Secrets She Left Behind Quotes

“My life sucked, and it would catch up to me, and I'd just crack.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“People…ladies, I mean…they dye their hair sometimes,” I explained to him. “So one day they have red hair and another day they have brown hair. It doesn’t matter,” I said. “They’re still the same lady.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“You’re trying to paint things as either black or white,” he said. “As either good or evil. It’s never that neat.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“Let’s reframe what you’re going through, Maggie,” he said. “I’d like you to think of it as grief.” “For the people who died?” “No. For yourself. For the life you thought you had before the fire. Before Ben.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“I’d married a near stranger because I felt like I had no choice. When you’re young, you have more choices than you’ll ever again have in your life, yet sometimes you can’t see them. I’d truly been blind.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“But the truth is, sometimes kids—and adults—seem to wait until their relatives are out of the room to go. It’s like they don’t want to distress them more than they have to.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“still a part of her future as well as her past. But it was stupid and pointless to think about what might have been.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“But he had a story. I guess everybody did. People walked around with this thick dark film sticking to them and until you scratched it, you had no idea.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“I think people put on a show that they’re good,” I said. “Maybe they even start to, like, believe it themselves. But people are really... not evil, exactly, but they just care about themselves. They don’t really care about who they step on. They just pretend like they do. You can’t trust them. You really can’t trust anyone.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“It was me—the weak-willed, easily seduced, insecure girl I’d become. I was the obstacle I’d be carrying around with me for the rest of my life.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“Okay.” I smiled, although I was not doing okay at all. My calm exterior was an act. Inside, I was falling apart.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“And grief is never quick and easy,” he said. “It takes time to get through.” “I’ll never get over it,” I said. “Not over, but through. That’s the key word. You can’t skip it. You have to go through it.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“felt the depth of my deception. What had happened to my self-respect? My integrity?”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“what I have with Laurel is public and shallow. What I have with you is private and deep. Which part of me would you rather have?”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“We can’t always have what we want in life. I should know that by now.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“Now I knew that an emotional affair was even more dangerous. It created a need to share every thought and feeling with another person. It seduced you into being entirely vulnerable while still feeling entirely safe.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“Maybe if I’d never set foot in the chapel, everything would have turned out okay. I would have learned to be satisfied with what I had. As I got to my feet after the service, though, I knew it was already too late. The seed was planted for everything that would follow. The damage was already done.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind

“Sometimes there’s so much to say that you don’t know where to begin.”
― Diane Chamberlain, Secrets She Left Behind