Stacy Willingham > Quotes

“There are so many subtle ways we women subconsciously protect ourselves throughout the day; protect ourselves from shadows, from unseen predators. From cautionary tales and urban legends. So subtle, in fact, that we hardly even realize we’re doing them.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that, in the process, he does not become a monster. If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“When people get hurt physically, you can see it in the bruises and the scars, but when they’re hurt emotionally, mentally, it runs deeper than that. You can see every sleepless night in the reflection of their eyes; you can see every tear stained into their cheeks, every bout of anger etched into the creases in their foreheads. The thirst for blood cracking the skin on their lips.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“I had come to think of him as a library book, entering my life on rented time. Something that I could enjoy for a few hours, curled up and comfortable, devouring as much of him as possible before our time was up. And because he wasn't mine, I couldn't scribble in the margins or write my name on the spine; I couldn't leave my mark on him in any discernable way.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

“The two of us together were childhood trauma wrapped in a bow and placed delicately on the doorsteps of every doctor in Louisiana. Everybody knew who we were; everybody knew what was wrong with us. Everybody knew, but nobody could fix it. So I decided to fix it myself.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“Maybe you need to stop retracing your footsteps. Maybe you need to try a new path.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

“But that’s the thing about grief: There is no manual for it. There is no checklist outlining the optimal way to move through it and move on.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

“The truth is, people love violence—from a distance, that is. Anyone who disagrees is either in denial or hiding something.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

“And for one single moment, like a flicker in the dark, it felt good.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“But aren’t all of our lives just stories we tell ourselves? Stories we try to craft so perfectly and cast out into the world? Stories that become so vivid, so real, that eventually we start to believe them, too?”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

“An inner conflict between the person she is and the person she thinks everyone wants her to be.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“it hit me like a truck: It’s because mothers—and, honestly, women in general—are conditioned from birth to feel guilty about something. We always think things are our fault. We always feel the need to apologize: For being too much or too little. Too loud or too quiet. Too driven or too content.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

“People tend to stash their dirtiest secrets in the most common of places.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

“And some of these people have secrets. All of them do, really. But some of them have the real ones, the messy ones. The deep, dark, shadowy ones that lurk just beneath the skin, traveling through their veins and spreading like a sickness. Dividing, multiplying, then dividing again. I wonder which ones they are: the ones with the kinds of secrets that touch every organ and render them rotten. The kinds of secrets that will eat them alive from the inside out.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

“I wanted to apologize to everyone for simply existing.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“Sometimes, the mind is just stronger than our attempts to override it.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

“I guess that’s the thing about grief, loss: it changes everything, not just you. Colors are duller, foods are blander. The words don’t sing like they used to.”
― Stacy Willingham, Only If You're Lucky

“And in that moment, the moment of the crash, it made me realize that monsters don’t hide in the woods; they aren’t shadows in the trees or invisible things lurking in darkened corners. No, the real monsters move in plain sight.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“that the past never stays where we try to keep it, stuffing it deep into the back of a closet and hoping to forget.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“Classic avoidance coping, Chloe. You know that never eliminates the problem—it only postpones it.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“It’s all the same: lonely souls in search of some company, any company.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“I imagine everyone has a Lena in their life at some point. A person who comes blazing in like a shooting star and fizzles out just as fast.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“After all, the violence always comes to us in ways we could never expect: quickly, quietly. Masked as something else. Ben has always known that you don’t have to pull the trigger to get away with murder—sometimes, all you need to do is load the gun and let it go off on its own.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

“I understand the way the brain can fundamentally fuck with every other aspect of your body; the way your emotions can distort things—emotions you didn’t even know you had. The way those emotions can make it impossible to see clearly, think clearly, do anything clearly. The way they can make you hurt from your head down to your fingertips, a dull, throbbing, constant pain that never goes away.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“it made me realize that monsters don’t hide in the woods; they aren’t shadows in the trees or invisible things lurking in darkened corners. No, the real monsters move in plain sight.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that, in the process, he does not become a monster. If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. —Friedrich Nietzsche”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“This effect he has on me, I can’t explain it. It’s as if he knows what I’m doing at this very moment; the way I’m slipping underwater, too tired to even look for a branch to cling to, and he’s the hand that juts out from the trees, grabbing my shirt and yanking me back to land, back to safety, just in time.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“More often that not, it's just the thought of them that calms my nerves. I once told a claustrophobic patient to carry a single Xanax in her purse every time she boards a plane, its mere presence strong enough to elicit a mental reaction, a physical response. She probably wouldn't even need to take it, I told her; just knowing there was an escape within reach would be enough to ease the suffocating weight from her chest.”
― Stacy Willingham, A Flicker in the Dark

“I remember picking it up, feeling the familiar well of tears erupt at the thought of losing yet another person in my life that I loved.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things

“At the time, it reminded me of the stars: how two can collide and fuse into one—bigger, brighter, stronger than before. But what I
didn’t know then was that when they collide too fast, they don’t fuse at all. Instead, they explode, evaporating into nothing.”
― Stacy Willingham, All the Dangerous Things