I Stop Somewhere Quotes

“People don't debate what defines murder. Politicians don't argue the body's ability to fight off being killed. There's no talk of "murder culture." No one says that you asked for murder. What you wear doesn't excuse being killed.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“I didn't deserve this. Even the most confused and lost girl, even the most screwed up of us all, doesn't deserve this. Death isn't the consequence for making a mistake; it's the punishment we force on girls because they couldn't be good. Only girls have to die for wanting.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“The court of public opinion moves much faster than the law.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“This isn’t a story of great romance or of true love. It’s simply a story of being lonely and how comforting it is to be called beautiful.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“It takes a lot of things to make a girl, but breaking her? It only takes a few pretty words and a crooked smile.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“Some people get closure; others just go on living because it’s the only option.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“Nobody ever wants to be inconvenienced by all the things that happen to girls.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“People should see what goes on. What it really feels like. Because once a trial starts and everyone's watching, both men will stand resolved and stoic. But if they could see this, if they could see what this kind of darkness does to a person, maybe they'd feel it, too. Maybe they wouldn't make excuses anymore. Maybe they wouldn't shrug it off, because, you know, these things happen.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“Beth will come back and coach Gretchen and Kailey on how to say the right things. I don't know if anyone is coaching the boys, but it seems unfair. Why do Gretchen and Kailey have to learn how to be the right kind of victims?”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“In the quiet between all the worry and all the things we fill our minds with, the world goes on.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“The thing about my diary is that I lied in it. I obscured the truth. I never told even the empty space around me the whole story. I was afraid someone would find it, read it, know me. I wanted them to know a different girl. A better one.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“Girls disappear. Girls are brought to secret places to be used and nothing is done, because it's how things are. Because they're only girls.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“Misconduct. I wish they'd call it for what it is. Misconduct sounds like something you do to earn yourself a time-out as a toddler.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“They condemn our town. Separate it from their own, where the same secrets pulse.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“Rape.
It brings with it connotations, assumptions, a whole steamer trunk full of other people's ideas of it, because other people only know it as a word. A concept that's discussed, argued, demonized. If you actually know what it is, if you live and experience it and know what it is beyond a word, you have to carry that word with you. You're now "rape victim", "rape survivor." Your identity is attached permanently to a word you hate.
I'm also a murder victim, but murder carries with it what it is. People don't debate what defines murder. Politicians don't argue the body's ability to fight off being killed. There's no talk of a "murder culture." No one says that you asked for murder. What you wear doesn't excuse being killed.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“That’s part of what makes a girl, I think. That inherent need to be pretty.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“Perhaps the worst dangers in our lives are the ones we invite in.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“People have a hard time believing what they don't want to believe. What makes them look inward.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“She builds an escape for herself and someone comes along and turns it into the one thing she dreads.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“I know I wasn’t very good at it. At being a girl.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“strength is a tourniquet. It isn’t a well.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“Time, when you're young, doesn't pass in the same way. It feels endless. It's hard to keep track of how seasons change, of when days become months, because we fill time until there's nothing left of it. We fill it with parties and bonfires and school and sports and relationships and people, but it's never enough. Because there's so much time, we need to fill it entirely. Boredom frightens us.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“I don't know what happens, what line gets crossed that transitions a girl from seeing her dad as the entirety of her world to viewing him as an embarrassment. For years, we were best friends. Fishing, the movies he slept through, cooking on the grill outside when he was home in the summers. I was his little girl, and he was everything. And then, he wasn't. I woke one day to realize that to be liked, I had to give up the one person who loved me. That's a pretty shitty way to introduce a girl to growing up.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“What’s the worst that can happen? I’m a nice guy.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“I kind of liked being terrified. I thought this was what it felt like to fall in love.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“I had to imagine love and so the absence of it was just something I guessed at. But now, I knew what it felt like to miss someone. To have someone fit into your life and take parts of you for themselves, only to abandon you and those pieces without care.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“Winter broke the trees and now it's breaking all the people, too.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“It made sense; I was a periphery girl.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“She doesn't believe it. She says it's a misunderstanding. That Caleb wouldn't... How does someone misunderstand find a body in a backyard?”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere

“They never go for the face anymore. They prefer their damage to be hidden, to be in the places you need to protect. They want you to feel shame if you show anyone. They're careful to hurt you only in the places you've been told to keep private.”
― T.E. Carter, I Stop Somewhere