All the Missing Girls Quotes

“People were like Russian nesting dolls - versions stacked inside the latest edition. But they all still lived inside, unchanged, just out of sight.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“There is nothing more dangerous, nothing more powerful, nothing more necessary and essential for survival than the lies we tell ourselves. I”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“If there's a feeling to home, it's this. A place where there are no secrets, where nothing stays buried; not the past and not yourself. Where you can be all the versions of you, see it all reflected back at you as you walk the same stairs, the same halls, the same rooms. Feel the ghost of your mother as you sit at the kitchen table, hear the words of your father circling round and round after dinner, and your brother stopping by, wishing you'd be a little better, a little stronger.... It's four walls echoing back everything you've ever been and everything you've ever done, and it's the people who stay despite it all. Through it all. For it all.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“If I were a monster, I'd pretend to be human.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“Here’s the thing I’ve learned about leaving—you can’t really go back”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“The past, boxed up and stacked out of sight. But never too far away”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“There was a small part of me that was still childish, stubborn in her hope, thinking I could somehow have everything.

...That I could be all the versions of me, stacked inside one another, and find someone who would want them all. But that's childhood. Before you realize that every step is a choice. That something must be given up for something to be gained. Everything on a scale, a weighing of desires, an ordering of which you want more--and what you'd be willing to give for it.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“The darkness lives in everyone. She knew this better than anyone. Everyone had two faces, and she looked deep into us until she found it.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“I feel like the whole world is off balance. Like I'm losing my shit. Like there's this cliff and I don't even realize I'm on the edge.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“Intention is nice, but it's a thing sometimes based more on hope than on reality.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“We were a town full of fear, searching for answers. But we were also a town full of liars.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“Missing girls had a way of working their way into someone's head. You couldn't help but see them in everyone - how temporary and fragile we might be. One moment here, and the next, nothing more than a photo staring from a storefront window.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“But friends to call for the deep things, the things that live in the dark spaces of our hearts? Those people didn’t exist for me any longer.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“There is nothing more dangerous, nothing more powerful, nothing more necessary and essential for survival than the lies we tell ourselves.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“It is quite true what philosophy says; that life must be understood backwards. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“It wasn’t in church but in moments like this when I maybe believed in God or something like that. Some order to the chaos, some meaning. That we collide with the people we need, that we meet the ones who will love us, that there’s some underlying reason to everything.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“And time standing perfectly, painfully still. It's just a thing we created. A measure of distance. A way to understand. A way to explain things. It can weave around and show you things if you let it.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“You change. But the past, it’s still there. The only thing moving is you.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“People were like Russian nesting dolls—versions stacked inside the latest edition. But they all still lived inside, unchanged, just out of sight.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“Time isn’t running out. It’s not even real,” he said, and I knew I had lost him—he was lost, circling in his own mind. “It’s just a measure of distance we made up to understand things. Like an inch. Or a mile.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“But here’s the thing I’ve learned about leaving—you can’t really go back.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“There were tiny moments, like this, when the grief came on strong out of nowhere. It was sneaky, and tricky, and you couldn’t see it coming until it was already there. It came with the mundane, simple tasks: My mother would never be hanging pink streamers at my shower. I would never lean over to someone and conspiratorially whisper, My mother is crazy. She would never become a grandmother.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“It is quite true what philosophy says; that life must be understood backwards. But then one forgets the other principle: that it must be lived forwards. —SØREN KIERKEGAARD”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“But the simple truth was that when a girl like Corinne loves you, you don’t ask why. You just hope it doesn’t change. Tyler”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“Because the thing about standing here in the middle of the mountains with the rain coming down, in a house your grandfather built, is that it's too easy to notice how insignificant you are. How quickly you might go from something to nothing.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“The house felt different. Unsafe, unknown, too many possibilities existing all at once. Too many voices whispered back at me from the walls.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“I know what it’s like to leave, to come back, to not fit. To feel that distance between you and everything you’ve ever known.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“Time isn’t running out. It’s not even real, It’s just a measure of distance we made up to understand things. Like an inch. Or a mile. Clocks do not measuring time. They creat it!”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“Time isn't running out. It's not even real," he said, and I knew I had lost him--he was lost, circling in his own mind. "It's just a measure of distance we made up to understand things. Like an inch. Or a mile." He moved his hands as he spoke, to accentuate the point. "That clock," he said, pointing behind him. "It's not measuring time. It's creating it. You see the difference?”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls

“But here, the rain was just another part of the landscape. Like it was the thing that lived here and we were merely visitors.”
― Megan Miranda, All the Missing Girls