Hey, Zoey Quotes

“We are replaceable. All of us. And not simply by other people. By things too, like alcohol and drugs and fibre optic broadband.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“But I wished I wasn’t strong. Because when you are, no one thinks to take care of you.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“How could we possibly tell another person everything about ourselves? It would take a lifetime. It would be incredibly boring.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“After a couple of hours she breathlessly put aside her palette knife and asked, ‘Did you ever experiment with your handwriting?’ I thought about this as Jacinta poured herself a glass of milk from a carton. ‘I suppose so. Once I wasn’t being forced to use joined up writing with a fountain pen any more. Why?’ ‘You sent me a few of my old exercise books from school after you cleared out Mum’s place a few years ago. Do you remember?’ I told her I didn’t. Maybe David had posted them to her. ‘When I was at primary school I wrote using the whole wide line. The capitals touched the top and everything was balloony, you know, round and chipper. But my handwriting in the later exercise books, I think I must have been fourteen or so, was completely truncated like inky footprints made by ants. I could hardly make out what I’d written. I don’t know how the teachers deciphered it. I still don’t quite know what comes naturally when I write. I don’t have a style. It changes. Sometimes it’s all swallowed up and at other times I write using tall, spindly letters. Maybe it’s the pen and paper I’m using. That makes a difference.’ ‘Yeah, it does,’ I agreed. ‘I hate thin-ruled paper.’ She took a gulp from her milk. The light was behind her. I couldn’t see her features. Her hair was pulled back into a low ponytail like the one she wore to school for years. I hated Mum. I hated Pete. I hated Gavin. I hated myself. Jacinta said, ‘When I paint I have a signature. It’s my own and I don’t have to be afraid.’ ‘I’m sorry, Jacinta. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know what to do.’ ‘I don’t blame you. But I thought you’d forgotten. Or forgiven. Or a bit of both.’ ‘A bit of both,’ I admitted. She was quiet, began to clean up. I didn’t help. I just watched. And eventually she turned back to me and said, ‘How’s Zoey?”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“I am not suggesting I didn’t get on with my life afterwards. I got over it and did what people usually do, which is grow up. But for a long time I blamed the changes in me, and my resistance to love on what happened. I blamed the affair with my genetics lecturer on it, my proclivity to being hurt. And then I set it aside because what did it matter? Much worse things happen to other people.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“Jacinta was sitting on the front step reading. I’d been to the shops for beans and bread. When she saw me, she waved. And from behind her, through the front door, Gavin emerged. Tenderly he put his hand on her head. She looked up. She went back to her reading, her shoulders curled in towards her ears. I had always known.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“She said, ‘It shouldn’t have come to this.’ ‘No.’ ‘I despise him. I want him to die. Not me. It isn’t fair that I almost died.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and immediately hated myself, knew that saying such a thing made me no better than Mum or Pete. ‘And look at you. Look at David. I hope Gavin gets a disease and suffers.’ ‘Jacinta!’ ‘Fuck him, Dolores. Fuck him.’ I took her hand, kissed it. She smelled like carbolic soap. ‘I never want to see Gavin or hear his name again,’ Jacinta said. ‘What did he do to you?’ I asked. Like I didn’t know. ‘The same as he did to you,’ Jacinta said, looking directly at me.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“Somnophilia is an abnormal sexual desire in which an individual becomes aroused by someone who is unconscious. The Dictionary of Psychology has categorised somnophilia within the classification of predatory paraphilias.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“Shh,’ he said. ‘It’s OK.’ ‘What’s happening?’ I said. ‘You’re asleep,’ he said.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“When Mum moved out of her house and into the bungalow David had bought, we had a rigorous clear-out. The garage was full of junk belonging to Jacinta, Gavin and me. Books, comics, posters in tubes, fabric, snorkels, wellies, old exercise books filled with rickety graphs and essays covered in angry pen and lumpy Tipp-Ex. Everything got lobbed into a skip. Even things that weren’t in the garage like mismatched wine glasses and ornaments from holidays abroad. Letters were thrown away too. We threw out the letter that would have proven I wasn’t out of my fucking mind.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“He wrote an apology letter. After the last time. The worst time. The time I remember most clearly because I wasn’t asleep. I’d just turned off the light. I was full of frozen pizza and a romantic comedy I’d stayed up late to watch. Jacinta was staying with a friend. Mum and Pete were at the pub. I heard the front door open and close and knew it must be him though he wasn’t due a visit until the following Friday. I could have jumped out of bed, put on a pair of jeans and pretended to be on the phone or reading or anything other than sleeping. When I return to that night, I know I stayed still out of a warped curiosity. He tapped on the door and came in. ‘Hey, Dolly,’ he whispered. He wrote a letter to apologise.