The Nest Quotes

“She was so much better at being alone; being alone came more naturally to her. She led a life of deliberate solitude, and if occasional loneliness crept in, she knew how to work her way out of that particular divot. Or even better, how to sink in and absorb its particular comforts.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“She supposed she could Google, but she preferred to wonder.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“Parents are temporary custodians, keeping watch and offering love and trying to leave the child better than they found him.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“Everyone’s always on the hunt for a mirror. It’s basic psychology. You want to see yourself reflected in others. Others—your sister, your parents—they want to look at you and see themselves. They want you to be a flattering reflection of them—and vice-versa. It’s normal. I suppose it’s really normal if you’re a twin. But being somebody else’s mirror? That is not your job.” Nora”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“This was the part she hated, the part of a relationship that always nudged her to bail, the part where someone else’s misery or expectations or neediness crept into her carefully prescribed world. It was such a burden, other people’s lives.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“She believed in second chances, sometimes more than first chances, which were wasted on youth and indiscretion.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“She was open to love, but she was best at managing her own happiness; it was other people’s happiness that sunk her.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“People abandoned one another constantly without performing the courtesy of of actually disappearing. They left, but didn't, lurking about, a constant reminder of what could or should have been.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“True patriotism, Jack believed, would have been for his fellow Americans to look inward after 9/11 and accept a little blame, admit the attacks had happened, in part, because of who they were in the world, not in spite of it.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“His love for her was quiet and constant, familiar and soothing; it was almost its own thing entirely, like a worn rock or a set of worry beads, something he’d pick up and weigh in his palm occasionally, more comforting than dispiriting.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“I you want people to judge you based on the inside, don't distract them from the outside.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“Right now, it felt like there was nowhere for his thoughts to alight that wasn't rife with land mines of regret or anger or guilt.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“People might not change but their incentives could.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“So the first time she and Leo combusted, she'd practically been poised for the breakup. In some inexplicable way, she'd been looking forward to it and all its attendant drama, because wasn't there something nearly lovely–when you were young enough–about guts churning and tear ducts being put to glorious overuse? She recognized the undeniable satisfaction of the first emotional fissure because an unraveling was still something grown-up and, therefore, life affirming. See? The broken heart signalled. I loved enough to lose; I felt enough to weep. Because when you were young enough, the stakes of love were so very small, nearly insignificant. How tragic could a breakup be when it was part of the fabric of expectation from the beginning? The hackneyed fights, the late-night phone calls, the indignant recounting for friends over multiple drinks and in earshot of an appropriately flirtatious bartender–it was theatre for a certain type of person . . . Until it wasn't.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“It's not your job to be anyone's mirror.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“Everyone’s always on the hunt for a mirror. It’s basic psychology. You want to see yourself reflected in others.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“The shelf held nothing of value and it held everything of value. It was the past they’d both endured and escaped. It was despair and hope. It was life and death.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“Nothing was a sure thing; every choice was just an educated guess, or a leap into a mysterious abyss. People might not change but their incentives could. So”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“Sometimes a small change could make all the difference.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“I hate wearing flats,” she said, tugging her fitted white blouse a little lower. “They make me feel flat all over.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“a long, boozy evening when her ebullience was so uncorrupted that she could shift a room’s atmosphere”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“He pretended optimism every time Jack had a new trick up his sleeve, quietly paying off lines of credit that never materialized into revenue because that was what you did when you loved someone, when you were building a life together. Your strengths compensated for their weaknesses. You became the grounding leverage to their impulses, ego to their id. You accommodated. And if Walker got impatient, if he sometimes wished things were a little more balanced, he would just imagine his life without Jack and recalibrate, because he couldn’t imagine life without Jack.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“They’re all kind of weird.” “Everybody’s kind of weird.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“abundance proffered too soon led to lassitude and indolence, a wandering dissatisfaction.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“She was so much better at being alone; being alone came more naturally to her. She led a life of deliberate solitude, and if occasional loneliness crept in, she knew how to work her way out … Or even better, how to sink in and absorb its particular comforts.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“This was the part she hated, the part of a relationship that always nudged her to bail, the part where someone else’s misery or expectations or neediness crept into her carefully prescribed world. It was such a burden, other people’s lives. She did love Leo. She’d loved him in a host of different ways at different times in their lives, and she did want whatever their current thing was to continue. Probably. But she always came back to this: She was so much better at being alone; being alone came more naturally to her. She led a life of deliberate solitude, and if occasional loneliness crept in, she knew how to work her way out of that particular divot.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“They’d fallen into their old ways, accusatory and evasive, which was reassuring in a perverted way. Leo understood the nasty pull of the regrettable familiar, how the old grooves could be so much more satisfying than the looming unknown. It’s addicts stayed addicts.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“I’m curious,” he said, “is telling someone to relax ever helpful? It’s like saying ‘breathe’ to someone who is hyperventilating or ‘swallow’ to a person who’s choking. It’s a completely useless admonition.” “I”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“If you want to predict a person’s behavior, identify his or her incentives. Leo”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest

“Accommodation. A different and sturdier kind of nest. AS”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, The Nest