Find Layla Quotes

“It’s not even dark outside yet, but I am done with the day. I lie there trying to hold it together until the day is done with me.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Do you like juice?” Martha is holding open the stainless-steel door of her huge refrigerator.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Sometimes . . . sometimes I think I should just die.” At the end of the sentence, my voice breaks because I am going to laugh myself to death.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“One night we were so cold I thought we would die.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“I wish I could tell her that’s life. Life is hard and complicated and messy. Life is parasites that live in your gut and brilliant scientists teaching a gorilla to use sign language. Life is moths that drink tears, and the flu virus, and nothing you can control. Life is sometimes using a knife to comb your hair, because absolutely nothing else works, and life always finds a way through. I want to tell her what I always tell myself now: that’s life. It cheers me up and it calms me down. It reminds me to focus on what I can do rather than what I can’t. That’s life.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Nobody is going to want me. Andy’s little, and he can still be somebody’s
kid. I made that video with my report card to show people that I’m not a fuckup.
I’d be fine if somebody could offer me a closet to sleep in, and I won’t burn
down their house or go to jail or anything, but I can’t become part of somebody’s
family. Andy is gonna be like one of those baby monkeys that gets released into
the wild and the other monkeys accept him and he forgets there was ever a
before-time. I won’t ever forget, because it’s been my whole life. I’ll always be
weird, like one of those gorillas that learned too much sign language to go back
to the forest.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Living with her had always been like living with a stranger. It’s always been the same stranger, one who’s lived with me for as long as I can remember.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Just remember that nobody’s opinions about you are as important as your opinions about you.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Nobody else knows that story. What we share is terrible, but it’s ours and ours alone.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Everybody wants to be internet famous.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Sepia apama—a cuttlefish in the dark of the ocean without any sound receptors whatsoever in my strange, flashing body.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Just remember that nobody’s opinions about you are as important as your opinions about you. If anyone threatens you or scares you, tell an adult. But try to let the rest of it roll off you. It doesn’t really matter.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“want something different. I don’t know what it is, but my current methods aren’t producing the desired result. I have to do something different to get something different.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“I faked having this stupid bitch bully me every day about stuff that wasn’t funny or okay to joke about. This was all a really fun game, but I’m done faking it now. You don’t exist anymore, and neither do I. You’re going to try to show this video to someone and all that will be there will be ten minutes of silence in this parking lot. I was never here, and neither were you.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“But the best thing I made up was you.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“It should have been a fight a long time ago, but I’m glad it’s happening today. I’m ready for a fight. “Jane, I faked my whole life.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“If looks could kill, we’d have both died a long time ago. But looks don’t kill and words don’t hurt and this is all fake, so nothing matters.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“I was living some other life where my mom was a scientist and showing me the laboratory.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“The times when she was nice to us made even less sense than when she’d just check out or leave us home alone.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“If I take that money, if I say yes to some guy who offers me money, I become somebody else. Somebody like Mom. Not today.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“wanted to describe my observations without having feelings about them. But”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“I’ll always be weird, like one of those gorillas that learned too much sign language to go back to the forest.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“wanted something I can’t really have, which is a safe, clean place where I can take care of my brother while I finish high school.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“was hoping to find a new home.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“This could work like symbiosis, both of us getting something we need out of this conversation.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“It’s like being . . . exposed. Like everyone knows something about me that used to be secret. Like when nudes leak, I guess. But it’s the truth, and I needed to tell it. So I told.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“I’ve seen the calm of other biomes. I’ve stolen it, like a parasite. What I don’t know is whether I can get my own and maintain it. Peace and homeostasis look expensive. I”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Mom can’t come to the phone right now. Can I take a message? “Mom’s not home. Nobody’s home.” No reaction. “Nobody’s ever home, are they, Mom?”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“Living with her had always been like living with a stranger. It’s always been the same stranger, one who’s lived with me for as long as I can remember. She hardly ever looks directly at me and never says my name. Sometimes she calls Andy “kiddo,” like a yard narc would, in a way that means all kids are the same. I hate her so much that if some idiot fell asleep on me while smoking, the hatred would leak out of me until it poured over the threshold and flooded the streets.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla

“I wish I had something to show people, like here’s the scar where my mom used to be. I have nothing. That’s life.”
― Meg Elison, Find Layla