Greer Hendricks > Quotes

“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.’ Well, I’ve never feared bad weather, either.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Wife Between Us

“I was happy, I think, but I wonder now if my memory is playing tricks on me. If it is giving me the gift of an illusion. We all layer them over our remembrances; the filters through which we want to see our lives.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Wife Between Us

“We all have reasons for our judgments, even if those reasons are so deeply buried we don’t recognize them ourselves.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“Gaze detection, it’s called—our ability to sense when someone is observing us. An entire system of the human brain is devoted to this genetic inheritance from our ancestors, who relied on the trait to avoid becoming an animal’s prey.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Wife Between Us

“People are motivated to break their moral compasses for a variety of primal reasons: survival, hate, love, envy, passion. And money.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“Every lifetime contains pivot points—sometimes flukes of destiny, sometimes seemingly preordained—that shape and eventually cement one’s path.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“Some people contend there are two primal fears. The first and most basic is the end of our existence. The second is isolation; we all have a deep need to belong to something greater than ourselves.”
― Greer Hendricks, You Are Not Alone

“Uncertainty is an excruciating state in which to exist.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“We all have reasons for our actions. Even if we hide the reason from those who think they know us best. Even if the reasons are so deeply buried we can’t recognize them ourselves.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“The worst of humanity comes out in the shadows.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“Grief isn’t linear. It isn’t logical. There’s no structure or civility to it; it grabs you when you least expect it and digs in its nails until you succumb.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Golden Couple

“It can be frightening to become acquainted with parts of yourself that you don’t like to admit exist.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“Know thy enemy, Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Wife Between Us

“For years, I have allowed fear to dominate me. But as I sit in the cab, I realize another emotion is rising to the surface: anger. It felt cathartic to unleash my rage at Richard after absorbing his for so long.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Wife Between Us

“The intellect does not reign supreme in matters of the heart.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“She is oblivious to what I have done to her.
She is unaware of the damage I have wrought; the ruin I have set in motion.
To this beautiful young woman with the heart-shaped face and lush body-the woman my husband Richard, left me for-I'm as invisible as the pigeon scavenging on the sidewalk next to me.
She has no idea what will happen to her if she continues like this.
None at all.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Wife Between Us

“Grief is a shape-shifter, it defies logic, sneaking up on you when you least expect it and leaving you empty-handed and hollow when you go searching for it.”
― Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, The Golden Couple

“There’s also a stat I’ve thought about a lot lately: that the average person will walk past sixteen killers in the person’s lifetime.

I watch as a woman moves down the subway aisle.

I keep staring at her as she passes my seat. I wonder if she will walk past fifteen others during her lifetime.”
― Greer Hendricks, You Are Not Alone

“Self-preservation is a powerful motivator, more reliably so than money or empathy or love.”
― Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen, An Anonymous Girl

“You don’t award confidences easily, yet you yearn for the relief that comes with the release of a secret.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“In my marriage, there were three truths, three alternate and sometimes competing realities. There was Richard’s truth. There was my truth. And there was the actual truth, which is always the most elusive to recognize. This could be the case in every relationship, that we think we’ve entered into a union with another person when, in fact, we’ve formed a triangle with one point anchored by a silent but all-seeing judge, the arbiter of reality.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Wife Between Us

“These moments, as unique to each individual as strands of DNA, can at their best cause the sensation of a catapult into the shimmer of stars. At the opposite extreme, they can feel like a descent into quicksand.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“Tell colorful, drawn-out stories that deflect attention from the fact that you aren’t actually sharing anything. Avoid specifics that will separate you from the crowd. Be vague about the year you graduated. Lie, but only when completely necessary.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Wife Between Us

“This could be the case in every relationship, that we think we’ve entered into a union with another person when, in fact, we’ve formed a triangle with one point anchored by a silent but all-seeing judge, the arbiter of reality.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Wife Between Us

“Five seconds can change a life.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“Then my aunt does one of the bravest things I have ever seen. She smiles.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Wife Between Us

“Those extraneous “no’s” are your undoing: Liars, like the chronically insecure, often overcompensate.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“Perhaps he will be the one who will finally enable you to experience true love. Not the storybook version. The real kind, which sustains through phases of dark, until the return to light.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl

“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”
― Greer Hendricks, The Wife Between Us

“Sometimes I think I’ve hurt everyone I’ve ever loved.”
― Greer Hendricks, An Anonymous Girl