The Divide Quotes

“Look after each other. As a couple. When you have kids, you'll want to put them first. Don't. Marriage is like a plant. To keep it alive you've got to water it and feed it. If you don't, when the kids are gone, you'll look in the corner and it'll be dead.”
― Nicholas Evans, The Divide

“Of course she is. Hell hath no fury. You're not the only woman scorned. However much you and Ben tell her that it's not about her and that it's just about what went wrong between you and him, she probably can't see it that way. You should have her go talk to somebody.'
'A shrink?'
'Why not? Aren't you seeing someone?'
'I'm not the type.'
'What's the type? You get sick, you see a doctor, right?”
― Nicholas Evans, The Divide

“It was hard to get lost in Missoula even if you wanted to. Wherever you were, all you had to do to get your bearings was look around and find the big letter M, embossed in white halfway up the steep shoulder of grass that reared on the south bank of the Clark Fork River. Though only a hill, it was called Mount Sentinel and if you had the legs and lungs and inclination to hike the trail that zigzagged up it, you could stand by the M and gaze out across the town at a travel-brochure shot of forest and mountain dusted from early fall with snow.”
― Nicholas Evans, The Divide

“The gist of it was that there were two types of men who absconded from their marriages: the naughty and the needy. The naughty absconder was a simple dick-driven creature who just couldn't help himself. However much he might love his family, it always came second to his main object in life, namely, chasing women. The needy absconder was basically insecure and forever trying to prove to himself how much everybody loved him. His family was, in effect, one big love machine that needed his constant control and attention. When his kids grew older and got lives of their own and didn't need him so much, he suddenly got scared and felt old and useless. So he ran off to look for a new love machine someplace else.”
― Nicholas Evans, The Divide

“Maybe that's nature's way. Making people you once loved less lovable, so that it won't be so hard when they go.”
― Nicholas Evans, The Divide

“The power of human habit never failed to astonish her. How was it that two intelligent, decent people who basically loved each other could get so locked into a pattern of behavior that neither of them - or so she presumed - enjoyed? It was as if each knew the role he or she was expected to take and had no choice but to play it”
― Nicholas Evans, The Divide

“Car si elle n'avait jamais agi ainsi consciemment, elle se rendait bien compte qu'une femme pouvait confondre amour et pitié, et s'attacher à un homme dans l'espoir de le sauver. Ou qu'elle pouvait y voir comme un défi, persuadée qu'elle et elle seule pourrait le secourir, le protéger et le rendre heureux.”
― Nicholas Evans, The Divide

“Two weeks earlier than scheduled, she flew into Vancouver and signed on with Greenpeace.
The work was neither taxing nor truly exciting but the people she met more than compensated and she forged many new friendships. The high points were the trips they made by sea kayak, exploring the wild inlets farther up the coast. They watched bears scoop salmon from the shallows and paddled among pods of orcas, so close you could have reached out and touched them. At night they camped at the water's edge, listening to the blow of whales in the bay and the distant howls of wolves in the forest above.”
― Nicholas Evans, The Divide

“Ben felt paralyzed with shock. But she hadn't finished. In fact, she'd barely started. She went on to give him a scorching lecture about how he was a victim of this ridiculous, upside-down consumer culture in which everyone was constantly being bombarded with the pernicious promise of happiness, and even worse, being told at every turn that they had the goddamn right to be happy. And if they weren't, they could be, if they just got themselves a new car or a new dishwasher or a new outfit or a new lover. The messages were everywhere, Sally said, in every magazine you picked up. on every dumb TV show, feeling greed and envy, making people dissatisfied with what they had, persuading them they could change it and be happy and successful and beautiful, if only they had some gorgeous new thing or a new girlfriend or a new face or a new pair of silicone tits....”
― Nicholas Evans, The Divide

“parents should never feel they owned their children. Rather, they should consider themselves the bows from which their sons and daughters were sent forth as living arrows. Ben believed this and believed, moreover, that it was right and should be so. But what no one ever told you was what happened to the bow once the arrows had gone. Was that it? Was that all? Did it then just get propped in a corner of the closet to gather dust?”
― Nicholas Evans, The Divide