The Woman in the Window Quotes

“My head was once a filing cabinet. Now it’s a flurry of papers, floating on a draft.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“And if I don’t want to die, I’ve got to start living.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“I think of Dr. Brulov in Spellbound: “My dear girl, you cannot keep bumping your head against reality and saying it is not there.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“If there's one thing I've learned in all my time working with children, if I could whittle those years down to a single revelation, it's this: They are extraordinarily resilient. They can withstand neglect; they can survive abuse; they can endure, even thrive, where adults would collapse like umbrellas.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“I have a feeling that inside you somewhere, there’s something nobody knows about. —Shadow of a Doubt (1943)”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“Shaw also said, alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“I was fighting for my life. So I must not want to die. And if I don’t want to die, I’ve got to start living.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“Watching is like nature photography: You don’t interfere with the wildlife.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“The world is a beautiful place,” she insists, and she’s serious; her gaze is even, her voice level. Her eyes catch mine, hold them. “Don’t forget that.” She reclines, mashing her cigarette into the hollow of the bowl. “And don’t miss it.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“You can hear someone’s secrets and their fears and their wants, but remember that these exist alongside other people’s secrets and fears, people living in the same room.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“Something’s happening to me, through me, something dangerous and new. It’s taken root, a poison tree; it’s grown, fanning out, vines winding round my gut, my lungs, my heart.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“You’ll notice I’m not asking what made you this way, she said to me. Or, rather, I said it to myself. Life made me this way.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“I know the skies are vast and deep, an upside-down ocean .”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“She’s come undone. That was a book, I believe.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“No family, happy or unhappy, is quite like any other. Tolstoy was chock-fullo’shit. Remember that.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“This is classic therapist argot: It sounds to me. What I’m hearing. I think you’re saying. We’re interpreters. We’re translators.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“Kind of guy who steps out of the shower to piss,”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“And I stand there in the dark: cold, utterly alone, full of fear and something that feels like longing.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“Streaks of rainwater like varicose veins slide down the umbrella.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“What's happening, I think, is that Richard's passing has fundamentally altered your world, but the world outside has moved on without him. And that's very difficult to face and to accept.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“You live in a dream,” sneers Uncle Charlie. “You’re a sleepwalker, blind. How do you know what the world is like? Do you know, if you rip off the fronts of houses, you’d find swine? Use your wits. Learn something.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“Double Indemnity, Gaslight, Saboteur, The Big Clock . . . We lived in monochrome those nights. For me, it was a chance to revisit old friends; for Ed, it was an opportunity to make new ones. And we’d make lists. The Thin Man franchise, ranked from best (the original) to worst (Song of the Thin Man). Top movies from the bumper crop of 1944. Joseph Cotten’s finest moments. I can do lists on my own, of course. For instance: best Hitchcock films not made by Hitchcock. Here we go: Le Boucher, the early Claude Chabrol that Hitch, according to lore, wished he’d directed. Dark Passage, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall—a San Francisco valentine, all velveteen with fog, and antecedent to any movie in which a character goes under the knife to disguise himself. Niagara, starring Marilyn Monroe; Charade, starring Audrey Hepburn; Sudden Fear!, starring Joan Crawford’s eyebrows. Wait Until Dark: Hepburn again, a blind woman stranded in her basement apartment. I’d go berserk in a basement apartment.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“Sometimes I’ve got too many thoughts at once. It’s like there’s a four-way intersection in my brain where everyone’s trying to go at the same time.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“As I surface, the dream drains away like water. The memory, really. I try to scoop it up in my palms, but it’s gone.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“I just miss him. I miss him, I love him.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“The definition of insanity, Fox, Wesley used to remind me, paraphrasing Einstein, is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different result.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“Ad astra per aspera, read the inscription. Through adversity to the stars.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“And old movies, of course, brought me and Ed together.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“In his absence, explains his widow, I feel overwhelmed. I feel like an old lady.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window

“best Hitchcock films not made by Hitchcock. Here we go: Le Boucher, the early Claude Chabrol that Hitch, according to lore, wished he’d directed. Dark Passage, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall—a San Francisco valentine, all velveteen with fog, and antecedent to any movie in which a character goes under the knife to disguise himself. Niagara, starring Marilyn Monroe; Charade, starring Audrey Hepburn; Sudden Fear!, starring Joan Crawford’s eyebrows. Wait Until Dark: Hepburn again, a blind woman stranded in her basement apartment. I’d go berserk in a basement apartment.”
― A.J. Finn, The Woman in the Window