Missing Clarissa Quotes

“But I’ll imagine you there.”
― Ripley Jones, Missing Clarissa

“I’ll tell you a chapter in what will be mine: One day I’m going to go to New York City. I’ll walk up and down the crowded streets. I’ll eat a hot dog from a sidewalk cart. I’ll stand under the lights of Times Square. I’ll take pictures of tourists and roasted chestnuts and the subways going over the Manhattan Bridge. I’ll go to the library with the stone lions outside it and look for the shelf where one day my books will be. I’ll walk across the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset. I’ll sit in a café and write down what I see. And I’ll go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and look at every painting. Not for me, Clarissa. For you. I’ll go each day until I’m done. However long it takes.”
― Ripley Jones, Missing Clarissa

“Do we have to be lovable to be loved? Why do girls have to be perfect for their absence to matter?”
― Ripley Jones, Missing Clarissa

“The thing is, white women’s pain isn’t special. It’s real, but it doesn’t need to be the center of every story.”
― Ripley Jones, Missing Clarissa

“Why were we so easy to fool? I wanted a different kind of life than the one that was in front of me, but I didn’t think I deserved a bigger horizon. I think that’s what he saw in me: a hunger that was also a wound.”
― Ripley Jones, Missing Clarissa

“Love isn’t enough to live a long time with another person. You have to be willing to grow together. To build something together. A garden. A house. A future. An ordinary, beautiful life.”
― Ripley Jones, Missing Clarissa