Before We Were Innocent Quotes

“Sometimes your entire fucking life catches on fire for no reason other than to remind you of how fragile it all is. How little control we have over any of it.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“I had learned how fragile it all was—that my entire life could be reduced to something smaller than a matchbox in the blink of an eye”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“We sounded frivolous at best, mercenary at worst, and maybe we were. But show me an eighteen-year-old saint, and I'll show you a liar.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“We sounded frivolous at best, mercenary at worst, and maybe we were. But show me an eighteen-year-old saint, and I’ll show you a liar.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“we’re back to the land of the before: the place unmarred by regret or death or penance, the place where our immature jokes could be forgotten the second they left our mouths and we leapt down steps and careened around corners without dreading what was ahead because we were free to be as weightless and shameful and alive as we wanted, without thinking for a second that we would ever have to temper it, or that any of it would catch up with us in a million years.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“Theo told me something a few years ago,” she said slowly. “He said that some people believe we choose our parents before we’re born, because they have something to teach us. And that doesn’t always look how you think it will, and it won’t always be a lesson taught intentionally by them, or even in good faith, but whatever we do learn is necessary for our souls to progress.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“I don’t think any of us know what someone else is truly capable of,” Theo says. “Even when we love them. That’s part of the thrill of being alive.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“It’s the kind of place where your hardest decisions become clear as water, and you realize that not only do you know exactly what you need to be doing, but you had the answer all along.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“Each word shatters through me like an expanding bullet, ripping me apart from the inside out. And that’s how it always is with my family—some sentimental remark, some otherwise throwaway comment, can plunge me right back to being eighteen and sick with guilt and needing my parents to tell me that I’m a good person, despite the bad things I’ve done. I try to plug the rising shame, but it’s too late. It’s always too late.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“You're doing her a disservice," Joni says. "Ev was so much more than an angel. She was a teenage girl.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“People in your life will want to shame you, to keep you in your old habits and dysfunctions because you’re easier to predict that way. They’ll want to keep you trapped on autopilot, an eternal victim of your own trauma, because you’re easier to control that way. But”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“Fifteen powerful books about friendship Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams The Group by Mary McCarthy Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt Swing Time by Zadie Smith The Dead Are Gods by Eirinie Carson Summer Sisters by Judy Blume A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky Passing by Nella Larsen The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“It’s the story of three perfectly imperfect women who hurt each other in all the most obvious ways, but who loved each other enough for a lifetime. And it doesn’t end here.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“life is about being fucking terrified and still showing up and turning yourself inside out because you know that loving someone gives them the power to break you, but that maybe, one day, you might just be lucky enough to stumble across another human who recognizes you exactly as you are and who will spend the rest of their life learning how to strike a match to fill your darkness.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“know”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“Sometimes we could be cruel for sport, yes, but most of the time we hurt each other to hide our own gaping wounds. To find out not just if we were enough for each other but if we would ever be enough for anyone.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“You were so scared we were going to fracture that you broke us first,”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“You should know better than most that not everything can be solved. Sometimes your entire fucking life catches on fire for no reason other than to remind you of how fragile it all is. How little control we have over any of it,”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“terrified and still showing up and turning yourself inside out because you know that loving someone gives them the power to break you, but that maybe, one day, you might just be lucky enough to stumble across another human who recognizes you exactly as you are and who will spend the rest of their life learning how to strike a match to fill your darkness.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“In the first class of every academic year, he would hand out letters sent between Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre to his high school English students, comparing their notes to teenagers’ texts today as an example of digital communication being the death of intellect, of passion, of nuance, as if any number of acronyms and pizza emojis could ever encapsulate as much emotion as the human language, which has already lasted over a million years, for fuck’s sake. Willa, while still demonstrative in her emoji use with Joni, for example, would never dream of sending Lucien an emoji, let alone one of a black fucking heart.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“I’ve taught myself to be smaller like this—less reckless than I was made.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“You were so scared we were going to fracture that you broke us first-”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“That woman is like a hurricane, (...) She breezes through the world entirely on her own terms, not caring when she leaves mass destruction in her goddamn wake.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“I have the concentration of a hoverfly, staring at threads and threads of messages and somehow being entirely unable to decipher what is happening, as if I’m trying to read a language I was once fluent in.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“If she thinks she can catch me out just by looking at me, then she’s sorely mistaken. I’ve been playing this part for so long I can almost convince myself of most things.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“You’re so transparent,” Evangeline said, her back still turned to me. “Do you know that about yourself? So, so embarrassingly transparent.”
It was the meanest thing she’d ever said to me. Perhaps the meanest thing anyone had ever said to me, given how smart I thought I was and how true it could have been.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“...everything felt urgent, like we were clawing through molasses to join a race everyone else had started without us.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“Maybe Joni was right and life is about being fucking terrified and still showing up and turning yourself inside out because you know that loving someone gives them the power to break you, but that maybe, one day, you might just be lucky enough to stumble across another human who recognizes you exactly as you are and who will spend the rest of their life learning how to strike a match to fill your darkness.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“You just have to pretend,” she says, once I am close enough to hear her. “I never understood, but that’s all it is. You have to pretend like you can do it before you can.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

“Prison is your best friend’s voice in your ear, telling you everything is going to be okay.”
― Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent