110 Quotes by Peter Hedges

I stared at her – unable to accept that at one time I was growing inside her. I was once just a couple of cells. My father and my mother were naked something had to be satisfactory about it, because he came inside her and she got pregnant. She, like me, was once a baby in her mother’s stomach and so on and so forth and so it goes. So it goes.

No ‘buts’, Gilbert. You just make sense to me. It’s nothing more special than that.

I was seven when he hung himself, and I don’t remember all that much, and anything I did remember, I’ve managed to forget.

She doesn’t acknowledge Tucker, and there’s no thank you for the cigarettes. She says a person shows their gratitude by action, not by words. So I guess that means she thanks me by smoking every cigarette in every pack.

I never want to regret. ‘Regret’ is the ugliest word.

It’s supposed to go bing-bing or bong-bong or ding-ding when tires go over it. The one at Dave’s stopped working several years ago, and he won’t have it fixed because he feels as I do – that none of us need to be reminded we exist.

You can tell the idyllic nature of a family by the upkeep of its picnic table. Ours is its own indictment. We are splintering and peeling. We rot.

The more Christian you are in this town, the more makeup you wear. I’ve always thought that it’s because if you were to die suddenly, you’d look better for God.

He loves to hide, but only if you take the time to find him. And while I suspect that’s true for most people, only a retard or a kid would admit it.