Quotes from Lisa Unger's Die for You

I just read Lisa Unger's Die for You. There were several quotes I enjoyed thinking about.

(1) "I didn't want to know anything about Marc's lover...didn't want any fodder for my imagination to spin. Without it, I could just cast her as a bit player, someone who glided across the stage barely noticed. Any detail might have started me weaving her into something bigger, more important than I wanted her to be.

(2) When asked why she forgave her husband's affair: "Because I love him..."
"And love forgives." The detective sounded sarcastic, bitter.
"Love accepts, moves forward. Maybe forgiveness comes in time."

(3)"(He) thought that American women had been sold a concept that failed them miserably. Spend every free moment of your time fretting about your body, the media urged, exercise, buy diet books, primp, preen, pluck, wax, and a man will find you attractive and love you forever. Don't ever for one second worry about being loving or lovable, about kindness or finding fulfillment on some spirtual level. Just try to take up as little space as possible, be as small as possible, or you will be reviled and ridiculed by every industry posed to make a dime off of you -- the fitness and publishing industries, even the medical industry. They'll steal your money and your self-esteem. You'll give it all and still be unhappy. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, they bought these ideas, believed wholeheartedly, built lives and lifestyles around them."

(4) (He) thought it required a special kind of ego-sickness to take a life, a core belief that your needs, your survival took precedence over all others. Unless it was a question of self-defense or to protect another, be believed you had to be at least a borderline sociopath to kill another person. Even if someone is overcome with rage, it takes amazing arrogance to kill."

(5)"I was fearless once...I remember being so sure of myself, of my opinions, passions, and goals...Everyone with a different opinion was simply wrong...But as I grew older, that passionate certainty faded. I beame more reserved, more reticent. My righteousness was less assured. I avoided the kind of heated politicl debates that I once enjoyed. Existential, religious, moral arguments made me uncomfortable. There were so many opionions, so many convinced of their own righeousness. A slow dawning that the world was impossibly complicated, that differences were too often irreconcilable, made me less inclined to do battle."


(6)Her sister commented on her mellowed approach to life. She replied, "I can't afford my own temper tantrums anymore. You owe them (your children) something you know. These kids, you bring them into the world. They didn't ask for it, you did it, for all you own reasons, good or bad. The least you can do is not be a bitch all the time, someone who's always in a rage, or complaining, or depressive."

(7) "Why didn't she see that it was about betrayal? infidelity? That it was about secrets and lies, an erosion of trust? Why didn't she know that those things cannot be fixed? You can't restore torn fabric to its original state. You can patch it, you can sew it -- but there will always be a seam, a place you can touch with your finger, a place that's weaker, prone to tearing again."