56 Days Quotes

“None of us know what we're capable of, if the circumstances were right. Or wrong.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“People think the decisions you make that change the course of your life are the big ones. Marriage proposals. House moves. Job applications. But she knows it's the little ones, the tiny moments, that really plot the course. Moments like this.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“We have these stories we tell ourselves—and other people—about ourselves, based on what happened to us in the past, or what we did, or decisions we made, and then they become our future just by the telling. It’s like a …”
“Self-fulfilling prophecy?” she offers.
“Yeah. We want things to be different but we start by telling the other person how they were the last time, and that kind of, like, limits us to being that person again ... I suppose what I'm saying is that, for once, I’d like to start something clean. Without any stories limiting where this can go, who we can be.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“Do you ever think that maybe you have your shit together, it's just that your shit doesn't look like everyone else's?”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“Lies are spindly, unwieldy things. Delicate filaments, like bundles of nerves in the body. Easy to twist, hard to control, impossible to keep hold of.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want the most.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“Dividing people into good and evil is just lazy.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“Most people who do bad things do so because a confluence of events has maneuvered them into that position and then pushed them to act, to do something out of character. How many times have we heard, ‘Oh, my Johnnie would never do that, he doesn’t have it in him, you must have the wrong house,’ or, ‘I’ve been best friends with this guy for years, I know he’s not a killer’? Yeah, he didn’t have it in him and he wasn’t a killer—until he did and he was. None of us know what we’re capable of, if the circumstances were right. Or wrong.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“It’s not secrets I like. It’s discovering things that are new to me but actually were always there. Secrets are a different thing. They’re destructive.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“People think the decisions you make that change the course of your life are the big ones. Marriage proposals. House moves. Job applications. But she knows it’s the little ones, the tiny moments, that really plot the course. Moments like this.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“She's found another one: there is a killer in her family.
But it's her.
The only solace she's been able to find is that she understands now there might be a difference between killing and being a killer.
She hopes, for her sake, that there is.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“Now she grieves for two people: the Oliver who never was, and the Shane who never got to be.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“Do you ever think," Karl says, "that maybe you have your shit together, it's just that your shit doesn't look like everybody else's?”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“I think you can absolutely change. Your problem has always been that you don't want to.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“He knows he's standing with his hand in the fire. He can see the flame tickling his skin. And past experience tells him that any moment now, the heat will burn through the outer layer to his nerve endings and drop him into a world of screaming pain.
There's no other possible outcome, he knows this.
But he just can't pull his hand away.
He likes the heat.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“She doesn't know what to say. She manages, "What's this all for?"
"Well... you.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“It was like someone had built him a bridge across the dark, turbulent water so, for once, he could take a break from trying to claw himself up from its tangled muddy depths.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“The only way you can lose your own shadow is to stand in the dark.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“It was easier than she'd thought it would be, but there is no solid ground on the other side.
She doesn't care. She lifts her face to his and kisses him.
She steps over the threshold and throws herself into the fall.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“It's not your fault."
"It's not yours either.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“But when his mouth finds hers, they tell each other something neither of them could possible say: that they are two very lonely people hungry for touch, needing, it, starving for it.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“Do you think people can change, Shiv? Like, really change? At their core?"
Her sister sighs so hard it sounds like a gale blowing down the line.
"What does that even mean, 'at their core'? What does a person changing actually look like? How would you know if they did?"
"They'd act differently. Different to how you'd expect them to."
"Based on what?"
"Based on how they'd acted in the past."
"I think people can change their habits and behaviors," Siobhan says carefully, as if she's on the stand in a courtroom, testifying for the defense, and the hot-shot prosecutor has just tried to trip her up with a cleverly worded question. "And sometimes their mind and their beliefs. People get older and wiser and have more experiences, and that all updates their... let's call it their central operating system. Because everything they do they learned in the first place, right? No one is born being X, Y, or Z. And theoretically, if you can learn how to be a certain way, you can unlearn it, too. But at the same time, you can't erase the past. You can lock it in a box and put that box away, but you can't make it disappear.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“But you don’t know it, don’t realize that you’re being ushered into the priority lane of life every single day.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“There might be a difference between killing and being a killer.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“Discipline is choosing between what you want and what you want the most.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“on?”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“Everything is so much easier when he stays away from other people. The only way you can lose your own shadow is to stand in the dark. The problem is, Oliver hates the dark.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“The only way you can lose your own shadow is to stand in the dark. The problem is, Oliver hates the dark.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“The residents are used to living above and below and beside other people’s entire lives while pretending to be utterly unaware of them; hearing each other’s TVs and smelling each other’s cooking but never learning each other’s names.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days

“People think the decisions you make that change the course of your life are the big ones. Marriage proposals. House moves. Job applications. But she knows it’s the little ones, the tiny moments, that really plot the course.”
― Catherine Ryan Howard, 56 Days