had to shape yourself around it.” — Emma Cline Copy Share Image
“Mitch studied me with a questioning, smug smile. Men did it so easily, that immediate parceling of value. And how they seemed to want… — Emma Cline Copy Share Image
“No-one had ever looked at me before Suzanne, not really, so she had become my definition. Her gaze softening my centre so easily that… — Emma Cline Copy Share Image
“How drugs patchworked simple, banal thoughts into phrases that seemed filled with importance. My glitchy adolescent brain was desperate for causalities, for conspiracies that… — Emma Cline Copy Share Image
