Loreth Anne White > Quotes

“We are—or we become—what we pretend to be, so we must be very careful who we pretend to be.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Maid's Diary

“sometimes people are broken and don’t know how to mend because they aren’t able to say what they need or deeply want. Sometimes you get to a point in life where you realize you’ve made a terrible mistake and you desperately need to fix it, but it’s so deep and bitterly ingrained you can’t start.”
― Loreth Anne White, A Dark Lure

“Without fear, there cannot be true courage”
― Loreth Anne White, A Dark Lure

“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.”
― Loreth Anne White, A Dark Lure

“Because we all lie. Every one of us, and whoever claims they don’t is the biggest liar of all.”
― Loreth Anne White, In the Dark

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Patient's Secret

“We all need a mask in order to function. But wear the mask too long and we forget who really lives behind it. Right? We forget our authentic selves.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Patient's Secret

“make a choice to change the narrative, to overwrite the patterns of history. That a person does not have to be defined by the past. Or by genetics. People can change.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Patient's Secret

“People live in the six inches of real estate between their ears—in that three pounds of fat and protein that is the human brain. They live inside their heads. That’s where reality resides. That’s where every single human constructs an individual narrative of their life. That’s where they tell themselves who they are, and what they can and can’t be. And no person’s reality can ever be the same as anyone else’s. The notion that there is one objective truth out there—that’s the biggest illusion of all.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Patient's Secret

“The pain, the sense of loss, of fear—it would hit out of nowhere. She’d learned this. She’d also learned to accept it, and to bow under it, give in to it, because the harder she tried to shove it away, the harder it hit next time around, and it would be all the more debilitating”
― Loreth Anne White, In the Dark

“If she’s learned anything, it’s that honesty—while difficult—has merit.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Unquiet Bones

“Each life has a cycle. One makes one’s choices and bears one’s punishment”
― Loreth Anne White, A Dark Lure

“Myron fell silent, his mind seemingly drifting away on some sea of secret sorrow, buoyed by booze and painkillers.”
― Loreth Anne White, A Dark Lure

“That’s all everyone wants—to be loved. To belong. To be forgiven for their sins.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Patient's Secret

“We all lie. We all guard secrets—sometimes terrible ones—a side to us so dark, so shameful, that we quickly avert our own eyes from the shadow we might glimpse in the mirror. Instead we lock our dark halves deep in the basement of our souls. And on the surface of our lives, we work industriously to shape the public story of our selves. We say, “Look, world, this is me.” We craft posts on social media . . . See this wonderful lunch I’m eating at this trendy restaurant with my besties, see my sexy shoes, my cute puppy, boyfriend, tight ass in a bikini. See my gloriously perfect life . . . see what a fucking fabulous time I’m having drunk and at this party with my boobs swelling out of my sparkly tank top. Just look at those hot guys draped all over me. Aren’t you jealous . . . And then you wait to see how many people LIKE this fabricated version of yourself, your mood hinging on the number of clicks. Comments. Who commented. But darkness has a way of seeping through the cracks. It seeks the light . . .”
― Loreth Anne White, The Drowned Girls

“words were like magic, like ancient runes, symbols, that, if you knew how to unlock and decode them, conjured stories—people and pictures in your mind.”
― Loreth Anne White, A Dark Lure

“here’s a thing I’ve learned: Perfection is deception. An illusion. It’s a carefully curated but false narrative. The golden family you think you know from the luxury home down the street—they’re not who you believe they are. They have faults, secrets. Sometimes dark and terrible ones.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Maid's Diary

“Release what no longer serves you.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Patient's Secret

“We all lie. We all guard secrets—sometimes terrible ones—a side to us so dark, so shameful, that we quickly avert our own eyes from the shadow we might glimpse in the mirror. Instead we lock our dark halves deep in the basement of our souls. And on the surface of our lives, we work industriously to shape the public story of our selves . . .”
― Loreth Anne White, The Drowned Girls

“Words, unbidden, curled like smoke into her mind, his voice thick velvet over gravel. Intelligent, seductive, alluring. Dark . . .”
― Loreth Anne White, A Dark Lure

“She was his compass. His true north. She’d showed him the way home.”
― Loreth Anne White, Manhunter

“We all move within six degrees”
― Loreth Anne White, The Drowned Girls

“Women are the harshest critics of each other. I suspect this is because the flaws we see in other women are flaws we hate to acknowledge in ourselves. Being critical, lashing out at other females, is a way of attacking those traits within ourselves that we detest most.”
― Loreth Anne White, In the Deep

“Two Metro fire-rescue vessels—bright yellow with”
― Loreth Anne White, The Drowned Girls

“The stars in the dark vault of sky were endless. Soft green and blue light with tinges of peach at the edges waved across it in silent curtains. The curtains of gods. “I think she’s watching us from up there.” Tears leaked silently down her face. And in that instant she was certain that from up there, everything must look like it had a plan. A reason. A pattern. She just couldn’t see it from down here.”
― Loreth Anne White, A Dark Lure

“. . . It’s not a game until both sides know they’re playing . . .”
― Loreth Anne White, A Dark Lure

“Once that whole valley was sage scrub. Nothing more. Until one little beaver dammed a small stream.” Silence. Wind rustles through autumn grasses. “A small act,” he says quietly, “that reshaped the future.” He looks at Ash. “The past doesn’t always have to write the future.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Dark Bones

“lagged”
― Loreth Anne White, A Dark Lure

“People misunderstand power. Real power is being at peace with oneself and living in the moment—not being affected by the currents and actions of others.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Lullaby Girl

“Once a secret is told it’s no longer a secret because someone else knows. And when that happens you no longer control the truth. You can no longer guard it for yourself.”
― Loreth Anne White, The Unquiet Bones