Five Tuesdays in Winter Quotes

“When you die, she thought now, you can no longer give love. You can't give love anymore. She wouldn't be able to love her children. It struck her suddenly as the very worst thing about death, worse than not being able to breathe or laugh or kiss. A kind of existential suffocation, to not be able to give her children her love anymore.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“Becca, though, I married. I don’t know how other people do it, not stay with the girl whose ankle socks made your stomach flip at age fourteen, whose wet hair smells like your past—the girl who was with you the very moment you were introduced to happiness.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“Adults hid their pain, their fears, their failure, but adolescents hid their happiness, as if to reveal it would risk its loss.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“A few days ago, a woman had come in with swatches of fabric and asked him to find her books only in those colors.
Last week a man had been looking for War and Peace, and when Mitchell explained that he was temporarily out of anything by Tolstoy, the man asked if he had it by anyone else. It was a terrible time for books.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“Socially we balanced each other out. He was the guy who came into the room and everyone was relieved. I made people deeply uneasy, myself most of all.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“I thought about words and how, if you put a few of them in the right order, a three-minute story about a girl and her dog can get people to forget all the ways you’ve disappointed them.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“I have never understood why a person who is not a genius bothers with art. What's the point? You'll never have the satisfaction of having created something indispensable.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“No one will actually come out and say this nowadays, but women are at their best when they're writing about men: their husbands, their fathers, their lost loves. It's when they start writing about themselves that they become unreadable.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“Soon Paula would begin complaining that he didn't understand her, didn't appreciate her, didn't love her enough, when in fact he loved her so much his heart often felt shredded by it. But people always wanted words for all that roiled inside you.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“It was a skill of mine, splitting myself in half, pretending to be childish and oblivious while shifting through adult exchanges with the focus and discrimination of a forensic detective.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“She was the type who could not take a compliment. If he told her she looked nice, she’d give the reason instead of saying thank you. But he was the type who could not give a compliment, so he just said hello and let her in.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“It's not here anymore," he said.

"What?"

"What happened."

"Then where is it?"

"It's gone. It's over. You can't find it, stroke it, coo over it. Time has stolen it away like it fucking steals everything. In rare instances, like yours, that can be a good thing.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“She wondered how other people adjusted to vacations. It was such an unpleasant feeling, like gunning a car in neutral.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“I don’t know how other people do it, not stay with the girl whose ankle socks made your stomach flip at age fourteen, whose wet hair smells like your past—the girl who was with you the very moment you were introduced to happiness.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“I was feeling what I should be feeling, as if for once all the sharp awkward fragments of my life suddenly fell into their proper slots.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“It's not here anymore." He said.
"What?"
"What happened.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“Oda felt a racing in her body, an urgency that had no reason to exist now. She didn’t have to get up for work or make Hanne’s lunch or get her to her Saturday lessons or to church. She wondered how other people adjusted to vacations. It was such an unpleasant feeling, like gunning a car in neutral.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“Did he know? Of course he didn't. But for so long now when someone asked how she was they loaded it with pity and braced themselves for her reply, as if she had the power to hurt them with the truth.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“Polky Polky I used to call it."
"Dot Dot, actually."
Hanne smiled. "Dot Dot. I thought you were the most beautiful singer in the whole world."
Oda felt pitched up onto the crest of a wave, like one of those boats far out at sea.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“Love, he thought. It would come out soon enough. Words and feelings were all churned up together inside him, finding each other like lost parts of an atom. He didn't try to push them apart or away. He let them float in the new fullness in his chest.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“He'd always been the same person. He marveled at how in books people looked back fondly to remembered selves as if they were lost acquaintances. But he'd never been anything but this one self.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“The visit has unveiled the mystery of this man’s devastating ambivalence years ago, but she could have done without his but-for-the-grace-of-God relief as he hugged her goodbye.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter

“She seemed amused, entirely uninterested in changing him. He knew it was like that at first with anyone. He also knew it might mean that she didn’t care about him at all.”
― Lily King, Five Tuesdays in Winter