The Shadows Quotes

“Perhaps life was just a matter of doing what you thought was best at the time and then living with the consequences as best you could afterward.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“Absence of evidence was not evidence of absence.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“But everything is okay until it isn’t. People are there, large as life and taken for granted, and then they aren’t.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“As you get older, it [time] all begins to blur into one. You start to think life was never any kind of straight line. It was always more of a ... scribble.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“Graveyards might have housed the dead below the ground, but what lay above was always for the living; they were the places where people came to deal with the break between what their lives had once been and what they now were. All the times she had come here, she had only really been visiting herself, and her relationship with the past.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“There were good memories here too. Moments that, looking back on them objectively, had been filled with light. The problem was that what happened later cast such a shadow they were hard to see.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“It occurred to me that, when my mother died, I would be all that was left of a family I hadn’t known, and for a moment all my adult confidence evaporated and I was left feeling lost and unmoored.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“Because that was what parents did, wasn't it? They wanted to protect their children. They wanted the best lives possible for them. And they expected nothing in return for that.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“And while she was sad to see me leave, I think she was also happy that I was heading out into the world, escaping the past and moving forward into a different present without even glancing behind me. Because, however painful it might be, that’s what all good parents have to do in the end.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“Why was not necessarily a question that mattered. Motivations, causes, reasons—they almost always turned out to be mundane and disappointing. What explanation could there possibly be for the horror she had seen in the quarry that afternoon that would make sense of it? Asking why was like diving into a black hole. The deeper you went, the less light you found.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“And just as our dreams are shaped by our reality, there are times like these when our lives can be changed by the dreams we've had.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“Asking why was like diving into a black hole. The deeper you went, the less light you found.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“She remembered the desire to escape from it all—to be anywhere apart from where she was, and to find the person she was meant to be, as though the real her were already out there somewhere, and one day they would meet and shake hands.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“always desperate to please the whole world, but never sure what it wanted.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“I don't care if you ever think about me at all. I'll think about you instead.”
― Alex north , The Shadows

“You know you need to let each other go, but it’s so sad and difficult, and so you don’t until you have to. Until the hurt of keeping someone outweighs the hurt of losing them.”
― Alex North, The Shadow Friend

“Jenny had been my first love, and when you're young you cling to that long past the point when you know it should be over. You know you need to let each other go, but it's so sad and difficult, and so you don't until you have to. Until the hurt of keeping someone outweighs the hurt of losing them.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“When I thought of my mother, it was always as a presence - a role, almost - and it was strange to be faced with a truth that should have been obvious, that she had been someone with her own dreams and aspirations, who had felt the same as I had, and who had once had a life that existed entirely outside of her relationship to me.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“Her father was gone. Graveyards might have housed the dead below the ground, but hat lay above was always for the living; they were places where people come to deal with the break between what their lives had once been and what they are now.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“... the truth was you didn't need to think about something for it to affect you. I had been knocked off course, and by keeping my eyes closed, I had never been able to correct that trajectory.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“Those woods had always seemed alive and dangerous to me. The deeper you went, the more it began to feel as though you were actually staying still—that the illusion of movement was caused by the land rearranging itself around you, like the squares on a chessboard shifting around the pieces.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“Back then, it felt like my entire life was constrained and controlled by the adults around me, and yet none of them appeared to have noticed the black flower rotting in the middle of the yard. Or else they had decided it was easier to leave it alone—that the grass it was poisoning didn’t matter.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“It was like a candle flame that I wanted to cup with my hands, blow on gently, and bring to brighter life. But, of course, there was always a danger when you did that. Always a risk you would make it go out instead.”
― Alex North, The Shadow Friend

“...maybe it was only as you approached the end of your life that you appreciated the force of it.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“Places are like people. They have to know where they came from--and where they are now--or else they'll never know where they're going.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“I felt the book was important to her, and I had determined there and then to take care of it. If it was in danger of falling apart, then it wasn’t going to happen on my watch. And I supposed I had done that.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“After what happened it felt like there was only one story that would ever matter and I don't think I've ever had the words to write about that."
"Perhaps that will change?"
"I don't think so. It's not a story that has an ending."
"Not yet.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“Adrenaline was a poison; if you didn’t use it up, it used you instead.”
― Alex North, The Shadow Friend

“Os cemitérios podiam albergar os mortos debaixo da terra, mas o que estava à superfície era para os vivos: são os sítios onde as pessoas vão para lidarem com a rutura entre o que a sua vida fora outrora e o que passara a ser. Amanda ia ao cemitério para se visitar a si mesma e à sua relação com o passado, e competia-lhe a si decidir como fazê-lo.”
― Alex North, The Shadows

“Havia uma vida inteira de arrependimento gravada no rosto do Carl. Na verdade, as minhas palavras aplicavam-se a toda a gente; talvez só quando nos aproximamos do fim da vida é que damos valor à sua força.”
― Alex North, The Shadows