The Roanoke Girls Quotes

“You can't outrun what's inside of you. You can only acknowledge it, work around it, try and turn it into something better. I may not know exactly where I'm headed, but this time I'm choosing my own destiny.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“We're all fucked up, Lane, one way or another. It's only a matter of degree.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“...sometimes you have to hurt people just to prove you're alive.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“No one had to explain to me the power our childhoods had over us, even when we fought like hell against them.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“Roanoke girls never last long around here. In the end, we either run or we die.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“Sometimes it's a revelation, even to me, how much more comfortable I am with cruelty than with kindness.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“The real danger has always lived in my granddad's kind voice, his soft caresses. All of it masquerading as innocent, but really just a gateway drug for girls starved for affection, desperate for someone to love them. He doesn't force us with a heavy hand. He manipulates with a gentle touch, guides us exactly where he wants us to go. So in the end, we blame only ourselves.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“I understand how sometimes you have to pass the pain around in order to survive it.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“He is such a child underneath all his alpha male bravado. A selfish child who thinks everything in the whole world is meant for him.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“One summer is enough. Hell, sometimes one day is all it takes to change your life.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“The sharp tap of hail begins against the window panes like bony fingers trying to find a way inside.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“Guilt, I’m discovering, is an emotion that’s almost impossible to kill. It’s like growing, burrowing into every vulnerable spot. Always reminding you of all the ways you’ve failed.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“how sometimes you have to hurt people just to prove that you’re alive.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“You can’t outrun what’s inside of you. You can only acknowledge it, work around it, try to turn it into something better.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“I knew well the painful futility of reaching for more than you were ever likely to get, how much easier it was to simply accept the limits of your world.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“You can’t outrun what’s inside of you. You can only acknowledge it, work around it, try to turn it into something better. I may not know exactly where I’m headed, but this time I’m choosing my own destiny.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“Guilt, I’m discovering, is an emotion that’s almost impossible to kill. It’s like a poisonous weed that keeps on growing, burrowing into every vulnerable spot. Always reminding you of all the ways you’ve failed.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“Fake flowers ringing a jaunty hand-painted wooden Welcome sign. Judging from the way Sarah’s face falls when she sees me, she’s forgotten the message on her own front door.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“Like she was walking a tightrope between light and dark, joy and sorrow, and all I could do was stand beneath with arms outstretched and hope to make a catch.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls

“Like she was walking a tightrope between light and dark, joy and sorrow, and all I could do was stand beneath with arms outstretched and hope to make a catch. Or at least that’s what I’d done with my mother when I was younger. In recent years, I was more likely to yank away the net just to watch her fall.”
― Amy Engel, The Roanoke Girls