After Anna Quotes

“Who cares about crumbs or mess or late bedtimes? We spend so much time worrying about the little things, when they don’t matter. And we let the things that do matter slip.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“The worst injuries are always self-inflicted, even if you do them for the best of reasons.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“That was the trouble now. People felt sad, so they got a pill. Work was hard, so people resigned. Marriages went through rocky patches and people got divorced. It was selfishness, pure and simple. And it was all justified by emotions. I’m unhappy. I’m stressed. I need to feel loved. Just having the emotion was enough justification for whatever people did. And it was useless. Didn’t people see that unhappiness came from within? A person could change jobs, but if they were an unhappy type then they would take their unhappiness with them.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“Your reputation is like your virginity, Julia: you only get to lose it once.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“agreed to wait until three thirty, but that was as long as she could hold on. Julia and Anna had spent hours getting ready for the puppy: buying the bed, choosing where to put it, selecting the name (Anna had settled on Bella, which Julia thought was a fine name for a puppy), stocking up on dog treats, planning where they would take her for walks, and Julia did not want to have to deal with the disappointment that would follow if she had to tell Anna that the puppy would not be coming home that evening after all. Even more than that, Julia needed the puppy to be a source of nothing but joy and affection, because she was going to be facing her own custody battle soon enough and, if it was anything like Carol Prowses’s, Anna would need all the distractions she could get. Julia hadn’t found Brian in bed with one of his students –thankfully, since he taught in a junior school –or with anyone else, for that matter. If she had she probably wouldn’t have cared, which was exactly the problem. She liked Brian. She thought he was a good man and a good dad and a good husband –well, an OK man and”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“Who cares now? Julia thought. Who cares about crumbs or mess or late bedtimes? We spend so much time worrying about the little things, when they don’t matter. And we let the things that do matter slip. When”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“most people don’t understand. They think they are safe because they assume that other people share some of their values. They don’t – can’t – understand that some people – very few, but some – will kill them or steal from them or hurt them and cast them aside in order to get what they want. An executive wants a promotion to CEO, and in order to get it he or she has to cut a thousand jobs, destroy the livelihoods of a thousand families, push a city like Detroit into ruins. Is it justified? Is it fair that, on the back of that misery, one person gets a bigger pay packet? Gets even richer than they already are? Is it fair that bankers who produce nothing of value, who leech wealth from the rest of society, get to pay themselves tens of millions of pounds for doing so? Of course, it isn’t. But does anyone think they care about what is fair? You cannot deposit fairness in the bank. What they want is money, and they will do whatever they can, at whatever cost to other people, to get what they want.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“She couldn't remember who'd said it - Orwell, maybe - but a famous wit had once pointed out that there is one anniversary we pass each year without celebrating, or even knowing it is there: the anniversary of our own death.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“It must happen all the time. All around the world, every day, in every country, people must say a cheery goodbye or au revoir or auf wiedersehen to a loved one, with no inkling that it was the last time they would be able to do so. It was probably a good thing; if we knew how close disaster was, if we worried that each goodbye would be the last, we would never do anything. We'd be paralysed by fear.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“She'd run to the bathroom sink and vomited until there was nothing left to come out other than bile and saliva. It was funny how your body reacted to extreme emotion by emptying the stomach. She didn't know why that would be the case; you'd think it would be better to retain the food as to have some energy to deal with whatever crisis it was.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“It isn't fair, you know that, but then the world isn't fair. Life isn't fair. You know that, too. Fair doesn't come into it. Does the wolf slaying the lamb worry about fairness? About wounded innocence? No, it cares only about it's hunger. There is no fair or unfair for the wolf. The wolf takes what it needs, and it's need is the only justification necessary. Right, wrong; fair, unfair; they play no part in its world. And they play no part in yours either. There is only strong or weak, winner or loser, the cry of its not fair is just a tool the weak use to constrain the strong.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“her granddaughter to inherit the”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“The mind didn’t work like that. It reminded her of being a teenager and going over every possible meaning of every word a boy she was interested in had said.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“She had not cried like that – uncontrollably, her chest heaving – since she was seventeen and she had been dumped by Vincent, the first love of her life. She had believed, as teenagers will, that he was the one, the only one, and when he had told her it was over – it’s not you, he’d meant to say, it’s me, except the prepared lines had come out wrong and he’d actually said, in a moment of unwitting honesty, it’s not me, it’s you – she had cried for days. It had felt like the end of the world, like nothing would ever be the same again. After a while, though, it had passed, and she’d seen that maybe life would go on without Vincent.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“And a necessary evil is indistinguishable from something right and proper. If it is necessary, how can it be evil? If it is the only path to the right and proper outcome then it must itself be right and proper. To be deterred from doing the right thing because a little girl might undergo some temporary suffering – wouldn’t that be worse than letting her suffer? If everyone made decisions like that then nothing great would ever be accomplished. How many people died in order for the great cathedrals to be built? Or bridges? Or railways? Or for the wars of the righteous to be fought? Did their deaths matter? Were they tragedies, every one of them? Yes, of course they were. But were they to be regretted? No, they were not.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“always been that way. And you will not share her. She is yours. Vanished into your car; traceless. It has gone very, very well. As well as could have been expected. You have to admit to being a little bit pleased. You have to admit that you allowed yourself a pat on the back. Have you been lucky, even? Maybe. You need luck. Everyone does. You are no different, at least not in that regard. In some others, yes. In some other ways, you are very different. Better. More clear-sighted. More decisive. So maybe it wasn’t luck, after all. No, you don’t think it was. It was down to good planning. Yes, you prefer that. It was down to good planning. And ability, of course. Nerve and skill. It was you who’d done it, you who’d made it happen. Luck was not part of it. Not that you are becoming complacent. That would not do. That way, disaster lies. Complacency is the path to failure. And you did not take”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“would”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“Julia had read once that you could tell how someone would be in the bedroom by the way they danced and the way they cooked.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“these denizens of chat rooms, these speculators in the comments section of newspapers. Was there ever a more public demonstration of the bizarreness of the human species than the comments sections?”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“What Edna did turns out to be pretty minor. But then that’s life, isn’t it? The worst injuries are always self-inflicted, even if you do them for the best of reasons.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“That was the trouble now. People felt sad, so they got a pill. Work was hard, so people resigned. Marriages went through rocky patches and people got divorced. It was selfishness, pure and simple. And it was all justified by emotions. I’m unhappy. I’m stressed. I need to feel loved. Just having the emotion was enough justification for whatever people did.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“Anna was gone, taking with her the only thing that gave Julia”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“was”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“She was also very honest, and believed in saying what she thought. She had shared with Julia that she did so on the advice of her therapist, who had told her that holding it in was just stacking the shelves of your closet with problems for the future.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“There was none of the warmth and comfort of food prepared with slapdash love, just the clinical perfection of the surgeon’s knife.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“Right,’ Edna said. ‘Let’s get this over with.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“pointless. All she could”
― Alex Lake, After Anna

“is your mother behind it – to be appalling, and I hope you feel the shame of it. I do not accept your proposal for custody, and my lawyer will be in touch in due course to formalize matters. Yours, Julia Then she hit send. She hoped that she was doing the right thing. His reply came a few minutes later. Fine. Send your lawyer’s details. My lawyer will be in touch. She didn’t deserve a reply to her letter. A defence against her accusations. She didn’t even deserve a signature. But that was fine. She smiled.”
― Alex Lake, After Anna