Jason Rekulak > Quotes

“We don’t know how much our bodies can endure until we make cruel demands of them.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“When you eliminate the impossible, all that remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“I see her every night,” Teddy says. “She sleeps under my bed so I can hear her singing.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“hardest things about recovery is coming to terms with the fact that you can’t trust your brain”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“Every parent’s an unreliable narrator. We think we know our kids better than anyone. But none of us can see them objectively.”
― Jason Rekulak, The Last One at the Wedding

“It was one of those ideas that doesn't sound stupid until someone says it out loud.”
― Jason Rekulak, The Impossible Fortress

“Protecting you, Mallory. I’ve always protected you. Don’t you remember your job interview? All those rude and nasty questions about your qualifications? I was trying to scare you away. I tried scaring all the candidates away. But you were persistent. You really wanted to be here. And Caroline thought you were the solution to all our problems.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“Everyone has a story. Some of us are better at telling it than others.”
― Jason Rekulak, The Last One at the Wedding

“Girls practically invented programming,” she said. “Jean Bartik, Marlyn Wescoff, Fran Bilas—they all programmed ENIAC.” I had no idea what she was talking about. “And don’t forget Margaret Hamilton. She wrote the software that let Apollo 11 land on the moon.” “I meant programming video games,” I said. “Dona Bailey, Centipede. Brenda Romero, Wizardry. Roberta Williams, King’s Quest. She designed her first computer game at the kitchen table. I interviewed her for school last year.”
― Jason Rekulak, The Impossible Fortress

“seemed so epic. But I mentioned the challenges to Adrian’s mother and she gave me some good advice. She said I shouldn’t try to write a book, I should just sit down at my laptop and tell the story, one sentence at a time, using the same language I’d use to tell a friend over coffee. She said it was okay not to sound like J. K. Rowling. It was fine if I sounded like Mallory Quinn from Philadelphia.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“We don't know how much our bodies can endure until we make cruel demands of them.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“I forced myself to stay quiet. It's a tactic I learned from my wife, she used to say that if you wanted a kid to share things, you couldn't interrupt them with lots of questions. You had to shut up and let them talk.”
― Jason Rekulak, The Last One at the Wedding

“A woman was murdered. Annie Barrett. She was an artist, a painter, and she used your house as her studio.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“And I have this horrible realization that I am just not a very creative person. Isn’t that an awful thing to discover about yourself?”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“I’m not even sure I need meetings anymore. I think I can handle things on my own.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“I’m grateful to the judge who sent me to rehab instead of prison.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“an addict’s brain will “remember” happy fantasies so we can avoid dwelling on real memories—all the shameful things we did to get high, all the shitty ways we hurt good people who loved us.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“I didn't know how to respond. What do you say to a beautiful woman in the prime of her youth who shackles herself to a shrunken elderly lawyer with skin liked grilled cheese?”
― Jason Rekulak, The Last One at the Wedding

“So we stood up there for a long while, watching the sunset and discussing how it was one of those things you could never truly capture in 8-bit, not with the simplistic definition of violet (CHR$(156)), orange (CHR$(129)), and yellow (CHR$(158)). There were too many other colors, thousands of colors. The hardware could never do justice to it.”
― Jason Rekulak, The Impossible Fortress

“The last one at the wedding was a little girl with a crown of summer daisies hanging crookedly around her head.”
― Jason Rekulak, The Last One at the Wedding

“your brain has become your own worst enemy.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“I’m not asking you to take care of me. I’m saying I would take care of you.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“Heroin is such a big scary word but it feels like Oxy at a fraction of the price. You just have to get past any squeamishness regarding needles. Fortunately, there were plenty of YouTube videos to help me along—tutorials (ostensibly for diabetics) showing how to find a vein and how to gently draw back the plunger at just the right moment, to make sure you’ve made contact with the bloodstream”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“I have a whole day to kill before the pool party starts at three o’clock. But I can sense there’s no talking Adrian out of the trip, that he would chase every lead to the end of the earth to keep me from leaving Spring Brook.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“I close the door to my cottage and lock it. I spy a crumpled wad of Kleenex on the nightstand beside my bed. I pick it up with a paper towel and shove it deep down to the bottom of my wastebasket. Then I pull off my blankets and strip off my sheets and discover three of my bras mixed up in everything. I don’t know how they ended up in my bed and I don’t want to know. Tomorrow I will put everything in the laundry and I will try to forget this happened.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“He forces a smile and his eyes are pleading with me to stop asking questions. But I can’t stop now. I still have to ask the big one. The question that will explain everything. “Why didn’t you tell me Teddy is a girl?”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“What do you say?” “Gesundheit. Or ‘to your health.’ It means the same thing.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“As parents, we always say we'd do anything for our children, but would we really?”
― Jason Rekulak, The Last One at the Wedding

“And I didn’t have the words to explain—I just knew. It was like a fluttery feeling on the periphery of my attention—a kind of spidey sense. I bet there’s a good chance you’ve felt it yourself, that you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures

“Sometimes. It’s very high-pitched. Like when a mosquito buzzes too close to your ear.”
― Jason Rekulak, Hidden Pictures