The Boy in the Photo Quotes

“Too much lonely always leads to too much wine.”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“it’s hard not to cry when there is a ball of sadness inside him all the time. He wishes he could”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“One glass had made her feel better, two glasses had made her feel optimistic about the future, three had made the comedy on television hilarious and then, without her noticing, the bottle was done.”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“her mother needs comforting.”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“Megan had heard the word ‘we’, feeling the grateful relief once again that she had a partner to navigate her life with.”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“She stands up straight as she recovers her equilibrium. It has taken her years to learn how to state what she wants without leaving any room for discussion, and she banishes thoughts of Greg from her mind.”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“That was the day she understood without a shadow of a doubt that Greg’s version of love was only about suffocating control. She had been his puppet to manipulate, and when she’d failed to perform as expected, he’d had to find another way to wrench back his power. That realisation, over everything else, was the one thing that had made her the most fearful of all for Daniel because she’d understood that her son would now have to be the one to dance when his strings were pulled. How much of what Greg felt for his son was actual love, and how much was something else entirely?”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“once you’ve had a child, you’re a mother forever.”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“Yes… it’s been… just horrible.’ ‘Does”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“than anyone. She had found herself easily persuaded out of her own opinions and thoughts for years. In the car she has made a list of questions to ask Daniel, and then has abandoned that list and exhorted herself to let him lead the way. She has also decided that when she gets to the station the constable will say, ‘Sorry, that child’s parents came to pick him up an hour ago.’ Or, ‘Sorry, his father who we thought was dead came to get him and they’ve disappeared again.’ When Greg picked him up from school and left the country with him, he made the impossible possible, and so now Megan knows that even the most ludicrous thought in her head may very well eventuate. She has had to learn the hard way. But now the drive is over and she and Michael are standing outside the same small room where the photo of Daniel was taken. The door is closed but Megan knows it’s the same room. She can almost feel her body pulling towards it as her heart races. It is after five and the winter sun has disappeared, leaving a chill in the air, but she is sure she’s not shivering from the cold. Heddon Greta is as small as Michael described it. They have driven through kilometres and kilometres of forest filled with pine trees and layered green bush. There are no people anywhere and Megan assumes they have been driven inside by the cold. The empty street has an eerie, post-apocalyptic feeling to it, as though some disaster has caused all of the”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“Divorce is a terrible thing, but sometimes to stay married is even more terrible.”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“To her, Greg is a bully, an emotionally – and sometimes physically – abusive man, a nightmare of an ex-husband. To Daniel he is a hero, a joker, a friend to play with.”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo

“She finds this juxtaposition of thoughts about her ex-husband difficult to deal with. She would like to announce his sins to the world but she’s acutely aware that as Daniel’s father, he needs to be spoken of carefully to protect her son. How she sees Greg isn’t how Daniel sees him. She wouldn’t want Daniel to see his father like that.”
― Nicole Trope, The Boy in the Photo