You Know When the Men Are Gone Quotes

“The FRG … was the closest thing any of them had to family, this simulacrum of friendship, women suddenly thrown together in a time of duress, with no one to depend on but each other, all of them bereft and left behind in this dry expanse of central Texas, walled in by strip malls, chain restaurants, and highways that led to better places. Most of them had gotten used to making life for themselves without a husband, finding doctors and dentists and playgrounds, filling their cell phones with numbers and their calendars with playdates, and then the husbands would return and the Army would toss them all at some other base in the middle of nowhere to begin again.”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“After a dazed moment, Specialist Kit Murphy put his arms loosely around her, and Josie Schaeffer clung to him, knowing this man was not her husband, that her husband was never coming back, but for now she was as close to him as she could get and she would not let him go.”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“I said I don't want to know," Kailani said firmly, her voice suddenly too loud. Cristina sat back into the bench, her eyes wide and disappointed. Then Ana started waving wildly, her small hand arcing for her mother's undivided attention, and, as Kailani watched in silence, the child slipped safely down the slide."

Kailani to Cristina”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“It was "Boom Boom" Dupont who had ripped Kit out of the Humvee after the IED went off, the IED that turned the entire undercarriage of his truck into a fiery wall that consumed the five men inside.”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“You also know when the men are gone... babies still cry, telephones ring, Saturday morning cartoons screech, but without the men, there is a sense of muted silence, a sense of muted life.”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“It was absorbing work that helped the days go by while she waited for the staticky phone calls, infrequent emails or letters. I miss our life together, her husband would write over and over again and it made Meg think that were three lives between them: the life he was leading in Iraq, the life she was living alone without him, and the dim fantastical life of them together, a mythical past and future that suddenly had no present.”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“She carried her worry night and day. It pulled at her legs and shoulders and tear ducts, always there and ready to consume her, because how could anyone think rationally about a spouse in a war zone?”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“Jeremy lined up with all the other soldiers and he immediately found his wife, his eyes locking onto hers. He didn't, even glance at the children, just stared at Meg as if she were the anchor that held his life. And Meg did not hesitate. She stood and took a step toward him, knowing suddenly and without a doubt that he was, and always would be, worth the wait.”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“Raneen blinked at him. "It is the information we were meant to get. Of course that is why your battalion commander sent us to a girls' school so far away. Dora, as you said, is a bad neighborhood. The headmistress understands that in order to get a generator she must have very good information. You must know that also." She turned her face away as if insulted by Moge's ignorance. Her voice continued, so softly that Moge had to lean closer. "No one notices the women in this country, and therefore no one notices how much the women notice.”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“What if, after all of his longing to get out and get on with his life, in his comfortable middle age he would look back at this time and realize that his years in the army were the most vivid, the most startlingly real of his entire life?”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“She bit her lip and wondered if this was the sum of a marriage: wordless recriminations or reconciliations, every breath either striving against or toward the other person, each second a decision to exert or abdicate the self.”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“But Crawford, Dupont, and Kit had done basic training at the same time, managed to get sent to 1-7 Cav, then spent the deployment together in Iraq. They'd trained, bitched, slept, and pissed together for the past two and a half years: it was the equivalent of knowing each other for about a decade in the civilian world.”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone

“Ellen knew that soon he wouldn't let her kiss him goodnight anymore, that there was a time limit on a child's affection, that each year, month, week, day, whittled away at it until he, too, would stretch and grow out of childhood and into something prickly and strange.”
― Siobhan Fallon, You Know When the Men Are Gone