Andrew Hart > Quotes

“the moment became rare and precious because you know in your lying heart that nothing this good can last; you want to preserve it in crystal forever, a few perfect minutes in time that you can hold and step back into whenever you want.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“Carl,” she said again, her voice flat.”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“Love. The two women looked at each other, and that most loaded of words hung between them, stuffed full of misconceptions willful and otherwise, a word that meant everything and nothing.”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“I sat with them both until the X-rays were done and the arm—with its hairline fibula fracture—was braced and set.”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“Who the fuck is Carl?”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“I loved story, the shape of it, the inventive audacity of stringing together characters, places, and events to make up something that felt absolutely real but existed only in the head of the writer or their readers.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“But I remembered the semicircular shadows of the dogwood leaves as they had been during the eclipse, and I felt the truth of the private message they had sent me. Eclipsed. Happiness wouldn’t just arrive like dawn. I had to go to meet it.”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“Icarus is . . . I don’t know: aspiration and daring but also arrogance and hubris. It’s a cool story, the boy who flew too close to the sun so that the wax holding the feathers in his wings melted, but it’s also a great tragic metaphor for overreach, not knowing your limitations.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“We don’t need to look to mythological creatures to find terror and brutality. People can do that all by themselves.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“The men who like me . . . Well, there was only ever one, to be honest, and he turned out not to be very nice. Not nice at all. Believe me, I’m better by myself.” “But you are so warm and loving!” I exclaimed. “So good with people, with kids. People can see that. One day . . .”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here. —William Shakespeare, The Tempest”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“The men who like me . . . Well, there was only ever one, to be honest, and he turned out not to be very nice. Not nice at all. Believe me, I’m better by myself.” “But you are so warm and loving!” I exclaimed. “So good with people, with kids.”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“Kids. They always feel responsible for what happens in the world.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“Carl,”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“But you said . . . ?”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“Maybe that’s the truth at the heart of the labyrinth myth—that we’re wandering, lost, always trying to stay one step ahead of our personal monsters, always ready, sword in hand, spooling out Ariadne’s thread in the hope that one day we will make it out in one piece.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“Carl.”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“Then it shut with a thunk, and I was alone in the house for the first time in what felt like years.”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“Oh,” I said. I knew how lame and stupid that sounded, but I couldn’t think of anything else. I knew nothing of such stuff, but even I could see that this was bad. “Great Deal finds out, reports him, his agency fires him, and suspends his license for five years.” “So . . . he’s out of work?” I wasn’t sure where the conversation had moved from the hypothetical to the factual. “To say the least, yeah. It’s not Great Deal, of course, but otherwise the story is . . . yeah, he’s out of work and lucky not to be banned for life.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“The way Brad’s business works,” she said, “is that companies who are looking to expand send his agency locations where they want to go, and I don’t mean towns or regions. I mean coordinates. Latitude and longitude. Often they’ve already identified the site themselves.” “Why don’t they just buy the property themselves?” I asked. “Something about retailers not wanting to also be in real estate,” she said with a shrug. “It never made much sense to me either, but apparently it’s about showing their investors that they are staying within a particular area of business expertise and subcontracting for related services. Anyway. So a company like yours—Great Deal, right?” “Right.” “Great Deal says they want three stores in metro Atlanta in these locations and they’ll pay between one and three million per lot. Brad goes in, negotiates the deal with the property owner through a broker, ensures the land is suitable, then purchases it for Great Deal. But say he finds out that the seller will part with the land for only a few hundred thousand? He knows Great Deal will pay way more than that so . . .” “He convinces the seller to ask for a higher price and gets a cut of the extra?” I suggest. “Worse,” she said, and now her previous despondency settled back into her body so that she sagged and, for a second, squeezed her eyes shut. “He buys the land himself. Sets up a shell company under someone else’s name, then tries to sell it on to Great Deal at the markup he knows they’ll pay. A million plus profit per site.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“I found myself wondering if we had always been designated as audience to their greatness, as if they’d needed people to perform their perfection to.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“Whatever the world is, I still have to live in it. We all do. Maybe that’s the truth at the heart of the labyrinth myth—that we’re wandering, lost, always trying to stay one step ahead of our personal monsters, always ready, sword in hand, spooling out Ariadne’s thread in the hope that one day we will make it out in one piece.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“The only man who had ever been interested in her was Carl, and God knew that hadn’t been about attraction.”
― Andrew Hart, The Woman in Our House

“It’s idyllic, glorious, and I want it back so much that it tugs at my gut, my heart, like the most exquisite pain.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“Because nothing puts your life in focus like someone trying to take it from you.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us

“I see captured not so much who they were, but how we saw them, and each untainted image is full of light and energy and laughter, a joy so unconscious and complete that it brings tears to my eyes.”
― Andrew Hart, Lies that Bind Us