Quotes from book

Just Listen

“Everything hurt. I closed my eyes, pressing my cheek to the street, and waited. What for, I didn't know. To be rescued. Or found. But no one came. All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.”

“instead, we just sat there, together but really apart, watching a show about a stranger and all her secrets, while keeping our own to ourselves, as always.”

“And while it is hard enough to take away something that makes a person happy it's even more difficult when it seems like it's the only thing.”

“I mean, to me, freaking out is different. More of a running away, not telling anyone what's wrong, slowly simmering until you burst kind of thing.”

“No matter how much time has passed, these things still affect us and the world we live in. If you don't pay attention to the past, you'll never understand the future. It's all linked together.”

“I'd been convinced I was on the outside, but really, I'd always been within arm's reach. All I had to do was ask, and I, too, would be easily brought back, surrounded and immersed, finding myself safe, somewhere in between.”

“I thought again how you could never really know what you were seeing with just a glance, in motion, passing by. Good or bad, right or wrong. There was always so much more.”

“So I left him there alone to watch history repeat the same events retold again and again on his own.”

“I sat up, sliding them off, and the quiet around me did not, for once, seem empty and vast. Instead, for the first time in a while, it felt like it already was full.”

“I am still the center sister. But I see it differently now. There has to be a middle. Without it, nothing can truly be whole. Because it is not just the space between, but also what holds everything together.”

“You really get to meet people on such a personal level. There's a real bonding in someone beating the crap out of you.”

“Only a real asshole takes liberties with someone else's car stereo. That's serious.”

“It is kind of hard to hold a lot in. But for me… it’s sometimes even harder to let it out.”

“Silence is so freaking loud”

“So while it seemed like you were seeing everything, you really weren't. Just bits and pieces that looked like a whole.”

“Harder to get in than out, like so little else.”

“It's a funny feeling, being suddenly airborne. Just as you realize it, it's over, and you're sinking.”

“All I'd ever wanted was to forget. but even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below.”

“It's hard to be nice when the rest of the world is so mean.”