27 Quotes by J. Ryan Stradal

Money allows people to survive their mistakes, she knew from having observed that phenomenon from a distance, and people like her were fucked.

Well, the vast majority of people don't steal to get ahead. A lot of people work their way up from nothing without stealing.""I don't think a lot of people work their way up from nothing, ever. People like you want to believe it happens all the time. But it really doesn't.

...but she wouldn’t leave the legacy she desired simply through prideful public displays, like some men did. There were advantages to a low profile. It was like a man to scratch his name on the banister of history, but Helen had come to believe that it was better to be the stairs.

One of the things that Eva hated the most about being a kid was how everyone always told her that childhood was the best time of their entire lives, and don't grow up too fast, and enjoy these carefree days while you can. In those moments, her body felt like the world's smallest prison, and she escaped in her mind to her chile plants, resting on rock wool substrate under a grow light in a bedroom closet, as much a prisoner of USDA hardiness zone 5b as she was.

It reminded her of holding hands on the deck of a swaying boat, when, without warning, the other person lets you go. That moment between when your hand is empty and when you reach the railing can take years.

Things were pretty decent where she was, and she didn't ever see the point of bellyaching about the things she couldn't change, especially in a world that never once ran a want ad looking for a complainer

When you see a man falling off a ladder above you, Edith believed, you don’t envision your arms breaking. You just hold them out.

God made her a giving person, and even in this house of people who could be so hateful and hard, her one skill, she knew, was to serve them and make them happy, the way even an unwatered tree still provides whatever shade it can.

She suddenly felt sorry for these people, for perverting the food of their childhood, the food of their mothers and grandmothers, and rejecting its unconditional love in favor of what? What? Pat did not understand.