Heather Young > Quotes

“How terrible to die without finishing a book, she thought. Never to know the end of the story.”
― Heather Young, The Lost Girls

“How terrible to die without finishing a book, she thought.”
― Heather Young, The Lost Girls

“I thought of Emily's legs hanging down as Mother carried her. I thought about the empty look on her face as Mother hugged her. I thought about never being able to play in the forest alone, or make a friend, or spend more than a few minutes by myself. I thought about not having even the privacy of my own bed at night. I thought, for the first time in a long time, about how those things had made me feel, when Mother slept with me. But to Lilith I said, "She doesn't know how good she's got it," and for a moment she and I were united once more in our disdain for our little sister, our parent's favorite, who couldn't understand how lucky she was.”
― Heather Young, The Lost Girls

“They were her family. The family she'd brushed against as a girl and forgotten, the family whose legacy she'd planned to take with her now, in photographs & books & brass-faced clocks. As if legacies lay in things that could be bought & sold. As if families could be left behind or taken with you as you chose.”
― Heather Young, The Lost Girls

“That’s the whole point of being a mathematician! Ever since Euclid, people have been coming up with theories about how numbers work and figuring out how to prove them. Brilliant men die before they can prove their theories, leaving the proofs to other men who won’t be born for centuries. It’s like this incredible conversation that’s been going on for five thousand years.”
― Heather Young, The Distant Dead

“All stories need watchers. Otherwise, it’s like they never happened.”
― Heather Young, The Distant Dead

“I felt the small, private happiness that comes from giving just the right gift. After”
― Heather Young, The Lost Girls

“Take your seats, please,” Mr. Merkel said in his soft voice, but that filament of sound thrummed just enough to nudge twenty-two summer children into fall.”
― Heather Young, The Distant Dead