Alafair Burke > Quotes

“I get sad every time I hear a person say "I don't read." It's like saying "I don't learn," or "I don't laugh," or "I don't live.”
― Alafair Burke

“A word of advice: if the sex is a pain in the ass, you’re doing it wrong.”
― Alafair Burke, The Better Sister

“Cursing's for the uncreative. They say "Frack! on Battlestar Galactica, and everyone still knows what it means.”
― Alafair Burke, Long Gone

“You make the best decisions you can make in the time you have to make them, and you move on.”
― Alafair Burke, The Wife

“When he was gone, I blocked his number and then deleted it from my phone. When I say good-bye, I mean it.”
― Alafair Burke, The Ex

“I thought it was endearing when we first got together. By the end I wanted to stab him in the hand every time he dismissed my cursing as an uncreative vocabulary. I think being able to use one little four letter word to convey a hundred different thoughts is pretty fucking creative.”
― Alafair Burke, The Ex

“I despise hearing about other people’s problems, because I don’t like most people, especially people who would be described as normal.”
― Alafair Burke, The Ex

“In her experience, prefacing a statement with “To be honest” or “To tell you the truth” is a sure sign you’re telling someone else what to believe—such as what was “good” for her, in this instance.”
― Alafair Burke, Find Me

“No worries. When did that ridiculous sentence become an acceptable thing to say to another person?”
― Alafair Burke, If You Were Here

“So much past inside my present. —Feist”
― Alafair Burke, If You Were Here

“Mais j'avais fini par atteindre le terme du délai de huit ans après lequel toute possibilité de devenir partenaire reste illusoire: je n'avais pas réalisé mon rêve. J'avais facturé des milliards d'heures. J'approchais la loi "de manière calme et professionnelle", mais je n'étais "pas parvenue à développer des relations significatives avec les mentors" ni "à adopter un rôle de leader auprès des associés plus jeunes". Je n'avais "pas fait preuve d'un potentiel de développement client significatif". J'étais "trop aride dans mes communications interpersonnelles". [...] En gros, je connaissais mon métier, mais personne ne m'appréciait.”
― Alafair Burke, The Ex

“But a story that could have ended as tantalizing water-cooler gossip has burst open multilayered and nuanced discussions about the intersections among race, gender, sex, wealth, and power.”
― Alafair Burke, The Note

“Ethan groaned in embarrassment. “Oh my god, what was that? I sounded like a total chode.” It was his new favorite word for someone who was a jerk. I had to look it up in the Urban Dictionary.”
― Alafair Burke, The Better Sister

“brand-new hot tub.”
― Alafair Burke, Angel's Tip

“Note to self: the least sexy phrase in the English language is “What’s wrong?”
― Alafair Burke, The Better Sister

“For a wife and a mother, there’s apparently no such thing as a “home office.” Home meant Adam and Ethan wandering in whenever they couldn’t find something, had a question, or stumbled upon a movie on cable they thought I’d be interested in. It wasn’t until I tried to do my job under a shared roof with my family that I realized that neither Ethan nor even Adam truly understood that my job involved actual work.”
― Alafair Burke, The Better Sister

“short, I could do the work, but no one liked me.”
― Alafair Burke, The Ex

“Funny how that works. Whether everything goes right or nothing goes your way, booze always seems like a good idea.”
― Alafair Burke, The Ex

“Whether everything goes right or nothing goes your way, booze always seems like a good idea.”
― Alafair Burke, The Ex

“If only it were so easy. Real-world bad dreams are much worse.”
― Alafair Burke, The Better Sister

“Because she was a woman, I trusted her.”
― Alafair Burke, The Better Sister

“seemed”
― Alafair Burke, The Ex

“You were looking for a pattern. Bill Cosby. Trump. That gym teacher last year in Queens. Men who do this once, do it often.”
― Alafair Burke, The Wife

“He was a shitty husband, a cruel and distant father, and had absolutely no empathy for other human beings.”
― Alafair Burke, The Ex

“But the testimony she gave before Judge Paul Bandon was not really the whole truth. It was a dry, concise recitation of the basic facts—and only the facts—of a callout 120 days earlier. Time: 11:30 p.m. Location: a penthouse apartment at a building called 212 at the corner of Lafayette and Kenmare. Nature of the callout: a report of shots fired, followed by the subsequent discovery of a bullet-ridden body in the bedroom. The dead man: Robert “Robo” Mancini, bodyguard to Manhattan real estate mogul Sam Sparks”
― Alafair Burke, 212

“what”
― Alafair Burke, Find Me

“- Vous avez déjà entendu dire que rester assis était le plus court chemin vers la mort? m'a-t-il lancé entre deux halètements. Je mange comme un oisillon - des légumes, du poisson bouilli, du putain de quinoa - mais je reste assis toute la journée. Un gros lard qui engouffrait une barre au sirop d'érable m'a dépassé en courant jusqu'au quatrième étage. Une barre de sirop d'érable! Merde, qui mange ce genre de truc?
- Les gens qui ne sont pas assis toute la journée? ai-je proposé.”
― Alafair Burke, The Ex

“There's no such thing as merit separated from biography, he had told me. The only question is whether you're going to let your biography hold you down or help you up.”
― Alafair Burke, All Day and a Night

“Jack and his fake cuss words. Cheese and crackers. Monkey flunker. And, yes, Pluck a duck. I thought it was endearing when we first got together. By the end, I wanted to stab him in the hand every time he’d dismiss my “cursing” as an “uncreative vocabulary.” I think being able to use one little four-letter word to convey a hundred different thoughts is pretty fucking creative.”
― Alafair Burke, The Ex

“Because something is broken in people now. Rules don’t matter. Basic decency doesn’t matter. And it’s not just that they did it. They were proud of it. They loved getting away with it. It’s like there’s no such thing as shame anymore.”
― Alafair Burke, The Note