Liar, Dreamer, Thief Quotes

“Don't you understand? Even if you could go back, your house would still be on fire. The Wizard took a long puff of his pipe, and the air around them filled with a soft, purple smoke. If you don't stop him, he'll take over this entire realm. and end life here as we know it. Sometimes, the only way out is through”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“I’m a sixty-year-old Indian-American lesbian woman who assumed a man’s name and decided to open a private investigation office instead of getting married and having babies. As far as my parents are concerned, my mental illnesses could eat your mental illnesses for breakfast—they’d much prefer I just saw things.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“of it matters, though. For the first time in a long time, you’re absolutely free, and you’re back with your family, and you just don’t give a shit about anything else.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“You? You, help me? Kat, have you seen yourself? You’re fucking insane. You see things in our kitchen. You’re a goddamn stalker. You can’t even take out the garbage without fucking up.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“felt guilty, but I called and told him I’d come down there and beat his ass myself if he didn’t leave her alone. He apologized profusely.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“My mother says Koreans have a word for a special kind of grief—han. Han is more than sadness: it’s the aching loss of generations; the righteous, enduring anger of the once-occupied; the desperate yearning and unfathomable sorrow of a people who have had their families decimated and fractured by war.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“I already know the answer to the question I’m about to ask—because there’s only one woman who’s been in the middle of this, one woman who’s been manipulating me all along, who’s connected to every point of this mess.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“I’ve heard of couples downsizing when their children leave, but my parents loved being homeowners. It was their favorite part of America, the way a once waitress mother and a band teacher father could somehow buy land. I can’t believe they’d give it up, especially for a splotched ceiling and stained greige carpet.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“Three years of hurt, balled up and worried at, reinforced and tasted. How could they just cut me out of their life? Why did they wait until I showed up at the school? They had my address this whole time. They could’ve called. Could’ve come. Could’ve sent a postcard.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“two hands making an offering that can be interpreted three different ways: an apple of knowledge, the poison of a stepmother—or the right way, the secret way, which is a monument to the rebellion of teenage fantasy.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“I know this because I can feel myself getting closer to it, the way sharks sense blood in the water, or the way you sometimes know when the phone’s about to ring.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“Everything has to be Kurt’s: Kurt’s cards, Kurt’s laptop, Kurt’s apartment beneath me with its awful mirror message—but I’m sure Leoni is somehow enmeshed in all of this, too. Did she know about the surveillance and not tell me?”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“was Leoni. Tea-Closet Leoni. Clean-the-apartment Leoni. Talk-me-off-a-ledge-on-the-phone Leoni. Somehow, she was involved with Kurt’s jump, his car’s disappearance. No wonder she kept telling me to stay away from him.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“and it’s hard to find a good, affordable therapist when you have shit insurance.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“Feel free to sell it for the therapy, because you deserve better than this. Everyone deserves to be happy. Even you.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“An alliance between Japan and Korea? My mother would die, just to roll over in her grave—but from Yuto’s sniff, I can tell he’s listening.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“know this is dangerous, that without sleep, neuroses—kitchen-door or otherwise—all grow teeth. Insomnia distorts perspective, turns ordinary air into toxic gas.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“The kind of girl that gets half loaded, drives out to a bridge, and walks to the middle for the express purpose of imagining her own death.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“Despite her neutral face, I can guess her thoughts. After all—why was I on the bridge in the first place, alone, at almost midnight? Why would I leave my car in a parking lot and walk all that way?”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“It strikes me that this is one of the most medieval unicorn things she’s ever said: it’s wise and important, but also the kind of thing ingenue heroes in fables always ignore. I almost laugh. “You need to get”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief

“We look away from the homeless man on the street, while trying not to think about how long it’s been since we last called home.”
― Maria Dong, Liar, Dreamer, Thief