Barbara Taylor Sissel > Quotes

“Honey, you can get happy in the same shoes you get sad in,”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“Tara said, “Sorry is such a useless little word.” “It’s better than nothing,” Lauren said. “Sometimes it’s all we have.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“This was the place where they lived, on the dark, unraveling edges of doubt and lost faith, love that was uncertain.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“But neither would she ever resolve the question of what was worse: losing a child or never having one.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Faultlines

“The trouble with life, as far as Annie Beauchamp was concerned, was that it never gave you a clue about what was coming. When a terrible thing happened, life just charged at you, running full out, clobbering you, usually from behind. You were down then. You were left sick in your stomach and broken in your heart, trying to pick up your wits, your scattered pieces, and when you looked back, you saw that you didn’t have a clue, not one inkling.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“Still, the idea of strangers living in her grandparents’ beloved house was so foreign, so beyond comprehension—like selling your arm or your heart, your family’s legacy. So much of their childhood was framed by that house—its porch posts and sun-warmed floorboards, the hidden nooks that only they knew. Who else would love it as much? Who else would hear the echo of their laughter around every corner?”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“one else would ever be as constant or as tender as her mother. No one would ever care so much about her. Annie had thought when her mom died, long before Annie was ready to let her go, that she would die, too. But she hadn’t.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“a quote from his idol, Henry David Thoreau, that read: The moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“But devotion borne out of a sense of duty was not the same as devotion that rose, helpless and unbidden, as the extant and unstoppable side effect of love.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“If one act of violence can so irrevocably change someone, I can’t begin to imagine the emotional effect of multiple acts of violence such as what soldiers experience during war.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, The Truth We Bury

“When a terrible thing happened, life just charged at you, running full out, clobbering you, usually from behind. You were down then. You were left sick in your stomach and broken in your heart, trying to pick up your wits, your scattered pieces, and when you looked back, you saw that you didn’t have a clue, not one inkling.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“But you couldn’t stop people from making mistakes, not even when you loved them, not even when they were your own flesh and blood and you’d shared everything, including the air you breathed, from childhood forward.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“bedroom for him in her house, although he”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“she thought of the radiating waves of”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“just because you can do a thing like stay open and work seven days a week doesn’t mean you should.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“But what else was there to count on in this world other than your life and your mind and the rational way the two things worked together?”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“she brought it to him,”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Safe Keeping

“Sometimes it’s harder to receive a gift than it is to give one. Her mother had said that. Her mother had said some debts couldn’t be paid back, only forward. Darlene”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“But where were we before? Lauren wondered. Which ones of us ever stopped for him, thought about him, thought of asking what he might need—before he disappeared? Why did it always take a calamity to get people moving, to make them care, make them do the right thing? The”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“Why did it always take a calamity to get people moving, to make them care, make them do the right thing?”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel

“She didn’t walk her talk.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“Desire was a fierce thing. It could blind you to all kinds of truth.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“It was Texas after all, where folks had strong ideas about their right to bear arms, especially in the boonies. They’d shoot their gun at somebody for no more reason than the look in their eye. They’d shoot their gun to celebrate good news or just because they felt like it, and sometimes that thoughtless shooting killed somebody.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“How do you get there? she would ask. She wanted so badly to know. But no one could tell her, not even Carol. You just do it, she said. It’s easy, she said. Honey, you can get happy in the same shoes you get sad in, she said. Trust me.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“In retrospect it would seem eerie, given all the church would take from her. But the day she found it, she was intrigued. It”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“At least in his mind, there wasn’t a difference between a sin of omission versus one of commission. The result was the same. But she didn’t have a better answer.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Faultlines

“life. It wasn’t deliberate, nor was it out of anger or resentment. She could blame Paul, and sometimes she did, but he couldn’t have assigned her to a back room in AJ’s life if she hadn’t allowed it.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, The Truth We Bury

“left. They always left. Or they betrayed you, like Leighton, and then they left. Cooper drove through town, along the quiet streets, past still-darkened houses, where porch lights burned at random, surrounded by the shadows of doomed moths. Annie imagined the papery whisper of their wings, beating and futile. They flew at the light, heedless of the risk, the way Bo walked the streets, without regard for the danger. Stopping him was no more possible than”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Crooked Little Lies

“there are certain situations, certain crimes, where the only way for the human heart to survive is by forgetting—as much and for as long as that’s possible.”
― Barbara Taylor Sissel, Tell No One