Long Bright River Quotes

“I wouldn’t listen. I wanted everything to stay as it was. I was more afraid of the truth than the lie. The truth would change the circumstances of my life. The lie was static. The lie was peaceful. I was happy with the lie.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“This was the secret I learned that day: none of them want to be saved. They all want to sink backward toward the earth again, to be swallowed by the ground, to keep sleeping. There is hatred on their faces when they are roused from the dead.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“Who on earth can explain, in words alone, the great gutting tenderness of holding your child in your arms? The animal feeling of it—the baby’s soft muzzle, the baby’s new skin (which throws into relief the wear your own has endured), the little hand reaching up to your face, searching for family. The quick small pats, light as moths, that land on your cheek and chest.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“In a moment of clarity, once, Kacey told me that time spent in addiction feels looped. Each morning brings with it the possibility of change, each evening the shame of failure. The only task becomes the seeking of the fix. Every dose is a parabola, low-high-low; and every day a series of these waves; and then the days themselves become chartable, according to how much time, in sum, the user spends in comfort or in pain; and then the months.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“I’ve had a certain bad habit ever since I was a child. I duck what I can’t bring myself to acknowledge, turn away from anything that causes me to be ashamed, run away from it rather than addressing it. I am a coward, in this way.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“But there's a difference, I believe, between two consenting adults making a thoughtful transaction and the kind of bargain that happens on the Ave, where some of the women would do anything for anyone, where some of the women need a fix so badly that they can't say no or yes.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“—Connor can do bad things, Kacey says, but he’s not all bad. Almost nobody is. I have nothing to say to this. I picture Mrs. Mahon, her hand tipping back and forth in the air above the chessboard. They’re bad and good both, all the pieces.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“Since I was a small child, I have always tried to maintain my dignity in every situation. At work now, I strive to maintain my professional dignity. At home, with Thomas, I strive to maintain a certain parental dignity, to protect him from overhearing anything that might upset him, or anything untoward. Therefore, because it feels undignified, I have never enjoyed the feeling of anyone else worrying about me or being concerned for my well-being, preferring instead to give the impression that I am always fine, and that I have everything under control. Largely, I believe this image to be an honest one.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“The knowledge that there was once a person in the world who loved me more than anything.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“I tried hard to ignore the low noise that thrummed throughout my day, some tolling, cautionary bell. I wouldn’t listen. I wanted everything to stay as it was. I was more afraid of the truth than the lie. The truth would change the circumstances of my life. The lie was static. The lie was peaceful. I was happy with the lie.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“The hardest cases, I think--perhaps the most dangerous ones--are the friends of the Laffertys' (the evil ones). People like Sargeant Ahearn, who has possibly known for years about what goes on in Kensington. And he'll never be fired, never be questioned, never even be disciplined. He'll go on with his daily routine, showing up for work, casually abusing his power in ways that will have lasting effects on individuals and communities, on the whole city of Philadelphia, for years.
It's the Ahearns of the world who scare me.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“People with promise, people dependent and depended upon, people loving and beloved, one after another, in a line, in a river, no fount and no outlet, a long bright river of departed souls.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“was more afraid of the truth than the lie. The truth would change the circumstances of my life. The lie was static. The lie was peaceful. I was happy with the lie.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“Is there confusion in the little isle? Let what is broken so remain. The Gods are hard to reconcile: ’Tis hard to settle order once again. There is confusion worse than death, Trouble on trouble, pain on pain, Long labour unto aged breath, Sore task to hearts worn out by many wars And eyes grown dim with gazing on the pilot-stars.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“Some people do have trouble with Kensington, but to me the neighborhood itself has become like a relative, slightly problematic but dear in the old-fashioned way that that word is sometimes used, treasured, valuable to me.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“My implication, of course, was that it is the decisions that I have made in life that have placed me on my specific path—decisions, not chance. And that although our childhood may not have been idyllic, it sufficiently prepared one of us, at least, for a productive life.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“I have never enjoyed the feeling of anyone else worrying about me or being concerned for my well-being, preferring instead to give the impression that I am in all ways fine, and that I have everything under control. Largely, I believe this image to be an honest one.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“nine hundred overdose victims in Kensington last year. Not one of them Kacey.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“This was the secret I learned that day: None of them want to be saved. They all want to sink backward toward the earth again, to be swallowed by the ground, to keep sleeping. There is hatred on their faces when they are roused from the dead. It’s a look I’ve seen dozens of times, now, on the job: standing over the shoulder of some poor EMT whose job it is to reel them back in from the other side. It was the look on Kacey’s face that day as her eyes opened, as she cursed, as she wept. It was directed at me.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“It happened again and again. Kacey quickly got worse. Now she seemed permanently glazed over, a glossiness to her eyes, a flush to her cheeks, her speech slow, her tongue heavy, her beautiful laugh nearly gone. Seeing her this way, I often had the urge to clap my hands, loudly, in front of her face. To hug her tightly, to squeeze out of her whatever darkness was making her want to dull her life so completely. I missed my bright little sister, the quick-witted Kacey, dashing here and there, always alight with energy; the fierce small fiery version of the teenager who seemed now to exist in a world of unending, unrelenting dusk.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“But if I was self-conscious about my appearance, I was proud of my intelligence, which I thought of, in secret, as something that rested quietly inside me, a sleeping dragon guarding a store of wealth that no one, not even Gee, could take away. A weapon I would one day deploy to save us both: myself and my sister.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“right now. I look at him in the stark light of the lamp hanging on a chain above our booth. It’s a Tiffany lamp. Louis Comfort Tiffany, interestingly, spent some time here in Pennsylvania when he attended the military academy in West Chester. The lamp above us, though, does not look well made. It looks like an interrogation light in”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“now.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“a city called Philly can’t let any of its infrastructure go unabbreviated”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“Kacey told me that time spent in addiction feels looped. Each morning brings with it the possibility of change, each evening the shame of failure.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“Stupid,”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“this single memory that saved me”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“am four and I put one hand on her cheek. Hello, says my mother, and she puts her mouth on my cheek, talks into my face, and there are the teeth and the lips of my mother. My baby, said my mother, over and over, the phrase she used most in the world.”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“you? —What’s going on? I say. It’s me. Are you”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River

“This was the secret I learned that day: None of them want to be saved. They all want to sink backward toward the earth again, to be swallowed by the ground, to keep sleeping. There is hatred on their faces when they are roused from”
― Liz Moore, Long Bright River