Vera Jane Cook Quotes

She would have preferred being beautiful to looking as if she were perpetually sucking on sour drops.

Jealousy is a human emotion," she said with a smile. "If you weren't jealous if another man flirted with me I'd be terribly disappointed.

I hopped into the passenger side of his should be banned from the road Ford.

I wonder why the dead can't talk, look at all the crimes we'd solve if the damn dead would just Ouija board us our answers, or tell all those weird psychic people who killed 'em.

You know how to dance, young lady?"
"I was born knowing.

He would ask her, of course, and they would honeymoon at the Canary Inn, but that particular weekend wouldn't be about forever, not just yet. It would be about the discovery Bessie made, about love, how it boomerangs toward you on quiet feet and tugs softly, never raging or insisting on anything other than recognition, and an unencumbered path of return.

Nobody could understand the past except the people from it.

I mean, how does that crazy preacher know where the dead go and how the hell does he know the dead like being there? He's trying to make it sound like the only reason we get born is to bite the dust

Perhaps that is what death is , Bessie thought
as she awoke, a senseless reprisal of our lives, a void we drift in and out of, unable to control it, we are doomed to it; the senseless end of a long tale, the senseless repetition of a long life endlessly retold with forgotten information.

I guess, if you ever had God figured out the universe would be split in thousands of pieces and it would disappear and we who have dreamed ourselves alive would all fade away in all those splintered parts. What I mean to say is, it isn't meant for us to know anything.

Clarissa noticed his eyes, they were like indifferent tides, shielding knowledge of an impending storm

There is a cost to deceit," she whispered, "a price to pay," and reached over to hold his hand.

Daddy came and got me after dinner. Mama must have told him I knew that dead girl 'cause he was eyeing me all through Mama's pot roast like maybe I was going to get suicidal and hang myself from the ceiling light in my bedroom after the two helpings of dessert I took.

the difference between a good cup of coffee and a bad one was like the difference between a filet mignon steak and raw seaweed.

When friends stopped coming by, the days were upset by it, the redundancy of routine, once altered, needed to find new distractions, like puzzle pieces that need connection in order to form a whole.

I live in a world of lies, I might as well learn early that lies come with the territory. You befriend people, you grow up and marry, you work and you lie to everyone, your boss, your spouse and your best friend. You tell big lies, little lies, the world is a bunch of lies. You teach your children to lie because you believe that the only protection they will ever have from any kind of harm will be in the lies they tell.

Her childhood friend had decided that a man was the only thing that could come between them

She didn't want to go to that place, and she had to force herself not to, but it was standing between she and her father's memory; to keep him
close she'd have to allow the ache

It was stark around her, something sad
about winter and its naked limbs, she thought, its colorless indifference, the boredom of its lackluster stillness.

It was way too soon to feel my virginity was flirting with a sudden death.

Daddy says that one day all I'll think about is people I used to know.

No truth on this goddamn planet ever made its way out of your mouth. If truth was hanging out of your nose you'd blow that goddamn truth bugger into a snot rag and toss it into a fire pit

There is impotency being haunted by things we can't change; being stuck in your own damn mistakes isn't healthy. But when I think about
the things I need to do right now, and possibly won't, because I'd rather talk myself out of doing something that's coming from my heart, there's impotency in that, as well, and it's the worst kind of indifference, Spider; it's not doing what your heart is telling you to do. And there you'll be, old and dying, with regrets deep as the Seneca, and maybe even longer.

Everybody has got to hate someone, human nature

age is the ambrosia waiting to be sipped, the compliment hiding in the wings, waiting to be given to that which is too young today to value the character it will have tomorrow.

I should have seen his weaknesses and only given him a section of myself but I loved him to my core, no matter who he was. There were no hidden places in my heart that would not welcome him or any sacred ground inside my being that he could not walk upon.

Damn house was quiet now, even her cat walked too softly to hear.

I felt at any moment I might be swooped up and eaten by the profound sad tales of a Weeping Willow.

The passing years often rob people of the truth. But then again, those passing years also allow people to recreate the truth.

Sometimes, when husbands stay out of the way, friendship was easier between women

Why my husband, Savannah?" Clarissa whispered. It was still a shock after all these years, a betrayal with an endless sting.

Daddy looked at me like I was as dumb as fake ice cream.

That's the thing about fine things, they couldn't alienate, they had to invite, as hers did

Where is the truth then? Where does truth exist, behind the lie, within the lie? Is truth that which we seek to know or that which we avoid knowing?

Morning sounds came in through my window like the world made sense

Roland was handsome, movie star perfect, and he moved knowing it.

He put his head up to the sky and closed his eyes. The tear that fell down his cheek glistened in the sun and remained there, like the impression of a scar

I kept wondering if this was going to be my first experience of love or if this was going to be my first experience of being sweet talked into parting with my virginity.

Insinuation is not truth, just conjecture

We will always be in each other's life."
"And so too, the betrayals. They'll be there too." Savannah seemed stunned but Clarissa noticed her quick recovery.
"And so too, the laughter," she said as she began to close the door behind her. "And so too, the love," she added as the lock caught.

Angus had been hurt deeply by what John Peter had done, that he might have lost a friend in such a horrible way. I could see that. But even aside from the stupid thing John Peter had done, Angus was hurting for me, feeling my pain, taking it with him as he rode off. He might not have understood all of what I was feeling but he had embraced it. He didn't get it after Millie died, but now he knew what loss could do to a person. Empathy just might save the world one day.

Younger people just don't seem to realize that time eventually shows up for a payoff, and the longer it gives you, the more it will ask for , Bessie thought and nearly said aloud. I'll take your memories, your ability to walk. How about your bladder?
Good old Father Time, Bessie mused to herself. Bastard

Clarissa remembered why she didn't like him, he was astucious, an ambiguous villain in a gentleman's three piece suit.

She doesn't respond, of course. She smirks. I guess she thinks of a smirk as a greeting.

The whole process disgusts me, just put me in the goddamn earth and walk away. I don't want to lie on a cold slab in some old house waiting to have my innards drained and embalming fluid put inside my poor dead body, just put me in the goddamn earth and walk away.

Clarissa thought that was the problem with toothpaste, it always wound up looking like it had a drunken binge the night before and was spitting up all over itself.

The young should only know where they're headed

There are opportunities to find mistakes around every corner you turn, Richard.

They looked over stimulated by something that had distracted them from their usual boredom and lazy egocentric paragraphs about nothing at all that ever held any interest for me.

She continued walking, never revealing her disappointment until she'd passed beyond
her own smile, which faded and appeared, faded and appeared, as if prompted and cajoled out of hiding.

He was approachable but he was too complex to know really well, too gifted at exaggeration to believe fully.

I looked back at the two of them. I knew I didn't have the sharpest knives carving my Christmas turkey but I had what I had.

He had become like an old sweater, full of holes but never to be discarded, too many cold nights to find it in the back of a drawer and pull out.

Little bastard would never get as tall as the tales he told.

I am well practiced in avoidance and indifference though the hollowness in my soul resents her absence; I wear the mask I must.