Beautiful Ugly

by Alice Feeney

My wife tells stories that matter, trying to save the world from itself. I tell stories that matter to me.

My books have always been a place to hide myself inside myself when the real world gets too loud.

Marriage is made of a million beautiful and ugly moments stitched together into a shared tapestry of memories, all of which are viewed and remembered slightly differently, like two people stari...

I prefer dogs to humans. Dogs are loyal.

I have my characters for company and I prefer them to real people too. My characters don’t lie—at least, not to me—but before Abby, there wasn’t anyone I could trust. People rarely do what they say they will or what they should.

I think doing the right thing isn’t always the right thing to do.

Months of insomnia has turned me into my shadow and I exist in a cloud of foggy slow motion. I don’t remember what it feels like not to be exhausted, confused, lost. I’m in urgent need of a haircut, and my clothes all look like they belong in a charity shop. As if on cue, my jacket button falls off and lands on Kitty’s desk with a sad plink. It’s as though my clothes are trying to say what I can’t: I’m broken.

Grief is a patient thief and steals far more than people who have never known it realize.

“Success is often the result of a series of failures. Try to remember that. You never learn anything from success, but failure can teach you everything about a person. Especially yourself. I believe in you,”

“People rarely know what they have until they lose it. They spend their lives searching for a better one, wanting more, needing more, blind to the fact that they already had it all. I think sometimes it’s only when something gets taken from a person that they appreciate what they had.

She was my everything and when you lose your everything there simply is nothing left.

I keep my thoughts to myself because silence cannot be misquoted.

The only way out is to write.

“I can swear on a Bible if you’d like?” she says, then picks up a copy. She places her hand on top and says, “Fuck.” Then she smiles. “I swore on a Bible, get it? And there’s no need to look so shocked. Swearing isn’t a sin.”

Loved by all. Known by none. Alone at last.

“Nobody has any secrets on the Isle of Amberly. I hope you left yours behind.”

I’ve been fading since I met my husband. And falling. And I can no longer remember whether I jumped or was pushed. I feel as though I haven’t been in charge of myself or my thoughts or my feelings for years. His thoughts about the world are now my thoughts, as though they were contagious.”

I have forgotten how it feels not to feel lonely.

Wives think their husbands will change but they don’t. Husbands think their wives won’t change but they do.

One person’s nothing is sometimes a whole lot of something for someone else.

Grief is like a fingerprint, different every time. Mine is not like yours and you are not like me,

Life is beautiful and life is ugly and we have to learn to live with both sides of that same coin and see the light in the darkness. The world is Beautiful Ugly, relationships are Beautiful Ugly, love is Beautiful Ugly. Understanding that makes life easier to live with.”

The three basic fundamental fears that all humans experience are: Fear of death. Fear of abandonment. Fear of failure.

“Nobody said it was easy, but love is always worth fighting for, isn’t it? I think maybe it’s the only thing worth fighting for.”

She seemed convinced I would see things from her point of view one day, and I thought she’d give up trying to persuade me. We were both wrong. Her biological clock only ticked more loudly, and the parenthood debate clearly wasn’t going to go away. Which was why I had a vasectomy and didn’t tell her. It was such a simple procedure she didn’t even know I’d been in the hospital.

there’s no need to be afraid of the dead, it’s the living you have to watch out for.