The Accident Quotes

“Keisha’s with Danny and that’s because”
― C.L. Taylor, The Accident

“Strong would have been walking straight out of the World Headquarters club in Camden three years, two hundred and seventy days earlier when he laughingly called me a slut. Strong would have been refusing to ever see him again the night he refused to sleep in my bed because other men had been there first. Strong would have been reporting him to the police the night he raped me. Strong would have been stopping him from doing the same to another woman ever again.”
― C.L. Taylor, The Accident

“How many times can you cry wolf before the men in white coats come out with a nice white coat of your own to wear?”
― C.L. Taylor, The Accident

“What is it like not to feel anxious? To feel secure instead of scared? It’s been so long I can barely remember.”
― C.L. Taylor, The Accident

“Is it worth it, Sue? Is it worth being criticized, degraded and judged just for a few happy moments? Is it worth walking on eggshells, constantly wondering when he’s going to have a go at you next?”
― C.L. Taylor, The Accident

“What I want to do is tell Mum how much she means to me and how I wish I could take away the terrible disease that, day by day, is stealing another part of her away from me.”
― C.L. Taylor, The Accident

“Show me a teenager that opens up to adults and I’ll introduce you to Santa,”
― C.L. Taylor, The Accident

“You never feel heartache as keenly as you do when you’re young. You think it’ll destroy you and that you will never love, or be loved, again.”
― C.L. Taylor, The Accident

“Fifteen years fall away in an instant and I am twenty-eight again, cradling baby Charlotte to my shoulder, her slumbering face pressed into the nook of my neck, her tiny heart out-beating mine, even in sleep. Back then it was so much easier to keep her safe.”
― C.L. Taylor, The Accident

“Coma. There’s something innocuous about the word, soothing almost in the way it conjures up the image of a dreamless sleep. Only Charlotte doesn’t look as though she’s sleeping to me. There’s no soft heaviness to her closed eyelids. No curled fist pressed up against her temple. No warm breath escaping from her slightly parted lips. There is nothing peaceful at all about the way her body lies, prostrate, on the duvet-less bed, a clear tracheostomy tube snaking its way out of her neck, her chest polka-dotted with multicoloured electrodes. The heart monitor in the corner of the room bleep-bleep-bleeps, marking the passage of time like a medical metronome and I close my eyes.”
― C.L. Taylor, The Accident