The Isle of Youth Quotes

“I like having a job where I get to wear a mask all day.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“Over time, we became less sure we were something the other wanted to hold on to.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“Maybe it was my imagination, or maybe I wanted someone to blame. I was willing to entertain those possibilities. What I didn't understand was why I couldn't do anything more than stand around in pain.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“The five scientists from the Brazilian station always sat at their own table, isolated by their tragedy, which I understood. After my parents died, it took me months before I could carry on a conversation with someone who had not known them, who expected me to be young and sparkling and untouched by grief.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“It was my habit to lie to strangers, because how would they know the difference?”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“I would whisper in the back row. Just run away. He never did, of course, and it wouldn’t have changed anything if he had.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“When you're married, our counselor had told us, happiness is like a joint banking account; it becomes full or depleted in tandem.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“Deception is necessary. In marriage, in life. Otherwise the world will just sandblast us away. You have to keep something for yourself.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“Instead I was trying to understand how anyone survived this world of head-on collisions and lunatic abductors and all the other things one had little hope of recovering from.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“Why didn't they go to school and get regular jobs and get married and live in houses? The short answer: they are a group of people committed to making life as hard as possible.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“Once I saw an X-ray of a heart and I was alarmed by its smallness, its translucence. A thing we ask entirely too much of.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“Other people's lives were no less impossible to understand than my own.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“On our way out, I noticed”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“I asked why we kept trying for so long, why we even came to Paris, if we both knew we never really stood a chance. “Because that’s what you’re supposed to do,” he said. “You’re supposed to keep working on your marriage.” It was awful to me, this idea that keeping a marriage together was like laying pipe or digging a ditch. But he was right: it was what people had told us we were supposed to do. We had listened to sentences containing words like “salvage” and “repair” and nodded dumbly, pretending we didn’t know any better. It was an affront to everyone involved.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories

“These could be her lessons. It’s right there for her, that better world. She barely has to go looking. Dana knows this, just as she knows that this is not the day she will find it.”
― Laura van den Berg, The Isle of Youth: Stories