167 Quotes by Megan Abbott

  • Author Megan Abbott
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    Because they do burn leaves here, the older folks do, and I remember now that I love it and always have. The way fall feels at night because of it, because of the crackling sound and walking around the sidewalks, like when you’re a kid, and kicking those soft piles, and seeing smoke from backyards and Mr. Kilstrap standing over the metal drum with the holes in the top, the sparking embers at his feet.

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  • Author Megan Abbott
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    There's something crazily beautiful about it, the banks of stacked illuminated signs- Sauna Hut, Sheer Elegance, Waterbeds USA, Chiropractic Here, Benihana, Ideal Uniform- gorse rolling from curbed island to curbed island, across the endless parking lots like suburban tumbleweed. Last week, I watched one roll over a lit cigarette, flaring brightly. If there'd been anything natural in its path, it might have started a fire.

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  • Author Megan Abbott
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    The drone in my ear, it’s like the tornado drill in elementary school, the hand-cranked siren that rang mercilessly, all of us hunched over on ourselves, facing the basement walls, heads tucked into our chests. Beth and me wedged tight, jeaned legs pressed against each other. The sounds of our own breathing. Before we all stopped believing a tornado, or anything, could touch us, ever

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  • Author Megan Abbott
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    Now that I'm caught up in it, I feel a whiff of panic. This is Diane. And just as before, we are thrown together, and just as before, we want the same thing. A prize, dangling.

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  • Author Megan Abbott
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    Once, a few weeks ago, she’d heard a girl’s voice in there and wondered if it was porn on the computer until she could tell it wasn’t. She heard the voice say Eli’s name. E-liii. She’d turned her music as loud as she could, held her hands to her ears, even sang to herself, eyes clamped shut. She hoped he heard her fling off her Ked so hard it hit the wall. She hoped he remembered she was here.

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  • Author Megan Abbott
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    Back when Deenie was in middle school, she was always having sleepovers. All those girly thumping and trills on the other side of his bedroom wall confused and annoyed and stirred him, so he’d sneak down to the basement and page through a mildewed 1985 Playboy he’d found under the laundry chute. The pictures were startling and beautiful, but he always felt ashamed after, standing at the laundry sink where his mom scrubbed his uniform.

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  • Author Megan Abbott
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    No way," he said, shaking his head, shaking the image of Lise, bare-legged, her skirt hitched high, from his thoughts. "Lise, she’s a sister to me." "Oh," she said, fingertips making circles just above the waist of her skirt. Wider and wider circles. "A sister," he repeated. He looked at her. There was something scratching again, in the corner above his eye, like those metal probes at the dentist clawing at your teeth.

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