The Girls Quotes

“Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“I feel, holding books, accommodating their weight and breathing their dust, an abiding love. I trust them, in a way that I can't trust my computer, though I couldn't do without it. Books are matter. My books matter. What would I have done through these years without the library and all its lovely books?”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“What is it about sadness that can be so fulfilling?”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“Art isn't a product. It's an experience”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“How cruel it must be for a man to live past his soul.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“The city, no matter how small, is corrupt and unrepentant, while the sun shines brighter in the country, making people more wholesome.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. 'Read,' she'd say, 'and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out, 'I can do that too! ”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“I hum some secret place into being, thinking of this other me, the one that only I can see, a girl called She, who is not We, a girl who I will never be.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“Before she closed her eyes tonight, Rose said she regretted that she has not done something heroic in her life. Well, it's not like she can suddenly climb a tree and save a cat, or go to medical school and begin some important cancer research. But Rose has been my sister. I think that's heroic.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“In sleep, my sister and I found a common breath. In dreams, we knew the moon.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“I would not have dreamed back then, could never have imagined, that one day I would be a childless mother too.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“Funny how you can measure time by pets that were not even your own.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“I can't exactly say why I've chosen to write about the things that I am writing about. There are doubtless better stories from my life that I am missing, events and escapades I am not wise enough to know were important. If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars that they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.

p 179 ”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“Uncle Stash said you didn't have to be crazy to to do something stupid, just young.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“It was Aunt Lovey's belief that all ordinary people led extraordinary lives, but just didn't notice.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“I wonder if all women secretly fantasize, like me, about what it would be like to be an extraordinary beauty and bitchy as you wanna be.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“As I grew older, I found I could surrender my own comfort so effortlessly it didn't qualify as sacrifice.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“The final picture in the album was of Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash, their black-and-white wedding photo. I hated that their picture came last, because it felt like they were saying goodbye.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“On the farm, in our first-floor bedroom, my sister and I were sheltered in the essence of normal. We were not hidden, but unseen. The orange farmhouse was our castle, our kingdom the fields around, and the shallow creek that bisected our property the sea we crossed to find adventure.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“Ruby is my sister. And strangely, undeniably, my child.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“I consulted numerous works while writing this novel and wish to cite a few that were especially helpful: Conjoined Twins: An Historical, Biological, and Ethical Issues Encyclopedia by Christine Quigley; The Two-Headed Boy and Other Medical Marvels by Jan Bondeson; One of Us: Conjoined Twins and the Future of Normal by Alice Domurat Dreger; Entwined Lives: Twins and What They Tell Us About Human Behavior by Nancy L. Segal; Psychological Profiles of Conjoined Twins by J. David Smith; Millie-Christine: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Joanne Martell.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“RUBY ASKED ME to write this bit of verse from Robert Graves. It has taken me a while to dig it up—so to speak. Ruby says it’s about archaeology. I say it’s about writing. I hate it when we’re both right. To bring the dead to life Is no great magic. Few are wholly dead: Blow on a dead man’s embers And a live flame will start.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“People don’t finish, Rose. People stop. To finish is to say okay, now it’s right, never I’m going to change it. To stop is to say okay, it’s not perfect, but I have to go to something else.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“But Rose has been my sister. I think that’s heroic.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“Fatal is fatal, but it doesn't have to be all downhill.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“There's too much information out there. And not enough smart people.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“You think about these words final last never a lot, and there are not many things, when you come right down to it, that you'll be happy to see the end of.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls

“You're just not always in a place for as long as you thought you'd be.”
― Lori Lansens, The Girls