Black-Eyed Susans Quotes

“Closure doesn’t exist,” she responds smoothly. “Just…awareness. That you can’t ever go back. That you know a truth about life’s randomness that most other people don’t.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“My grandfather told me that God puts pieces in the wrong places to keep us busy solving puzzles, and in the perfect places so that we never forget there is a God.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“I thought there would be more people. Where are all the people who scream on Facebook?” “On the couch. Screaming.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“He believed that a person’s most profound flaws or virtues emerge in great crisis, or they remain buried forever.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“I am sane, and I am not, and I don’t want anyone to know.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“That was my grandfather's one survival tip if I ever found myself trapped in a fairy tale. Keep your promises. Bad things happen if you don't.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“The kind of desktop where passion is screwing organization and nobody's making the bed.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“Children often play the day of the funeral as if it’s any other day. It’s deceptive. They grieve far longer and more deeply than adults.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“February in Texas is a cold, bitter lady. March is when she loses her virginity.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“It would be very hard to live in Lydia’s head. I imagined it blindingly bright and chaotic, like an exploding star. Both sides of her brain constantly at war.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“My father used to say that February in Texas is a cold, bitter lady. March is when she loses her virginity.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“There is a reason you feel the need to blame yourself,” he continues. “From all accounts, you were a very careful girl. If you accept the blame—decide you took a rare misstep—you can reassure yourself this was not a random event. If you blame yourself, you can believe that you are still in control of your universe. You’re not. You never will be.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“It’s the kind of storm that Yankees make fun of on Facebook with a picture of a spilled cup of ice on the sidewalk that shuts down schools or a cartoon that depicts massive car pileups with one culprit snowflake. It would be funny, if a tenth of an inch of ice in Texas wasn’t deadly.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“Closure doesn’t exist,” she responds smoothly. “Just…awareness. That you can’t ever go back. That you know a truth about life’s randomness that most other people don”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“She is wearing a double helix made of gold.
The twisted ladder of life.
A strand of DNA.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“When it came to Lydia, boys just wanted a cheap thrill: to meet a beautiful, crazy girl in the dark and hope she didn’t bring an axe.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“He believed that a person’s most profound flaws or virtues emerge in great crisis, or they remain buried forever. I remember leaving his office that day thinking it was sad that ordinary, dull people die all the time without ever knowing they are heroes. All because a girl didn’t go under in the lake right in front of them, or a neighbor’s house didn’t catch fire.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“The very best thing about landing in that grave? Perspective.
So I peer through this morning's prism: a science test looming in second period, an a-hole of a coach who probably could have used more childhood therapy than I got, and a tell-tale tampon under my foot.
I consider the clawed tiger on the bed, the one wearing the zebra-printed sports bra - the same tiger that every Sunday transforms into the girl who voluntarily walks next door to help sort Miss Effie's medicine into her days-of-the-week pill container. The one who pretended her ankle hurt one day last week so the backup settler on her volleyball team would get to play on her birthday.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“I am sane, and I am not, and I don’t want anyone to know. What”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“My grandfather once told me that God puts pieces in the wrong places to keep us busy solving puzzles, and in the perfect places so that we never forget there is a God.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“Come in una favola dei fratelli Grimm, ho dato potere a qualcosa che non ne aveva. L’inferno può essere contenuto in uno specchio. O in un pisello. O in una margherita gialla.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“Sono molto fortunata. Ogni volta che sto per dimenticarmelo le ragazze Susan, le altre margherite gialle, me lo ricordano in coro”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“C’è stato un periodo della mia vita in cui ho creduto fortemente che il polline delle margherite gialle si sarebbe attaccato come una maledizione a chiunque mi avesse sfiorato una spalla o stretto la mano.
Ma adesso sono cresciuta. Agli sconosciuti offro la stessa stretta di mano ferma di mio nonno, abbraccio mia figlia almeno due volte al giorno e permetto ai miei amici di bere un sorso di tè freddo dal mio bicchiere, il tutto senza battere ciglio. Questo però non vuol dire che abbia smesso di essere una margherita dagli occhi neri. È un marchio che rimane. Come schizofrenica. Grassa. Affetta da deficit dell’attenzione.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“Sono molto fortunata. Ogni volta che sto per dimenticarmelo le ragazze Susan, le altre margherite gialle, e lo ricordano in coro.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“Ho perso trentadue ore della mia vita.

Lydia, la mia migliore amica, mi dice di pensare a queste ore come a vecchi vestiti in fondo a un armadio buio. Chiudi gli occhi. Apri l’anta. Rovista. Cerca.

Ci sono cose che ricordo bene, ma preferirei non fosse così. Quattro lentiggini. Occhi che non sono neri, ma azzurri, sbarrati, a pochi centimetri dai miei. Insetti che rosicchiano una guancia morbida e liscia. Granelli di sabbia tra i denti. Ecco quello che è impresso nella mia memoria. E’ il mio diciassettesimo compleanno e sulla torta le candeline sono accese.

Penso a quei gelidi cassetti di metallo pieni di margherite gialle, della varietà che chiamano Black-Eyed Susan, “Susan dagli occhi neri”, per via di quel bottone scuro, quella specie di occhio, al centro dei petali.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“Sono la ragazza Cartwright che tanti anni fa è stata scaricata in un appezzamento di terra vicino alla tenuta dei Jenkins, insieme a una studentessa universitaria strangolata e a un mucchio di ossa umane. Sono una delle quattro margherite gialle, le quattro Susan dagli occhi neri. Quella fortunata.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“Le Susan dagli occhi neri mi fanno visita in sogno. Sono più vive che mai. Stanno cercando il mio mostro, lo cercano in ogni angolo, come se la loro casa, che è la mia testa, fosse sul punto di esplodere. Come se quella fosse la loro ultima occasione”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“Examino su cara. Tiene arrugas a causa del dolor ajeno. Ojos azul verdoso que han visto mas horrores de los que yo jamas podre comprender. Los ha olido, tocado, respirado mientras caian del cielo como ceniza”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“Las Susanas son una planta codiciosa, a menudo la primera en prosperar en la tierra arrasada y devastada. Bonitas, pero competitivas, como animadoras. Viven para desplazar a los demás”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans

“What was that Poe quote that Lydia liked so much? I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity. The ducks and the pond are well behind me now.”
― Julia Heaberlin, Black-Eyed Susans