A Very Bad Thing Quotes

“You never really know when you’ve met the man who’s eventually going to murder you.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“Mom.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“But it is an open thread that makes her uncomfortable. She likes all the bows to be tied, all the loose strands to be resolved. It’s the writer in her, the true gift her mother left her.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“She doesn’t want her future contaminated by her past.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“It is strange to be here, knowing her life has taken a jagged turn, that the future she’d expected will not materialize.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“Darian goes to the window, looks out onto the water. She is momentarily surprised to see it placid and gently lapping the banks below her, sunlight dappling its edges; it should be roaring, twisting, screaming in its fury, splashing foam onto the rocks. Everything should be in turmoil, the way she is inside right now.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“Love makes people do awful things. “We are so very sorry.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“when you stop wanting, you stop living.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“She tries not to be hurt by his absence. She’s used to people walking away from her. Has put so many layers of protection around her heart, she can tell herself it’s okay, that she doesn’t feel the sword slice through her.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“We’re not safe here,” she says. “He’s come for us. He knows too much, he knew we would be here. He was waiting.” And as the words leave her mouth, the lights go out in the house.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“They were always destined to fail. He liked her too much; she liked her job too much.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“Not a cop, Detective. A reader. We pay attention to the details.” She flashes her dimples, bright teeth shining in the sunlight.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“To be hugged by a practical stranger makes her feel like even more of an outsider. Riley has become the city—the impersonal, the rush, the detachment. It’s why this is the perfect place for her. No more small towns.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“Leaving first has always been her greatest gift.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“She crosses the street at Seventy-Fifth and halts at the red light, waiting, waiting. It’s taking forever. She feels someone close by her and turns her head just as a strong hand lands in the middle of her back, and shoves. She stumbles out into the street to the shriek of brakes and the furious horn of an Escalade. It just misses her, swerving wildly into the middle lane.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“This is starting to look very suspicious. And you are definitely a target.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“In case of my death, please send this to Riley Carrington at East Fifth Magazine.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“only ten minutes apart.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“We’re all hiding something. Big or little, tragic or unseemly. We keep our deep secrets; we hold our truths close to the vest. We don’t share our true minds with anyone. Not really. No matter the words that come from your mouth or your fingertips on the keyboard, they are filtered. If they weren’t, you would have no one. You would travel this life in a lonely world, one of your own making. An outcast. An exile.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“We’re all faced with choices, moment by moment, as we embark on our lives.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“Good friends are like that. They can go years without laying eyes on each other yet fall back into the same pattern without blinking.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“We’re all hiding something. Big or little, tragic or unseemly. We keep our deep secrets; we hold our truths close to the vest. We don’t share our true minds with anyone. Not really. No matter the words that come from your mouth or your fingertips on the keyboard, they are filtered.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“Not a cop, Detective. A reader. We pay attention to the details.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“Right. Okay. Now look at our society as a whole. We are fed information in a constant stream. There’s almost too much to process. So we start taking that data at face value. We take exactly what we’re given and believe it, because our brains don’t have room for anything else. We don’t investigate any further. Even the media, these young journalists who don’t bother sourcing properly, just run with stories based on innuendo and rumor, don’t do the kind of due diligence we used to insist upon.” “A travesty that’s ruining journalism.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“Books matter. She can’t understand people who don’t feel that intrinsically, feel it in their marrow.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“Devon”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“There are only a few motivations to do bad things. Love. Money. Power.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“The author of your favorite book has died.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“like she used to when Darian was a child and they played hide-and-seek. Darian was forever hiding in places she thought were completely obscured from the world, and Columbia always, always, knew where she was.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing

“There is real power in allowing herself to be admired and not acting on the impulses that admiration brings. She wishes she’d figured that out earlier in life.”
― J.T. Ellison, A Very Bad Thing