Charlie Donlea > Quotes

“No suspects. No persons of interest. Just a girl who was alive one day and dead the next.”
― Charlie Donlea, Summit Lake

“A life might end, but sometimes their case lives forever.”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken

“My parents wanted their daughter back, and I haven't had the courage to tell them she's long gone. Haven't found a way to break it to them that that girl doesn't exist anymore.”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken

“You go through life doing all the things everyone else wants you to do, and you'll wake up one day realizing your life's passed you by and you've got a list of stuff you've never gotten to do.”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken

“when a loved one dies young your perception of them is placed in a time capsule. You’re only able to remember them as they were then, not as they would be today.”
― Charlie Donlea, Twenty Years Later

“You go through life doing all the things everyone else wants you to do, and you’ll wake up one day realizing your life’s passed”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken

“A missing girl was more interesting than a dead girl. And a dead girl was interesting only as long as her killer was on the loose. It was the sad reality of American society. Gory crimes captured the public’s interest, especially if they involved young, attractive women. But that curiosity lasted only as long as there was mystery surrounding the gore and the girl. Once the pieces were laid out and the puzzle was assembled, the public’s thirst was quenched.”
― Charlie Donlea, Those Empty Eyes

“Can anyone name a president who really had the citizens in mind during the majority of his decisions in office? None of them did, and the current ones don’t either. It’s all about power, keeping power, and dishing out power to those who throw the most money at them.”
― Charlie Donlea, Summit Lake

“Procrastination is the devil's way of stealing your time.”
― Charlie Donlea, Long Time Gone

“Stop sitting there like a prom queen who shit her dress.”
― Charlie Donlea, Twenty Years Later

“The future was something taken for granted. It was always there, waiting to be lived.”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken

“Yeah, the club was dark but so's the whole country. When someone important goes missing, or the case is interesting enough, everybody has the same fetish. Whole world, really. No one admits it, but it's true.”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken

“Love or the law. They’re man’s only two problems in this world.”
― Charlie Donlea, Twenty Years Later

“If she were a broken girl whose life was a wreck and would never be the same, their vigor for her story would simply be unacceptable. They couldn't allow themselves to be so attracted to her narrative if it ended any way but beautifully.”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken

“You go through life doing all the things everyone else wants you to do, and you’ll wake up one day realizing your life’s passed you by and you’ve got a list of stuff you’ve never gotten”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken

“Because if there was one thing that spurred the public’s interest even more than watching the birth of a young starlet rising to fame, it was watching them fall from grace. Schadenfreude had become the new American pastime.”
― Charlie Donlea, Twenty Years Later

“The country was transfixed, not by the girl who was gone, but by the one who made it home.”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken

“I factored in the unexpected, a necessity to any proper strategy.”
― Charlie Donlea, Don't Believe It

“Can life really be started over? Can you simply turn the page in the notebook of life that has recorded your history and start writing a fresh story?”
― Charlie Donlea, Don't Believe It

“Some choose darkness, others are chosen by it.”
― Charlie Donlea, Some Choose Darkness

“Darkness had forever been part of her life. She looked for it and flirted with it. Became quaint with it and charmed it in a way foreign to most.”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken

“With no heart. You want something, you gotta commit to it and go after it. Don’t slow down, don’t stop to think. Just keep moving forward.”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken

“But finding a secret is never the key. Figuring out why a secret is a secret”—he lifted his cigarette into the air—“that will lead you somewhere.”
― Charlie Donlea, Summit Lake

“You know they say the crime is not what brings people down.” Brad smiled. “Yeah, it’s the cover-up.”
― Charlie Donlea, Summit Lake

“Sometimes, she learned, talents were discovered without cultivating them, and goals reached without pursuing them—or even knowing they existed.”
― Charlie Donlea, Those Empty Eyes

“We were best friends.” “Meaning?” “Meaning if she called and said she was in trouble, I’d show up with body bags and an alibi.”
― Charlie Donlea, Twenty Years Later

“A cottony framework of snow-white clouds ripped and pulled their way across the sky, stretching over the lake and toward the horizon like a ceiling to the world. In the distance an opening formed, as though solvent spilled from heaven had burned a hole in the clouds, and through it shined vibrant yellow rays of morning sunlight that landed on the waterfall and ricocheted off the granite.”
― Charlie Donlea, Summit Lake

“her therapist continued to point out that correcting her trajectory through life was more important than arriving at some imagined utopia in the end.”
― Charlie Donlea, Those Empty Eyes

“For the general consumer, it was exciting to get photos back and see how they turned out. For me, and for Annabelle when she went into the darkroom, it was an obsession. In the darkroom, the images captured on film were projected onto photo paper and only became visible when the paper was submerged in a bath of chemicals. Then, the image slowly came to life, gradually appearing like a living, breathing thing being born. And when the photo was of something special or magnificent, the process was electrifying. Like I said, Annabelle had a passion for the darkroom.”
― Charlie Donlea, Long Time Gone

“I’ve tried to explain it to myself a thousand different ways. Make it sound like something other than what it is. Something that might be salvageable. I mean, when you’re with someone since high school, it’s hard to admit when it’s over. It’s hard to say that the first person you ever fell in love with is also the first you ever fell out of love with.”
― Charlie Donlea, The Girl Who Was Taken