The Girl Next Door Quotes

“As though all the world were a bad joke and she was the only one around who knew the punchline.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“I lay in bed and thought about how easy it was to hurt a person. It didn't have to be physical. All you had to do was take a good hard kick at something they cared about.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“The worst is missing them, you know? And knowing they won’t be back again. Just knowing that. Sometimes you forget and it’s as though they’re on vacation or something and you think, gee, I wish they’d call. You miss them. You forget they’re really gone. You forget the past six months even happened. Isn’t that weird? Isn’t that crazy? Then you catch yourself . . . and it’s real again.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“In the basement, with Ruth, I began to learn that anger, hate, fear and loneliness are all one button awaiting the touch of just a single finger to set them blazing toward destruction.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“The dialogue is solo now. I don’t talk. No matter who’s in bed with me I never do. My thoughts slip off into nightmares sometimes but I don’t share them. I have become now what I only began to be then—completely self-protective.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“She was grinning and she should have been pretty when she grinned. She had good white teeth and a lovely, delicate mouth. But something always went wrong with Denise's smile. There was always something manic in it.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“In the basement, with Ruth, I began to learn that anger, hate, fear and loneliness are all one button awaiting the touch of just a single finger to set them blazing toward destruction. And I learned that they can taste like winning.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“We were just kids. We were property. We belonged to our parents, body and soul. It meant we were doomed in the face of any real danger from the adult world and that meant hopelessness, and humiliation and anger.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“So here my check. Overdue and overdrawn.
Cash it in hell.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“You got to tell me the brave captain Why are the wicked so strong? How do the angels get to sleep When the devil leaves the porch light on?” —Tom Waits”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“Crayfish,” I said. I dumped out a tin of water. “Really?” I nodded. “Big ones?” “Not these. You can find them, though.” “Can I see?” She dropped down off the bank just like a boy would, not sitting first, just putting her left hand to the ground and vaulting the three-foot drop to the first big stone in the line that led zigzag across the water. She studied the line a moment and then crossed to the Rock. I was impressed. She had no hesitation and her balance was perfect. I made room for her. There was suddenly this fine clean smell sitting next to me. Her eyes were green. She looked around. To all of us back then the Rock was something special. It sat smack in the middle of the deepest part of the brook, the water running clear and fast around it.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“Pain can work from the outside in. I mean that sometimes what you see is pain. Pain in its cruelest, purest form.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“You think you know about pain?
Talk to my second wife. She does. Or she thinks she does.
She says that once when she was nineteen or twenty she got between a couple of cats fighting – her own cat and a neighbor’s – and one of them went at her, climbed her like a tree, tore gashes out of her thighs and breasts and belly that you still can see today, scared her so badly she fell back down her again, all tooth and claw and spitting fury. Thirty-six stitches I think she said she got. And a fever that lasted days.
My second wife says that’s pain.
She doesn’t know shit, that woman.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“can. “New York City, huh?” “Yup.” She rolled up her sleeves and dipped down into the water. And that was when I noticed the scar. “Jeez. What’s that?” It started just inside her left elbow and ran down to the wrist like a long pink twisted worm. She saw where I was looking. “Accident,” she said. “We were in a car.” Then she looked back into the water where you could see her reflection shimmering. “Jeez.” But then she didn’t seem to want to talk much after that. “Got any more of ’em?” I don’t know why scars are always so fascinating to boys, but they are, it’s a fact of life, and I just couldn’t help it. I couldn’t shut up about it yet. Even though I knew she wanted me to, even though”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“You had room for four kids sitting or six standing up. It had been a pirate ship, Nemo’s Nautilus, and a canoe for the Lenni Lennape among other things. Today the water was maybe three and a half feet deep. She seemed happy to be there, not scared at all. “We call this the Big Rock,” I said. “We used to, I mean. When we were kids.” “I like it,” she said. “Can I see the crayfish? I’m Meg.” “I’m David. Sure.” She peered down into the can. Time went by and we said nothing. She studied them. Then she straightened up again. “Neat.” “I just catch ‘em and look at ’em awhile and then let them go.” “Do they bite?” “The big ones do. They can’t hurt you, though. And the little ones just try to run.” “They look like lobsters.” “You never saw a crayfish before?”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“I see Donny turning to throw the words over his shoulder on his way across the lawn to the porch. Casually, but with an odd sort of sincerity about him, as though this were absolute gospel. “My mom says Meg’s the lucky one,” he said. “My mom says she got off easy.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“ready for whatever scooted out from under. The water was so deep I had my shortsleeve shirt rolled all the way up to my shoulders. I was aware of how long and skinny my arms must look to her. I know they looked that way to me. I felt pretty strange beside her, actually. Uncomfortable but excited. She was different from the other girls I knew, from Denise or Cheryl on the block or even the girls at school. For one thing she was maybe a hundred times prettier. As far as I was concerned she was prettier than Natalie Wood. Probably she was smarter than the girls I knew too, more sophisticated. She lived in New York City after all and had eaten lobsters. And she moved just like a boy. She had this strong hard body and easy grace about her. All that made me nervous and I missed the first one. Not an enormous crayfish but bigger than what we had. It scudded backward beneath the Rock. She asked if she could try. I gave her the”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“Don’t think they have them in New York City.” She laughed. I didn’t mind. “We get lobsters, though. They can hurt you.” “Can you keep one? I mean, you can’t keep a lobster like a pet or anything, right?” She laughed again. “No. You eat them.” “You can’t keep a crayfish either. They die. One day or maybe two, tops. I hear people eat them too, though.” “Really?” “Yeah. Some do. In Louisiana or Florida or someplace.” We looked down into the can. “I don’t know,” she said, smiling. “There’s not a whole lot to eat down there.” “Let’s get some big ones.” We lay across the Rock side by side. I took the can and slipped both arms down into the brook. The trick was to turn the stones one at a time, slowly so as not to muddy the water, then have the can there”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“It’s a cold, stark emptiness that has no laughter in it. No compassion, and no mercy. It’s feral. Like the eyes of a hunting animal.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“You got to tell me the brave captain
Why are the wicked so strong?
How do the angels get to sleep
When the devil leaves the porch light on?
—Tom Waits”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“It was a time when even the guilty displayed a rare innocence. In”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“I began to learn that anger, hate, fear, and loneliness are all but one button awaiting the touch of a single finger to set them blazing toward destruction. and I learned they can taste like winning.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“In the basement, I began to learn that anger, hate, fear, and loneliness are all one button awaiting the touch of a single finger to set them blazing toward destruction. And I learned that they can taste like winning.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“Where it went was to the basement.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“Pain can work from the outside in. I mean that sometimes what you see is pain. Pain in its cruelest, purest form. Without drugs or sleep or even shock or coma to dull it for you. You see it and you take it in. And then it’s you.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“I sat and knew myself entirely and calmly watched the sunrise.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“It took time for me to cut deep enough into whatever it was I felt and then once I did I couldn’t bear to give up the taste of it.
I’m still that way.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“Like some other species altogether. Some intelligence that only looked human, but had no access to human feelings.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“my drug was knowing. Knowing what was possible. Knowing how far it could go.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door

“Kids get second chances. I like to think I’m using mine.”
― Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door