The War Outside Quotes

“There are no good choices here, here where I'm surrounded only by spinach fields and the wide expanse of my defeated heart.”
― Monica Hesse, The War Outside

“It doesn't matter why people do things. It doesn't matter because sometimes things are wrong, completely wrong, no matter why they were done or what justifications people try to give.”
― Monica Hesse, The War Outside

“You can't change endings by going back and changing beginnings.”
― Monica Hesse, The War Outside

“I did love her. I think she loved me, too.”
― Monica Hesse, The War Outside

“Of all the things that happened there, in that place full of enemies and dust and spies and sadness; of all the things Margot said to me—the calculations that sounded like friendship, the casual shattering of my life—out of all those things, I am grateful for only one: that I never loved her. If I had loved her I couldn’t bear any of it, and so I am grateful for this lack of love, this one remaining thing I can bear. Because even if it’s a terrible thing to have, if I didn’t have that, I’d have nothing.


If Haruko said that, she was lying.
She did love me. I loved her too.”
― Monica Hesse, The War Outside