The Lifeguards Quotes

“Have you ever stood still while someone lied to you? If so, you know the sickening feeling. Your brain wants to make the situation less disturbing, and oh, how you want to convince yourself the liar is telling the truth.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“So you’re an addict,” he says. “I want to get better,” says Patrick. “I will get better. I want—” He looks at Charlie. His eyes are pools of need. “I’m sorry,” he says. Patrick stands up. He takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to be…” he says. He pauses. “I thought coming here, that maybe I would somehow…” “Just go,” says Charlie. “I’ve got Mom.” Patrick looks stricken. But he takes the chance Charlie’s given him to break away. He turns back a few times, as if he has something to say, but his addiction is more powerful than any remnants of love, and he exits the café.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“Was it too late? Could he still gather strength, just throw himself at something, if only to feel that velocity again? What was there to lose, when you gave up on figuring it out…or worse, when you saw that there was no figuring it out?”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“Salvatore had always thought that if he lived his life correctly, happiness would come. And maybe that was where he’d fucked up. He’d spent his life scared that he’d take a step wrong. Now he saw: the happiness was the barreling forward”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“ONE OF THE REASONS I’m good at being a ghostwriter is that I’ve been a chameleon for as long as I can remember. I become whatever people want me to be. It’s almost effortless now—sussing out what others want or need and then transforming. Who am I, truly? I have no idea.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“Far enough away from the White House to live above land, she thought. That was a good one: menacing yet vague.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“He considers making a TikTok of the reunion: turn the camera on himself, hold out his arm to capture the moment they embrace, edit it later with captions. This seems crazy but also a way to diffuse the situation, to make it content rather than pain. Rather than terror. Life hurts less when made into funny videos.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“Ballet trained you to obey orders. Your job was to become your teacher’s vision. Nobody wanted a dancer with opinions.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“He turned to her. “New Zealand,” said Jules. He put his hand on her knee. He was exactly the prize she wanted…or the prize she had been trained to want. Her grandmother had been so pleased. But now Gram was dead and Whitney could wonder: did she want her husband anymore? Had she ever loved him—or just mistaken security for love?”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“Work was a balm. Adrenaline distracted him from sorrow.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“Roma?” I was surprised, though I knew Roma was a perennial problem. She could be cruel, but despite a few truly alarming incidents, I tried to believe that Roma was, at heart, a good person. Charlie had once asked, “Mom? What do I do if every time I see someone, I feel bad about myself?” “Sweetheart,” I’d said, “you can try to make friendships work, but it’s OK to just let some people go.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“Whitney sipped, still not looking up from her phone. “Mmm, perfect,” she said. Whitney loved being cared for, and she did look after me as well. If sometimes it felt as if she treated me like staff, I could live with that. Wasn’t I using her, too, in my own way? Would I still love her if she were poor, or less influential, less glamorous? I liked to think I would, but I couldn’t know for sure.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“It was clear: if you were wealthy, you were safe. I’d seen how the summer kids seemed braver than me, reckless, and now I knew why. They could dive off anything, because underneath them was an invisible net of parents, doctors, coaches, teachers, money. If they fell, they had Cape Cod Concierge. If we had been rich, Mack would be alive.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“Later, she would question what life might have been like with someone who saw her as more than a gleaming trophy—a prize who began to lose her luster the moment she was won.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“It was hard not to wonder, as Whitney put the Tesla in park, whether this could possibly be true. The nature of disaster preparedness was so weird, as no one actually knew which disaster to be scared of. Steel doors, for example, weren’t going to help with anthrax. Fifty years of gourmet freeze-dried foodstuffs, which a nearby project promised, weren’t going to fix a bad marriage.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“In truth, Whitney felt compassion for Geoff. Climate change was obviously real, though everyone was trying their best to ignore it. Something about the impossible fact that life was changing, and fast, made it preferable to talk about Instagram, wine varietals, snacks. The strategy Geoff shared with many of his co-workers at Google—buy a luxury doomsday bunker and prepare for the hordes of starving climate refugees by making sure your bunker was fortified and impossible to access—was both immoral and disgusting, but was it worse than ignoring the looming collective fate? This was something Whitney found it hard to discuss with her friends.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“Using rage as fuel for living was a family tradition.”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“Every child breaks a rule or two, of course! But a worrisome trait to notice is if your child violates rules and gets joy and adrenaline from doing so. Future psychopaths can only feel when they do something bad and get away with it. Normal life doesn’t provide them with enough serotonin and happiness. So watch out for a child who seems happiest when they have stolen another kid’s toy, or deliberately done something you have told them specifically NOT to do!”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards

“breaks a rule or two, of course! But a worrisome trait to notice is if your child violates rules and gets joy and adrenaline from doing so. Future psychopaths can only feel when they do something bad and get away with it. Normal life doesn’t provide them with enough serotonin and happiness. So watch out for a child who seems happiest when they have stolen another kid’s toy, or deliberately done something you have told them specifically NOT to do!”
― Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards