Rebecca Barrow > Quotes

“They weren’t perfect, but at least they could be that way together.”
― Rebecca Barrow, You Don't Know Me but I Know You: A Heartfelt Debut Young Adult Novel About Adoption, Pregnancy, Choice, and Unconditional Love

“Anyone who doesn’t make you happy doesn’t deserve to make you cry.”
― Rebecca Barrow, You Don't Know Me but I Know You: A Heartfelt Debut Young Adult Novel About Adoption, Pregnancy, Choice, and Unconditional Love

“Being lonely was so exhausting. It was like being tuned into the same station, day in, day out, with no ad breaks or off switch. And listening to her same constant stream of I’m so pathetic, I’m so lonely, why doesn’t anyone like me, I should disappear, what’s the point was beyond depressing. Sickening.”
― Rebecca Barrow, This Is What It Feels Like

“Then Polly died, taking all her understanding of Luca with her, and Jada turned her back when Luca became too much for her. So now her sister is the only one she really has left, the one person who knows the unvarnished, unsweetened version of her.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“I’m more afraid of the things my brain says when it wants to make me afraid.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“I love you,” she says, words she never said when Polly was alive. “I’ll see you next year.” And she leaves. She’s always leaving Polly behind, further and further with each day.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“You forget that not everywhere is cursed.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“She searched out her pulse: there it was, beating slowly under her fingers, even and calm. She exhaled equally slow. How her body could be so rhythmic and regular when her brain was scrambled to the point of madness was beyond her.”
― Rebecca Barrow, You Don't Know Me but I Know You: A Heartfelt Debut Young Adult Novel About Adoption, Pregnancy, Choice, and Unconditional Love

“Carter flinches. Boys always do that when Luca speaks. Actually, everyone does it, with the exception of her therapist. Naomi, now, too. Luca can’t ever work out if she’s really that jarring to listen to, or if people are just not used to a girl who looks so soft being made of so many razor-sharp pieces.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“And if her other options are the kind of parents who don’t believe in mental illness, or the kind who would cling and monitor her every move, then Luca is glad she has the clueless-but-well-intentioned kind. It gives her a freedom, a space, where she doesn’t have to pretend to be the good, sweet girl who just gets a little sad every once in a while.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“Sometimes I try to pick something. Decide that yeah, it was when I left Polly on the beach the day before and all I said was goodbye. Or that it was later, and we were out, and I asked for a bite of her sundae. But maybe it was none of those, and maybe I just told her to shut up. I don’t know. I can’t pick. Because no matter what I choose, it’s not real. I’ll never know exactly what I said. And she’s buried in the ground now, so she can’t even help me.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“But then this spring it sold, sign outside, and now new people will live there, new people will sleep in Polly’s bedroom and walk her steps down to the beach and it’s really over, Luca thinks. It’s done: no more Polly. This is the last place that felt like she was still alive, the house suspended in time, a living, breathing space seeming to say, I will stay for as long as it takes. I will be here until the truth is known.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“So Madison disappears into the closet with the dress, and even though Luca offers to help, she insists on getting into it by herself. When she comes out, she’s in a gown with a top of raw silk, millimeter-thin straps and a sharp V of a neckline, and a swirl of skirts on the bottom, layer upon layer of organza, and between those layers, flowers trapped there, flowers that Luca is sure she’s supposed to be breathtaken by but as she watches Madison twirl, it only reminds her of the cemetery and she wonders if silk rots too.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“Wouldn’t it be nice to sit in your pretty house, and look out at your beautiful yard, and feel proud? That was what she really wanted. That was what she secretly feared she’d never have. A pretty, happy, shiny life.”
― Rebecca Barrow, This Is What It Feels Like

“Luca can’t ever work out if she’s really that jarring to listen to, or if people are just not used to a girl who looks so soft being made of so many razor-sharp pieces.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“People who don’t constantly think about killing themselves don’t understand the difference between the active and the passive. The plan, and the just ever-present knowledge that it’s an option”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“I want you I want you I want you, her blood pulses.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“She waits and she breathes and she thinks about the hundred ways she might die at any moment, how the curse may get her, and only then can she sleep.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“Her life could go inten thousand different directions, and all of them were right.
So tomorrow, and in two weeks, and in a couple of years, she’d be happy. That was a promise to herself that she’d do everything to keep.”
― Rebecca Barrow, You Don't Know Me but I Know You: A Heartfelt Debut Young Adult Novel About Adoption, Pregnancy, Choice, and Unconditional Love

“These images could tell a thousand different stories. That’s the best kind of art, where the viewer can see the same image over and over and read something new every time.”
― Rebecca Barrow, You Don't Know Me but I Know You: A Heartfelt Debut Young Adult Novel About Adoption, Pregnancy, Choice, and Unconditional Love

“It was the happiness behind the smile, and the love behind the eyes; that was where her beauty came from.”
― Rebecca Barrow, You Don't Know Me but I Know You: A Heartfelt Debut Young Adult Novel About Adoption, Pregnancy, Choice, and Unconditional Love

“Or how they had worked, anyway, and she’s being childish, maybe, but if you can’t be a little petulant in the wake of your sister’s murder then when the fuck can you?”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“There must be some kind of logic or pattern or something to the curse, because that’s how they work, right? In every other story Luca has ever heard, every myth and legend and fairy tale. A spell from a wronged witch, a punishment for an old crime, vengeance for eating the fruit that wasn’t yours. That’s how it always goes. But the stories of Parris have never had that element, are always missing the key to the why of it all, and—”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here

“And it doesn’t matter anyway. Because Luca’s already in the car, feeling the corners of the flash drive bite into her skin she’s holding it so hard, and then Naomi joins her and they drive off, leaving Jada fading into the background where she’s so afraid to be.”
― Rebecca Barrow, Bad Things Happen Here