Pretty Girls

“It's the truth. I'm sorry to be blunt about it, but girls don't like guys who are doormats. Especially pretty girls, because there's no novelty in it. Guys are hitting on them all of the time. They can't walk down the street or order a coffee or stand on a corner without some idiot making a comment about how attractive they are. And the women smile because it's easier than telling them to go fuck themselves. And less dangerous, because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her.”

“Your mother and I had always been secretly pleased that you were so headstrong and passionate about your causes. Once you were gone, we understood that these were the qualities that painted young men as smart and ambitious and young women as trouble.”

“Because I said so." She paused again. "Sweetheart, I know you're an adult, but adults are like vampires. The older ones are much more powerful.”

“Optimism is a sliver of glass in your heart.”

“There is kindness in so many unexpected places”

“Her father always said that the price for hearing gossip was having someone else gossip about you.”

“Anybody could be smart. It took a special somebody to be clever.”

“He said that children always have different parents, even in the same family.”

“because if a man rejects a woman, she goes home and cries for a few days. If a woman rejects a man, he can rape and kill her.”

“Having a teenager is like having a really, really shitty roommate. They eat all your food and steal your clothes and take money out of your purse and borrow your car without asking.”

“People did not change their basic, core personalities. Their values tended to stay the same.”

“He had always told her that winners only competed with themselves.”

“I want you to know that this is what happens when you meet the person you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with: that restless feeling dissolves like butter.”

“You couldn't turn on the TV without hearing about the missing teenage girl. Sixteen years old. White. Middle class. Very pretty. No one ever seemed quite as outraged when an ugly woman went missing.”

“Marriage. That’s what he called it, though men like Paul do not marry women. They own them. They control them. They are voracious gluttons who devour every part of a woman, then clean their teeth with the bones.”

“She took him for granted sometimes. That was the luxury of a long marriage. But she knew that she loved him. She needed him. He was the anchor that kept her from drifting away.”

“No matter what happened to you, no matter what horrors you endured when you were taken away, you will always be my pretty little girl.”

“Maybe that's why Claire had perfected the art of invisibility. It was a form of self-preservation. You couldn't resent what you could not see. She was so quiet, but she noticed everything. Her eyes tracked the world like it was a book written in a language that she could not understand. There was nothing timorous about her, but you got the feeling that she always had one foot out the door. If the situation got too hard, or too intense, she would simply disappear.”

“She was so quiet, but she noticed everything. Her eyes tracked the world like it was a book written in a language she could not understand”

“I loved him. I know you don’t want to believe that, but I really, truly, giddy, heart-breaking, longing, achingly loved him.”

“The world stops for you when you’re pretty. That’s why women spend billions on crap for their faces. Their whole life, they’re the center of attention. People want to be around them just because they’re attractive. Their jokes are funnier. Their lives are better. And then suddenly, they get bags under their eyes or they put on a little weight and no one cares about them anymore. They cease to exist.”

“Sweetheart, I know you’re an adult, but adults are like vampires. The older ones are much more powerful.”

“A few years ago when she'd read Paul several passages from Fifty Shades of Grey, they'd both giggled like teenagers."The biggest fantasy in that book," Paul had said, "is that he changes in the end.”

“Dyadic completion,” Paul would’ve told Claire. “The human brain tends to assume that, if there’s a victim, there has to be a villain.”

“Proactive interference,” Paul would have explained. “It’s when previously acquired information inhibits our ability to process new information.”

“That doesn’t sound invisible to me.” “I’m saying it wrong, then.” Lydia searched for a better way to explain. “She was always holding herself back. She was cocaptain, not captain. She could’ve dated the quarterback, but she dated his brother instead. She could’ve been top in her class, but she’d purposefully turn in a paper late or miss an assignment so she’d fall closer to the middle. She would know about Mauna Kea, but she would say Everest because winning would bring too much attention.”

“Lydia supposed his headstone had been ordered. Something large and garish made of the finest marble and phallic shaped because being dead didn't stop you from being a dick.”

“In her defense, her helicoptering tended to revolve around making sure that Dee could take care of herself. LEARN HOW TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH OR I WILL KILL YOU. LOVE MOM.”

“He had always said there was nothing that a list couldn’t solve. Conquer the details and you conquer the problem.”

“Then again, Paul had once told her that there was no such thing as coincidence. “The Law of Truly Large Numbers provides that given a large enough sample size, any outrageous thing can happen.”