Good Company Quotes

“forgiveness is a choice. It doesn’t arrive on fairy wings; it doesn’t descend from the sky for you to take or leave. Forgiveness is an action.” Flora”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“It was stupid, she now understood, to think that privilege translated to protection. To mistake privilege for grace.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“Too often, she looked forward to the end of something—to beginning the remembering—more than the thing itself.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“Bad things happened. The people closest to you surprised you in the most disappointing ways.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“One of the many qualities she and her mother shared was a mutual love for an event concluded. It was an inclination she fought all her life. She loved a party best when it was over and the house had been restored to order and she could sit in the quiet and replay the evening. Too often, she looked forward to the end of something-to beginning the remembering-more than the thing itself.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“Was it a thing, Flora wondered, that just happened to charismatic men—or maybe all men—how the world around them seemed to bend to their wants and needs?”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“You are only as happy as your unhappiest child.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“How odd, she never drank coffee after her one allotted morning cup anymore; it made her too shaky. As she got the grounds from the refrigerator and started scooping them into a filter, she realized what she was doing. She was conjuring her mother and her aunts, her protectors, all dead now. The surest way to get the attention of the Mancini sisters—even in the afterlife—was coffee in any of its stages: percolating, freshly brewed, stale and burnt, reheated in a microwave. The life cycle of a pot of coffee was the smell of her mother’s apartment. She didn’t know how they did it, those women. They lived on coffee”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“When Flora was a young girl she used to try to "fix" moments in her memory. The notion that years of her life would pass and she would only remember snippets, seconds of the whole, distressed her. She came up with a plan and at various times-walking home from school or out with friends or just sitting at her desk she would think: This. Remember this. ”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“She always believed, before Julian, that the only person she could trust was herself. It hurt to find out just how true that was, but she could survive it. She had formed herself in the image of her union with Julian. She had given over a piece of her soul (if she couldn’t find her way to any stronghold of belief anymore, she did believe in the soul) to Julian’s unshakeable love for her, to the story that was Flora and Julian and their unassailable marriage. In its place, she wasn’t putting nothing, she was putting broken Flora, Flora with a crack. She didn’t know quite what that meant for her, except that she felt tougher and less afraid and the feeling was tolerable. It wasn’t as if Julian had chopped down a tree and all was right with the world, but the world had a little more possibility in it—at least this morning, at least in this light.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“American Buffalo”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“She warned Julian about the danger of secrets, how they were tiny cracks that compromised the tensile strength of a relationship. But that was the other thing about patients who had to keep their home lives hidden, cloaked in shame—secrets felt safe. The truth was much scarier. What a terrible thing to do to a child: weaponize the truth. She sat and made some notes about her conversation with Flora. She’d told Flora to stay in touch. Maybe someday she’d write a book, and though she’d have to get permissions, couch all the identifying patient details, this was an interesting story, a good case. She wondered how it would end.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“You have to fool yourself before you can fool the audience.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“Was that how every couple functioned after time? Seeing the contours of someone else’s intelligence so much more easily than your own?”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company

“They marveled over how they could bring her to any restaurant and she’d try almost any food; she’d scarf down olives, caper berries, and stinky cheese and lovingly suck on a piece of lemon.”
― Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney, Good Company