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“I do not believe Pete would ever have murdered his own son. He may have taken it out on me. Or on Mum. He may have hurt himself. But mostly he was all mouth. He refused to put traps in the attic when we had squirrels. He threw coins at beggars like they were wishing wells. If Mum gave him the cold shoulder, he asked us for advice on how to get back into her good graces without degrading himself. When Jacinta and I talk about our shitty childhoods, Pete is the natural scapegoat. But he never was the baddie. Mum was right. Pete was doing his best.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“Gavin got a job putting flyers into letter boxes. He was saving for a gap year after university. He wanted to help build schools in Uganda. I delivered some of the flyers after school instead of going straight home. He gave me a cut of the money and told me I should be saving too. When I asked him what for, he said everyone needed an escape fund.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“Mum sat on the end of my bed, her hair in a shower cap. I was home sick from school and rereading old magazines. Mum looked around the room. ‘It’s a mess in here.’ ‘That’s why we made a path.’ Mum smiled and I felt amusing. ‘Instead of making a path through the shite, could you not pick up the shite?’ ‘It’s Jacinta’s stuff too.’ Pete called out something and shut the front door before Mum could respond. She shouted out anyway: ‘Bye, pet!’ She stood up and collected the clothes from the floor, sitting back down at the end of my bed to fold everything, whether it was clean or not. I continued to read a magazine and was surprised she didn’t ask me to help her fold. I worried she might tell me to do my homework or change the duvet cover. She said, ‘What was happening last night? When I came in?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Come on now.’ The quiz I was reading seemed to spin on the page. ‘Nothing.’ ‘You see, if something was happening and Pete found out, do you know what he’d do?’ ‘Leave.’ ‘He’d murder someone, Dolores. So whatever didn’t happen stays between us, OK?’ ‘OK.’ ‘Are you hurt?’ ‘No.’ ‘And you understand what I’m talking about?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘I’ll talk to him.’ ‘OK.’ ‘OK. Now if you’re feeling a bit better, you can come downstairs and help me with the dinner.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“You know she can orgasm,’ Leonard said. ‘Don’t be stupid.’ ‘She can. I saw it online.’ ‘You mean she can pretend to orgasm.’ ‘Yup. Just like real women.’ The theme tune started up. ‘Do you have another avocado? If you don’t, I’m eating that pizza slice.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“Pete got the biggest laugh: ‘How do you know your girlfriend is getting fat?’ He paused. ‘She fits into your wife’s clothes.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“A handwritten sign appeared on the staffroom notice board: Are they attention seeking or connection seeking? I considered ripping it down but couldn’t find a moment when the staffroom was empty. It stayed up there a long time, until someone else removed it.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“Jacinta answered groggily. Ed, her boyfriend, had slept over, and they’d spent the evening arguing about gun control. Ed was not a Republican, but he was an antagonist. Debate seemed to be a thing they did for fun.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“But it did make me wonder about honesty and love and whether omissions were lies. How could they be? How could we possibly tell another person everything about ourselves? It would take a lifetime. It would be incredibly boring.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“Intuition is science. It is what happens when the brain sees two or more incongruous details and a narrative in the subconscious cannot be established. We pause before crossing a road and barely avoid getting killed by a motorcycle, or take the stairs rather than sharing a lift with a stranger who turns out to have murdered a nun. The story told afterwards is that a mystical force from the future sent a warning in the form of a feeling. Fear as foresight. We believe we are in tune with the transcendent. But this is bullshit. The only truth is that each sense is alive to narratives where pieces are missing, and we are very good at filling in the gaps. So. I know why I turned to examine the long nylon bag rather than chucking the laundry into the tumble dryer and leaving. But it was only after I touched the bag that I consciously spotted the Christmas tree in pieces by the garage door, its branches arranged at odd angles. My peripheral vision must have clocked the tree and sent a signal: something is out of place.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“My peripheral vision must have clocked the tree and sent a signal: something is out of place.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“As a young teacher I would raise my voice to get a group’s attention. Now I know better. To make yourself heard, you get very quiet. It instils fear.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“I already had a simple life, and I thought that to others I might seem as dull as Elaine. What I actually wanted was a bigger life, though it felt out of reach.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“We were too alike. We loved one another in the wrong way, but that doesn't mean it wasn't love.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey

“Jacinta and I shared a doll. I don’t know where it came from, but it wasn’t from a shop because by the time we adopted her, she was missing her shoes and socks. We named her Grace. She had long, curly hair until Jacinta cut it short and I cut it even shorter. We scribbled nonsense on her body with felt tips and tried to rub it off with cotton balls soaked in nail varnish. We fought over her so hard, Jacinta at one end, me at the other, we pulled her head clean off and agreed to play separately with the two parts of her until Mum found a way to reattach the decapitated head, saying, “You can forget about a hamster.”
― Sarah Crossan, Hey, Zoey