Daisy Darker

by Alice Feeney

the secret to having it all is knowing that you already do.

Some people drink to drown their sorrows; others drink so they can swim in them.

“My dear, I’d rather be dead than normal.”

He collected regrets while she gathered resentment. Sometimes people don’t know they’re in love until they’re not.

“I think most murder mysteries are overrated,” Nana says. “There are much cleverer ways to end a person than killing them.”

He is an intellectually promiscuous man who gorges on the thoughts of others, then shares them, dressed up as his own. Secondhand ideas sold as new. He seasons

I am leaving you my drinks trolley. Like you, it’s now an antique but still good for holding liquor.”

Don’t waste your life wishing to be like someone else, decide who you are and be you.”

If you must always break the rules in life, you need to understand how to do so without getting caught. ‘Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it.’”

If you want to be bad and get away with it, you need to be better at pretending to be good. Like the innocent flower they all wish you were. Understand?”

Fear is something we have to feel to learn and learn to feel.

believe in kindness and hard work.” “What about God?” She smiled again. “I believe that God believes in hard work too.”

I don’t think any of us appreciated our parents spending it together—despite being recently divorced—for us. Looking back, I think they might have done more to make life better for us than we sometimes remember.

While a middle-class woman with nice manners and nice things might just be a failed actress who can’t handle being a dress size bigger than she wants to be. Life is a performance, and we don’t all like the scripts we’re given; sometimes it’s best to write your own.

“We only really acknowledge the beauty and brilliance of someone or something when they die,” she said, holding her pruning shears and deadheading some roses.

laughed. “I don’t, nobody does! But if I do know more than most, it’s because I read. Books will teach you anything you want to know, and they tend to be more honest than people.”

Albert Einstein once said that weak people revenge, strong people forgive, and intelligent people ignore. It was one of the few things he was wrong about. Success is the best revenge. Try to remember that.”

Love is like the soil that hate needs in order to grow. I think it’s rare in relationships to have one without the other.”

The problem with growing up with parents who say yes to everything is that it doesn’t prepare you for the real world, which often says no.

You can’t win an argument with someone who refuses to have one. I