45 Quotes by Allie Ray

She felt neither the shimmering, aching thrill of kissing Cole nor the reckless confusion of being with Mr. Schubert. But rather grounded herself on the promise of a warm, humming tedium as simple, as predictable as Bill himself.

It was one thing to be under the earth, in Nebraska. And quite another to be on top of it. To plant your feet against the wind and glare because you could hardly keep your eyes open. And glare because you could hardly smile, not without getting grit in your teeth.

Never in her life had she seen him this way--without that smirking assurance in his mouth. In his eyes. In his shoulders. He looked like another man; like a boy. Like a poor, beaten little boy no one had ever actually loved; an orphan in a Jacob Riis photograph, patched trousers, smudge-faced.

That old Golden Rule, "you reap what you sow" nonsense--I've got a problem with that. This idea you choose what you put into the world and it comes back just as you expect. Sow good, reap good. Sow evil, reap evil. Like we've got our pick of every seed sack in the world. But we don't have our pick, do we? No man gets to choose his talents, or his advantages. You do the best you can with what you got. But it's still just..birthright and happenstance. Bad luck and rotten seed.

People liked to poke fun at Mildred Eklund. They talked about the men she slept with and what a shame it was Rachel got all the looks in the family. But Lars didn't think she was so unfortunate. Her arms were strong, scouring away the grime and the memory of a terrible thing done on that spot. And she was strong, just for getting down on the floor in this room. Just for being the one who took up the brush and scrubbed it away.

And Lars thought of himself. Of the vast, gaping cave within him, black like pitch. Dark like the morgue beneath Monson's department store. Windowless and secret and clammy and ignored.[...] And Lars' stomach churned, wretched ill, because for the first time he realized he was filled throat to gut with formaldehyde. Mildred said he was the undertaker, but that wasn't true.He was the morgue.

What love will do'--easy to say when it's not you that has to be pregnant, has to give birth. Easy to chalk up carelessness to passion.

Everybody loves an easy girl," he said. "It's just a question of how deeply, for how long. And the answer to both--is not very.

You see, it doesn't matter what it takes to have something lovely and wild; it doesn't even matter that you've crushed it into something ordinary, so long as it's under your boot where it belongs...