Julie Clark > Quotes

“Identity is a strange thing. Are we who we say we are, or do we become the person others see? Do they define us by what we choose to show them, or what they see despite our best attempts to conceal it?”
― Julie Clark, The Last Flight

“I’m not very good at forgiveness.” Liz nodded. “Not many people are. But what I’ve learned in life is that in order for true forgiveness to occur, something has to die first. Your expectations, or your circumstances. Maybe your heart. And that can be painful. But it’s also incredibly liberating.”
― Julie Clark, The Last Flight

“it’s a system that tells women we are unreliable, and then expendable. That our truths don’t matter when set side by side with a man’s.”
― Julie Clark, The Last Flight

“The difference between justice and revenge comes down to who’s telling the story.”
― Julie Clark, The Lies I Tell

“You know, life is long. Lots of things can go wrong and still end up all right.”
― Julie Clark, The Last Flight

“Information is power, yes. But it’s also a burden because once you know something, you can’t pretend you don’t.”
― Julie Clark, The Ghostwriter

“Eva could walk away with no regrets, knowing for certain the past held nothing of value for her. That sometimes, the death of a dream can finally set you free.”
― Julie Clark, The Last Flight

“The world was filled with people who carried secrets. No one was who they seemed to be.”
― Julie Clark, The Last Flight

“People’s recollections are tinted with their own biases. Their beliefs, layered over the top, sometimes rendering a completely different meaning.”
― Julie Clark, The Ghostwriter

“You might be shoulder to shoulder with someone living their last moments as themselves and never know it.”
― Julie Clark, The Last Flight

“Instinct is a funny thing, a whisper of trouble that we can never quite name, never quite define, that allows us to locate danger. Women are taught from a young age to ignore theirs. We’re forced to justify our instincts with evidence, or we’re taught to ignore them—as a way to keep the peace, to prioritize other people’s comfort over our own.”
― Julie Clark, The Lies I Tell

“You can’t erase the past by not thinking about it.”
― Julie Clark, The Ghostwriter

“I learned that the worst can happen and I’ll still be okay. Life is filled with lessons. We can either choose to suffer from them, or learn from them.”
― Julie Clark, The Lies I Tell

“It’s the girl code. We have to look out for each other because no one else will.”
― Julie Clark, The Lies I Tell

“Stay open to all possibilities. Let the story lead you.”
― Julie Clark, The Ghostwriter

“Snippets of memories, fragments of conversations. When you’re living it, you can’t see how it all fits together, or how it’s all going to end. But here, in this space, all your days line up like pearls on a string, each one leading to the next. You get to touch them, live them one last time and finally understand.”
― Julie Clark, The Ghostwriter

“I wonder if I will ever be settled. If I will ever be the kind of person who will feel secure with what I have, instead of always feeling like I’m about thirty seconds away from losing everything.”
― Julie Clark, The Ghostwriter

“There’s a special kind of hell in not remembering trauma. It becomes a dark and faceless fear that lurks in unexpected places—the smell of whiskey, a certain type of bar stool, a song, a laugh”
― Julie Clark, The Lies I Tell

“If we don’t tell our own stories, we’ll never take control of the narrative.”
― Julie Clark, The Last Flight

“Convenience and comfort aren’t worth settling for. We can earn what we need; we don’t need a man to hand it to us.”
― Julie Clark, The Lies I Tell

“That was the funny thing about regret. It lived inside of you, shrinking down until you could almost believe it had vanished, only to have it spring up, fully formed, called forward by people who meant you no harm.”
― Julie Clark, The Last Flight

“Dedicated to all the women who have come forward with their stories. Whether it be in front of a congressional panel on live television or alone in a windowless human resources office—we hear you. We believe you.”
― Julie Clark, The Last Flight

“Are we who we say we are, or do we become the person others see?”
― Julie Clark, The Last Flight

“That you can make up whatever you want to be the truth and you can live your life as if you’ve sealed it off forever. But, like a heartbeat behind a wall, the truth is always there, holding you hostage.”
― Julie Clark, The Ghostwriter

“Every chapter has to have a point. Even if the reader can’t yet see it. Every story told must serve two purposes—to allow your reader to know your characters better, and to push the narrative toward the conclusion.”
― Julie Clark, The Ghostwriter

“Home disappeared for me the day my mother died. And ever since, I’ve been chasing the ghost of a feeling. Looking for a reset that would put my life back in order. But at some point, a person has to stop chasing something that doesn’t exist and just move on.”
― Julie Clark, The Lies I Tell

“The universe will always give you what you need.”
― Julie Clark, The Lies I Tell

“This is the consequence of speaking out as a woman. We are labeled hysterical, emotional, unreliable, and finally, incompetent.”
― Julie Clark, The Ghostwriter

“My therapist had been the one to suggest writing fiction as a tool in my recovery. “When you write a fictional account of something, you’re in control. You get to decide how it ends. I want you to write what happened to you that day, but I want you to change it so you have all the power.”
― Julie Clark, The Lies I Tell

“Blaming Meg for the lie that put me in Nate’s path was just a circumstance of chance, no more useful than blaming a lightning storm for a forest fire. Everything burned to a black pile of ash, until new growth can begin to emerge.”
― Julie Clark, The Lies I Tell