The Children on the Hill Quotes

“The tragedies we endure shape our lives: we carry them like shadows,”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“I don’t believe places can be haunted. Only people, and not in a supernatural way. People are only haunted by their pasts.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“Monsters are real. They’re all around us, whether we can see them or not.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“Who are we without our memories? Without our fears? Without our traumas? What does the body remember that the mind does not?”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“I COME FROM THE belly of the snake. The dark side of the moon. From my grandmother’s gin still: juniper berries, coriander, orrisroot. I leave a bitter taste on your tongue.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“We cannot change the past. All we can control is this moment.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“Winning was no fun when your opponent wouldn’t even try.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“It smelled like home: coffee and wood and books.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my blood boils at the recollection of this injustice. Mary Shelley Frankenstein”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“life and the hold it had over you. It might seem extreme, but it works. Time after time.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“Patients working in the pottery studio produced pieces (mugs, bowls, plates, and vases) sold in local craft galleries and markets. Pottery bearing the Inn’s signature mossy-green glaze and the Hillside Inn stamp at the bottom can be found in homes all over New England and is prized by collectors.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“Vi let the God of Books help her choose what she’d read next. He spoke in a thin, papery voice, as she ran her fingers along the spines of the books until he said, This one. And she had to read the whole thing, even if it didn’t truly interest her. Because she’d learned that, even in the dullest book, a secret message was inside, written just for her. The trick was learning how to find it. But Frankenstein felt like the whole thing had been written just for her. It made her feel all electric and charged up.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“That’s what I think of each time I see this. How the lowly caterpillar turns into the butterfly. How we’ve each got a butterfly hiding inside us.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“Everything was new and strange to Iris. Vi was a little jealous of her, experiencing wonderful things for the first time—Rice Krispies, Pop-Tarts, Tootsie Pops (“How many licks does it take to get to the center?” asked the wise old owl in the commercial), Saturday morning cartoons. She didn’t even know who Scooby-Doo was!”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“A trick I’d learned long ago—pretend you know nothing, that you’re walking in cold to every conversation.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“It was an old habit: the first stop in any new town was always either the bookstore or the library.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“But you must ask yourself: Who is the real monster? The creature being made, or the one creating it?”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“Human beings are a work in progress. And what if we as scientists, as doctors, can find ways to help that progress along?”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“I kinda worried about them up there on the hill all alone. Surrounded by lunatics is no place to raise kids.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“She wanted to go back to the time when they were just sisters hunting monsters, never realizing how close the real monsters truly were.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“Her secrets sat like stones in her chest, heavy and cold. But her secrets had never hurt anyone.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“It’s a network—a monster club, sort of.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“There are as many ways to make one as there are monsters.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill

“People loved a good creepy story. The need was almost primal: to hear them, have them chill you, then pass them along, embellished with your own details. Fear was a drug, and these stories were a delivery method.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The Children on the Hill