The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. Quotes

“You could become paralyzed with worry about what might happen to your family, or if you hadn’t yet had children you could decide not to, as a sort of proactive damage control. Either way, you would be derailing your life voluntarily out of fear that it might become ruined by chance. Or you could pick up and move on. Those were the only choices.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“But there are no real accidents, only decisions that feel like accidents, one after another, that take you down a certain road and take on a momentum that can't be reversed.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“That's the funny thing about people who don't fit into a box. They grow to infiltrate everything and when they suddenly go missing they are missing everywhere.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“The sense of the missing member of the party was a fog low over the patio, changing the look and feel of everything.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“Kate made a concerted effort not to drift into mommy terrain when she was with them, though she sometimes slipped and saw their eyes glaze over, like her older sister's would.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“Kate lowered her nose to Emily's head and breathed in Johnson's baby shampoo, a hormonal cocktail that among women who have children not long out of diapers drew the Pavlovian, ANOTHER.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“The sweep of his arms was wide and athletic, more like a quarterback than a middling golfer who had dropped off the tour.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“The sun was strong, glinting off the bridge and hitting the river like shattered glass.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“At the end of the day, a person had to take responsibility for what she showed the world and what she didn’t.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“It occurred to her that there could be in most relationships two distinct tracks of conversation taking place at any given time: what people actually discussed about their lives, and what people did not discuss but was very much on their minds. In the end I come back to that same feeling I’ve always had about confidences. They rarely give anything back, you rarely leave feeling any better, and you can get more out of just writing to yourself.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“It’s not the most uncommon thing in the world. I keep a journal, you know.” Kate looked up. “You do? I never knew that.” “For years and years.” He moved another stack of muffin tins to the sink. She watched as he cleaned one, scraping crust from its edges. “Why? If you don’t mind my asking,” she said. He paused in his scrubbing. “I mean, are you going to do anything with them? Do you love writing?” He looked over his shoulder at her. “It’s not a matter of loving writing. It’s something I need to do. It helps me vent and figure things out. I don’t have to think about anyone else’s feelings or judgments. It’s the one place I really get to have my say.” “Why not just call a friend?” He gave her a wry smile that suggested she’d missed the point in some important way. “ ‘The unexamined life’ and all that, m’dear.” They sat in silence while he drained the sink. “Besides. Who wants to hear all that? Really.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“She felt suddenly defined by everything she had not done.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“In the end I go back to that same feeling I’ve always had about confidences. The other person rarely has anything useful to offer and usually you leave feeling no better, sometimes worse.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“But there are no real accidents, only decisions that feel like accidents, one after another, that take you down a certain road and take on a momentum that can’t be reversed.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“Confiding in people rarely makes you feel any better; just feeds them information that they don’t know how to respond to and changes the way they see you.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.

“Was it possible, she wondered, to have solitude together? She tried to imagine what he would do if after dinner she went to his study back home with her book or her laptop, and sat on the couch there instead of in the living room as they had in the early years. He might glance over the top of his computer with a look of surprise and then a smile of welcome. Hey there. Or there might be a moment's hesitation. She'd sit quietly nearby, each of them feeling the weight of the other int he room and a dampening of his or her own thoughts, each looking up expectantly when the other shifted in a chair or looked off into the middle distance. She might offer a snippet of commentary about something she was reading, but it would not be easily understood out of context. After an hour or so she would stand and stretch, murmur that sh though she'd call it a night, and the following night she'd go back to the living room. It was a gift, solitude. But solitude with another person, that was an art.”
― Nichole Bernier, The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.