Random House Group > Random House Group's Quotes

“I am your maid. I know so much about you. But when it comes down to it: what is that you know about me?”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“Today at work, I found a guest very dead in his bed. Mr. Black. The Mr. Black. Other than that, my work day was as normal as ever.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“It’s easier than you’d ever think—existing in plain sight while remaining largely invisible. That’s what I’ve learned from being a maid.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“Never leave a mess to be discovered by a guest.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“It’s funny the way memories bubble up whenever I clean. I do wonder if that’s the same for everyone—for everyone who cleans, that is.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“And if I’ve learned anything about the way money works, it’s that it magnetized toward those born with it, leaving those who need it most without.”
― Nita Prose

“I do sometimes feel angry. Especially when guests are careless. When they forget that their actions have an impact on others, when I’m treated like I don’t matter.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“That’s the trouble with pain. It’s a contagious as a disease. It spreads from the person who first endured it to those who love them most. Truth isn’t always the highest ideal’ sometimes it must be sacrificed to stop the spread of pain to those you love.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“As for order, it is my express wish to live as ordered a life as possible. But the world is filled with random chaos that often devils my attempts at arrangement.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“People are a mystery that can never be solved.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“One thing I’ve learned in my business is that you can hide dirt for a while, but at some point, it all comes to the surface.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“I’ll never understand it—why people find the truth more shocking than lies.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“Isn’t it interesting how luxury has an unmistakable scent, as unmistakable as fear or death?”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“Laughs are just like smiles. People use them to express an array of confounding emotions.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“Vile and evil are composed of the same letters. One begets the other.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“There’s nothing quite like a perfectly stocked maid’s trolley early in the morning. It is, in my humble opinion, a cornucopia of bounty and beauty.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“My uniform is my freedom. It is the ultimate invisibility cloak.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“I don’t cut corners, I shine them.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“Perhaps it’s an occupational hazard: I see dirt where others don’t.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“Discretion is my motto. Invisible customer service is my goal.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“When all else fails, tidy up.”
― Nita Prose, The Maid

“We dreamed about love that would take to our hearts like fire to a forest, burning everything in its wake.”
― Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, The Orchard

“Back then we really thought Brezhnev to be eternal, like the earth itself or the sky.”
― Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, The Orchard

“Choice lived in her face, the inescapability of a bright future, the right to decide her own fate, how to dress, which school to attend, where to travel on vacation, what to eat.”
― Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, The Orchard

“But miracles happened, as my mother often said, and in our Soviet universe, a life without an occasional miracle could be a bottomless pit.”
― Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, The Orchard

“Or so we felt as we listened to the band play and sing, the heat spreading through us like sun through the orchard in early spring, giving life to everything it touched, every seed, every bud, every blossom.”
― Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, The Orchard

“I thought of the privilege of knowing someone so long, so intimately, that even a subtle shift of her head or a slight pull of her fingers, could be a sign of worry or love or care.”
― Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, The Orchard

“I switched my eyes to Milka’s face. Winter lived there, with its ferocious winds and dead ossified earth and hard frozen snow.”
― Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, The Orchard

“I thought of love then, of how it was supposed to be beautiful and free, and how my mother had always said that it wasn’t a nuclear bomb that would destroy us but lovelessness.”
― Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, The Orchard

“Living without love was like living in a cave: you were always cold and always in the dark.”
― Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry, The Orchard