Riley Sager > Quotes

“He once told me our relationship was like a rose. Beautiful, yes, but it came with thorns. I liked it to the weather. It was always changing. Icy seasons. Warm spells. Months when we'd talk almost every day and long sections of radio silence.”
― Riley Sager, Home Before Dark

“Lenora, the only one left, claimed to have had nothing to do with it.”
― Riley Sager, The Only One Left

“Yesterday, Mrs. Baker told me Hope’s End was a place where young women are given the benefit of the doubt. That’s not true everywhere. It’s true hardly anywhere.”
― Riley Sager, The Only One Left

“SURVIVOR ... It's both a declaration and dare. Go on, it says. Just try to fuck with me.”
― Riley Sager, Final Girls

“They’ve never waited for their paycheck to be directly deposited at the stroke of midnight because their wallet is empty and their credit cards are maxed and they desperately need to pay for gas. And food. And a prescription that’s gone unfilled for an entire week.”
― Riley Sager, Lock Every Door

“But I’m not an alcoholic. I can quit at any time. I just don’t want to. To prove it to myself, I set the bourbon down, keeping my hand close to the glass but not touching it. Then I wait, seeing how long I last before taking a sip. The seconds tick by, me counting each one in my head the same way I did when I was a girl and Marnie wanted me to time how long she could stay underwater before coming up for air. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. I make it to exactly forty-six Mississippis before sighing, grabbing the glass, and taking a gulp. As I swallow, I’m struck by a thought. One of those insights I usually drink to avoid. Maybe I’m not looking for trouble. Maybe I am the trouble.”
― Riley Sager, The House Across the Lake

“At night, you can’t see your reflection on the water. Centuries ago, before people knew any better, it was a common belief that reflective surfaces could trap the souls of the dead.”
― Riley Sager, The House Across the Lake

“Wrapped in Maddy’s red coat, she feels almost possessed by all the tough women she’s admired in movies. Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai. Crawford in, well, everything. The kind of women men don’t know if they want to kiss or kill. Women who claw and scrape through life because they have to. Now it’s Charlie’s turn. She’s no longer the scared, self-loathing girl she was when she left campus. She’s something else. A fucking femme fatale.”
― Riley Sager, Survive the Night

“There needs to be a counterpoint. Something dark. Or bitter. Or sour. Unsweetened chocolate. Cardamom and cinnamon. Lemon and lime. They cut through all the sugar, taming it just enough so that when you do taste the sweetness, you appreciate it all the more.”
― Riley Sager, Final Girls

“At seventeen, Lenora Hope I wonder if I should be scared. Hung her sister with a rope Because I am. Stabbed her father with a knife Even though there’s no reason to be scared. Took her mother’s happy life”
― Riley Sager, The Only One Left

“A Stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet”
― Riley Sager, Survive the Night

“I think he did it, but I just can’t prove it. —Taylor Swift, “No Body, No Crime”
― Riley Sager, The House Across the Lake

“In my experience, men who say they want the truth end up wishing they had settled for the lie.”
― Riley Sager, Middle of the Night

“It's a beautiful afternoon. Mid-sixties, sunny and clear. It reminds me of my childhood. Of pumpkins and piles of leaves and trick-or-treating.”
― Riley Sager, Lock Every Door

“Men like him gobbled up all they could, leaving nothing for everyone else.”
― Riley Sager, The Only One Left

“Revenge is fleeting. Vengeance lasts a lifetime.”
― Riley Sager, With a Vengeance

“The only differences here are that Boone isn’t a local, my heart’s too shattered to melt, and there’s no such thing as happily ever after. There’s only happy for a short period of time before everything falls apart.”
― Riley Sager, The House Across the Lake

“That by reading, whole worlds could be explored without ever leaving home. My father, on the other hand, warned me to get used to it. “It’s our lot in life, Kit-Kat,” he told me. “People like us toil. The rich bastards running everything make sure of that.”
― Riley Sager, The Only One Left

“Ladies shouldn’t play pool,” she once told me. “Lucky for me I’m not a lady,” I replied.”
― Riley Sager, The Only One Left

“Suspicion has a way of breaking through even the strongest barriers.”
― Riley Sager, Middle of the Night

“A saying I’d heard long ago came to mind: When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares into you.”
― Riley Sager, Home Before Dark

“She blamed herself and hated herself and punished herself because that’s what women are taught to do. Blame themselves. Blame the victims. Tell themselves that since the Angela Dunleavys and Taylor Morrisons and Madeline Forresters of the world had sat through the same lessons on assault, received the same tiny bottles of pepper spray, and endured the same self-defense classes, it must have been their fault they were attacked. Or raped. Or killed. No one tells women that none of it is their fault. That the blame falls squarely on the awful men who do terrible things and the fucked-up society that raises them, molds them, makes excuses for them. People don’t want to admit that there are monsters in their midst, so the monsters continue to roam free and the cycle of violence and blame continues.”
― Riley Sager, Survive the Night

“Because they take our world and improve upon it,” Charlie says. “Movies are magical that way. Everything is magnified. The colors are brighter. The shadows are darker. The action more violent and the love affairs more passionate. People break out into song. Or they used to. The emotions—love, hate, fear, laughter—are all bigger. And the people! All those beautiful faces in full close-up. So beautiful it’s hard to look away.”
― Riley Sager, Survive the Night

“The world is often brutal and cruel, and it only seems to get harder as time marches forward. The pressures and dangers kids face today are so much worse than when I was that age.”
― Riley Sager, Middle of the Night

“to himself. He claimed otherwise, of course. A peculiar trait among most self-important men is the need to try to hide their self-importance”
― Riley Sager, The Only One Left

“We all go a little mad sometimes.”
― Riley Sager, Survive the Night

“Every house has a story to tell and a secret to share.”
― Riley Sager, Home Before Dark

“I go to my father's desk, getting uncomfortable flashbacks to when Allie and I emptied my father's apartment a week after his death. It was rough. The entire place smelled like him - a soothing combo of wool, aftershave and old books. Every item dropped into a cardboard box felt as though a part of his existence was being locked away where no one could see it. Every tattered cardigan. Each worn-edged book. I was erasing my father piece by piece, and it gutted me.”
― Riley Sager, Home Before Dark

“Several scenarios pop into my head, starting with the worst, because that’s my default mode.”
― Riley Sager, Middle of the Night

“By the front door is a table normally used for mail and car keys. On it sits a single sheet of paper bearing six typed lines. Holding my breath, I pick it up and begin to read. At sixty-nine, Virginia Hope Wrote her nurse this little note Thank you, dear, for saving me Now it’s time to let you be I take my leave, walking tall Knowing that I fooled them all”
― Riley Sager, The Only One Left