The Thing About Alice Quotes

“You know, I don’t think two people are ever really equally in love. The one is always besotted, and the other merely lives off that love. That’s love for you, I guess.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice

“Old Bette Davis movies are all she watches now. There’s one where Bette Davis’s character goes blind, and as the credits rolled my mother said, ‘Must be what they mean when they talk about Bette Davis eyes.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice

“He had a tongue like a razor, let us start with that. Now when you take that, and add to it eyes like a hawk, and ears like a bat, you’ve got yourself a second-to-none biographer. But add to all of that an imagination—trouble is what you’ve got then.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice

“She liked it best when it was raining, and she sometimes imagined that in one of the many tall buildings there was another Gerty mopping the floor and looking back at her, a Gerty who had witnessed and learned from the many mistakes this Gerty had made. A Gerty who would do things right.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice

“Gerty crushed what remained of her cigarette beneath her foot, melting the no-longer-pink plastic on the sole of the no-longer-pink slipper, and embraced the girl for a moment. She would know that it was time for new slippers when someday a cigarette burned right through.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice

“Just wait until you get to be my age. If there’s a hair that isn’t gray, it’s an achievement. Getting old means getting ugly.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice

“Listen, you mustn’t go painting my picture too well either. Not every wrinkle needs to be seen.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice

“Alice suddenly found herself examining the birdbath as if it was a tide pool along the shore whose depths held countless creatures instead of just algae and bird droppings. Admiring the sunset instead might have been a wiser decision, as then she could at least attempt to blink away the tears forming in her eyes.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice

“Artistic license was what she had heard it called, but in her eyes it was nothing more than artistic laziness.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice

“Silas still owned the junk shop on Breyten Road, and only the very foolish would classify it as having anything to do with antiques; few in Breytenville owned antiques, and even fewer looked to acquire them. But for a knickknack at the right price, there was always a market, and for the right price any knickknack could easily be put on the market. Desperate times, desperate pleasures, that’s what Silas always said.”
― Jean-Luke Swanepoel, The Thing About Alice