If I Disappear Quotes

“This is what ordinary people are like. They don’t want to be bothered. They don’t want to care. They would rather let a few people disappear, a few families suffer and never recover, than ruin everybody’s vacation.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“It makes me think about how the patriarchy was preserved for thousands of years because organized religion gave men magical powers and made women their servants,”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“Serial killers kill animals too.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“And I think of being young, how women are taught, piece by piece, how they fit into the world. But that's not where it started either. I was born a woman. I was born to disappear.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“I think of the wedding, how it just went on and on. And everyone was so happy, and I was just there. And the happier they were, the more there I was. I go further back, to the day we met. I knew we would get married right away. I knew it like it had been chosen for me. I said to myself, Here is a man I can stand. Here is someone I can definitely put up with. So maybe it was before that. And I think of being young, how women are taught, piece by piece, how they fit into the world. But that's not where it started either. I was born a woman. I was born to disappear.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“Even just sitting here, in a too warm, too clean room, pretending there is a God we are all praising, makes me kind of angry, if you want to know the truth. It makes me think about how the patriarchy was preserved for thousands of years because organized religion gave men magical powers and made women their servants, and now here we are in a world where women disappear and men run congregations.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“I chose a selfish man to love, and I asked him not to be selfish. And even now I want him to help me, to think about me, to understand what being a woman is when he's always been and only ever been a man.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“Stories are contagious. Even the thoughts in your head can spread like a cold.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“And I think I can survive anything, even you.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“It’s easy for a man to be good, just like it’s easy for a woman to be crazy.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“And I want to tell him that he has no idea what it’s like to be a woman, that there are really only two choices: You can be too much or you can disappear.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“do vultures sleep, or do they just circle? Do they feed off the sleep of the dead?”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“I’m overcome with a warmth that stings around my crown, melts into my shoulder, like it’s special when people aren’t cruel.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“their beauty is theirs, that a woman’s beauty doesn’t have to be shared.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“If she killed all these women, why did she never kill you?” But it’s Tasia who answers me, and her eyes swell with significance. “Because someone would care if we were gone.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“You kept Grace alive because she was pregnant, and maybe you had scruples or you wanted her baby, or Jed’s baby, or you were afraid of what might happen if you murdered one more person. Maybe you knew you would lose the ranch. And then you would have to get rid of everyone, everyone who had shielded you, your mother and your father and your brother.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“She is too perfect not to be someone’s wife. Thirteen bodies were unearthed, an entire ranch was decimated, her own husband poisoned himself, and she still sits there like she’s waiting for the oven timer to go off. She is exactly the wife every man wants.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“But she had a reason to be afraid. She didn’t trust anyone because her own child was a serial killer. Not that they ever knew for certain. At least I don’t think they did. But you can feel it, in your bones, when something is really wrong.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“In their white clapboard house with their white picket fence and their pastel-painted walls, their patterned kitchenware, their jobs and their homework, they know something. They all know something but they’re pretending they don’t.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“Happens a lot out here, and it shouldn’t surprise you. You’d have to be crazy to want to stay in a place like this.” He clucks. “Too isolated. The men get drunk and the women get out.” He gestures to the woods beyond the ranch. “People come out here to die. If they want to live, they leave.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“am happy I can tweet the police.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“The second I decide it’s him I should be investigating, he shows up battered and bruised, playing the victim. But that’s crazy. He can’t read my thoughts. He doesn’t know what I know.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“realize this has gone too far, all of this. I have no reason to believe Jed killed you. No legitimate reason, really, to believe any crime ever happened. Maybe you left. Maybe Grace left. Why am I still here?”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“She was sick. She was obsessed with sick stuff.” I shrivel a little. I wonder what Tasia would think about me. “And she liked to cause trouble.” She gives Jed a look, like he will understand. “Look, I’m not saying I’m happy she’s gone or anything”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“I don’t know if you noticed, but these people don’t exactly think things through. They like the appearance of things, but if you look closely, just about everything here is falling apart or being”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“I’m not even a writer, except that I tend to get creative with my own reality.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“Suddenly I’m angry. Because isn’t this just typical police? Isn’t this just the police we know? Again and again. They miss the clues. They come in too late. They wait until the case goes cold, the evidence is compromised and corrupted, then flap around ineffectually, pin the crime on whoever is weak enough not to put up a fight, while we, the people who care, we burn.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“want you to listen. I don’t know how you know Rachel or if you even know her, but this girl has gone and disappeared about forty-five times. The first time, she was maybe fourteen. We were worried then. But then she kept on going missing. It became something of a local joke. It got so people didn’t even care. Some people just want to be missing.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“(She has to be old, because to a man, there are only two things a woman can be: young or crazy.) I can see that person in his eyes when he looks at me, and I curl in on myself and I want to go, I want to hide and I want to disappear but I won’t, I can’t, and I insist, “Her mother thinks she’s dead.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear

“Your nieces share your brother’s DNA. They are so beautiful, I feel sad that they are living where no one can see them, but then I remind myself their beauty is theirs, that a woman’s beauty doesn’t have to be shared.”
― Eliza Jane Brazier, If I Disappear