The Ghosts We Keep Quotes

“I didn't want to die. Not really. What I wanted was to disappear. To blink out of existence, to be forgotten by everyone who ever knew me. I didn't want to be here anymore, to have to think, to have to feel.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“He was a ghost following me everywhere I went, even when I didn't want him there.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“But knowing what you have to do and actually doing what you need to are two different things, two separate worlds.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“Fingers finding lost bodies-
floating along the surface, despaired drowned, dead.
Keeping secrets lost on pale blue lips-
For this is the place the dead things go-
This is the home of the ghosts we keep.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“I’m just so tired,” I told her. “I’m tired of being this way and I’m tired of my brain being broken and I’m tired, Mommy. I’m tired.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“I gripped Marcus’s notebook closer to my chest, tracing the words that he’d written, words that he’d written for my brother. I didn’t realize I was crying at first, but my tears fell to the page, staining the blue ink and forcing it to pool around the letters. I felt my grip on this reality slipping, the knowledge that my brother had this secret, one that he never thought to tell me. I cried for Marcus; I cried for his lost love and the future the two of them might’ve had. I cried for my parents and how awful their only living child had become, how they seemed to have lost both of their kids in a matter of weeks. I cried for Joel and Vanessa, how they’d hurt me, and how I’d hurt them. I cried for myself, and all the hurt I’d caused, and all the pain I felt. But most of all, I cried for Ethan because he was no longer here.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“He was stuck back there, as I moved forward. And yet it still felt like we were both stuck in the same place.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“This was Ethan's world, the world that he'd left behind.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“didn’t want to die. Not really. What I wanted was to disappear. To blink out of existence, to be forgotten by everyone who ever knew me. I didn’t want to be here anymore, to have to think, to have to feel.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“It was hard to feel like we were anything other than people sharing a tragedy.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“I was someone to Ethan until Marcus came around, and then I was nobody.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“I wanted my own answer. I wanted something for me. Maybe that was the point. To live just for me?”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“It hurt because I missed him so much. I missed my brother more than anything I’d ever missed before. And I knew that I was never going to stop missing him. But I had to learn to live alongside the pain, alongside this missing part of my life that I’d never get back.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“And I wish that you were here,
But you've left me alone.
Gone off on a journey,
That'll never bring you home.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“I didn't want to die.
Not really.
What I wanted was to disappear.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“I couldn’t believe the words I was hearing, I couldn’t believe I was watching the pastor of this entire congregation turn my brother’s funeral into a generic sermon. The pastor wasn’t talking about Ethan. He didn’t know Ethan at all.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“But now it was clear to me, I didn't belong anywhere; there was nowhere for me to go.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“She told me about how grief strikes you so hard that you aren’t even sure if you’re yourself anymore.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep

“What I wanted was to disappear. To blink out of existence, to be forgotten by everyone who ever knew me. I didn’t want to be here anymore, to have to think, to have to feel.”
― Mason Deaver, The Ghosts We Keep