Out of the Easy

by Ruta Sepetys

“Decisions, they shape our destiny.” Without opening the book, he began to recite from David Copperfield. “‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else … ’” I nodded and finished it with him. “‘These pages must show.’”

The characters’ lives were so much more interesting than the lonely heartbeat of my own.

One day when I was fourteen, I told Charlie that I hated Mother. “Don’t hate her, Jo,” he told me. “Feel sorry for her. She’s not near as smart as you. She wasn’t born with your compass, so she wanders around, bumping into all sorts of walls. That’s sad.” I understood what he meant, and it made me see Mother differently. But wasn’t there some sort of rule that said parents had to be smarter than their kids? It didn’t seem fair.

Character. I knew I was one, but they wanted me to have one.

Just because you’re eighteen doesn’t mean you can fall down on the job. And remember something else, Jo.” “What?” Willie stared at me. “You’re old enough to go to jail now.”

Sometimes we set off down a road thinkin’ we’re goin’ one place and we end up another. But that’s okay. The important thing is to start.

For some, a bloated bank account improved a man’s features.

Charlie Marlowe never wrote horror, but somehow horror was writing Charlie Marlowe.

“We both got a little hustle, don’t we?” He pulled on his jacket. “But I like to think we got more heart.”

I love you the more in that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.

My life was encased in a box and someone had picked it up, shaken it violently, and thrown it back down. Everything was in pieces, displaced, and would never fit back together.

“Josie girl here, she got a heart like an artichoke. A leaf for everyone.

“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.”