Emily

“One day you are living an ordinary life with its ordinary ups and downs, and then that life is ripped apart, and you can never feel entirely secure again. You spend your days looking over your shoulder; your understanding of the world is changed. You see it as a brittle place, full of hostility.”

“I'm sure they have it under control. They probably already have a suspect. There are CCTV cameras on that block. Nothing goes undetected anymore. I always hated the cameras. I thought it was the sign of a surveillance state. But now, I find they make me feel a little bit safer. I suppose this is how people become conservative. ... Being a property owner changes your perspective of things, whether you like it or not. Even the smallest apartment is enough to do the job. It's difficult not to be contaminated by it. There's a difference between living in theory and living in practice.”

“We all fall, Ms. Fitch. We fall and we rise. Bones and tissue heal. But sometimes we want to hold on to the pain. Sometimes we have our reasons for not being able to let go.”

“She is always there, always ready, always on time, like only the truly mediocre are.”

–from the author's interview in the back of the book–

“And that act of performing inherently causes you to second-guess yourself, which is so scary: the pain is a reality that you're living but because of the performance element of sharing it, your reality immediately becomes suspect.”

“I found there was a lot of pressure to be a good patient and to conform to some sort of progress narrative that my therapist or surgeon might have.”

“This encouragement, it seemed to her, ought though to come directly from upstairs and not from other people, and it bothered her that she had brought it up to Noah, that he might think she was after him about it. Maybe there was some [spiritual] feeling in him somewhere and maybe there wasn't, but it wasn't up to her or anyone else to go poking for it and applying bellows in any place but themselves.”