The Mystery of Hollow Places Quotes

“You get older, and you make your choices, and one by one the doors shut.”
― Rebecca Podos, The Mystery of Hollow Places

“Family isn't blood, necessarily; it's a thousand little choices we make every day. We choose to trust each other and forgive each other and go to the pasta place for dinner even though some of us would rather eat sushi.”
― Rebecca Podos, The Mystery of Hollow Places

“But if there's one thing Dad's bad times have taught me, it's this: I never, ever want to have anything I can't survive without.”
― Rebecca Podos, The Mystery of Hollow Places

“Time went by and there wasn’t even sadness.
“You know how another patient put it? She said this feeling inside her was . . . it was anti-feeling. Like a black hole in space, and everything—happiness, anger, hope, meaning—it would all get sucked in, tipped over the event horizon, and she couldn’t feel any of it. That’s the way it was for me. I walked around like everyone else, and had this wonderful opportunity at the museum, and came home to this brilliant guy who loved me and was nothing but sweet. Your father tried so hard. But I felt . . . empty. If I could’ve filled that space up with anything, I would’ve. If somebody had turned to me and said, ‘It’s easy, just pour some dry cement in there and you’ll be a normal human girl,’ I would’ve done it like that.” She snaps her fingers. “But I couldn’t. And your father couldn’t do it for me.”
― Rebecca Podos, The Mystery of Hollow Places

“I throw the car into drive, and once we're moving forward again, I feel tough. Which is exactly what I want to be. Tough means strong. It means even if you're sad - or god forbid, lonely - you won't crumble like a dry granola bar in the bottom of a backpack, destined to spill out over the lap of the first person who fumbles open your foil wrapper. Tough is the opposite of troubled waters.”
― Rebecca Podos, The Mystery of Hollow Places

“I get closing up your heart because you're afraid to look inside and find out it's hollow. I get choosing to be alone because you're afraid that if the choice is out of your hands, you'll simply be lonely, and alone is okay, it's almost cool in a way. But lonliness isn't just being alone.”
― Rebecca Podos, The Mystery of Hollow Places

“I imagine my heart in my chest. I imagine prying it open with a chisel and rock hammer, and once it splits down the seam I push out everyone, one by one. I fit the halves back together after them and tell myself I'll learn to love the quiet they leave behind.”
― Rebecca Podos, The Mystery of Hollow Places