Madeleine Gray > Quotes

“I worked hard in school because I liked learning and because I saw school as a perfect little realm of intellectual industry and competition that could act as a litmus test for my own potential. I wanted to confirm my own suspicion that if I put my mind to it, I could beat everyone I knew. I wanted direct evidence that I was not like the other people, and that if in life I did not gain money or professional accolades this was not because I was less capable than others, but because I chose not to engage in systems that presented careers as rewards.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“I’ve been re-watching Fleabag but haven’t we all.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“Hindsight is a dish best served earlier, but it never is. It is inevitably served after the bill has been paid, when you are fucked and full and powerless and bloated and stumbling.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“I am aimless and sapped, despite still being in my mid-twenties, which seems young to most people but not to people in their mid-twenties.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“I don’t know how to be in my own body, my own mind. I want to care about a story, any story.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“My decision to continue is a difficult thing to come to terms with, maybe. Perhaps you’ll suggest that I should have halted at this point, as it would have been the ethical thing to do and it would have protected my feelings. But what I really wanted was feelings to protect. And here they were. So I would go on.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“and I didn’t know where else to direct my anger, except at people who seemed more content with their lives than I was.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“My degrees are the years of freedom from work that I have bought with money aka loans. Unfortunately there are only so many degrees you can do before it occurs to those around you that your passion might actually be less for study and more for not working a job. You can do one PhD, but if you do a second people tend to as you what is wrong.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“sometimes the best thing you can do with a day is leave it behind and then start again tomorrow.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“But we latch on to criticisms of our personhood when we fear they might be accurate. I always had the feeling I was at least partially mad, and so it was hard to completely disbelieve my mother.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“I debate the pros and cons of going to buy a takeaway coffee. Coffee: good. Money: none.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“But what they didn't understand was that I loved this dish. I loved how plain it was; I loved how it screamed, 'man was overwhelmed by the large supermarket'. I loved my dad. I would trade a million fancy meals for frozen spinach ravioli and this man. I would trade a million mothers to hang out with this good dad; this good dad who wanted to be my father, even when the world didn't really want him to; this good man who went through hell to keep me.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“I am smart but she also knows that for all intents and purposes I am an idiot,”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“The next day is a Tuesday; the day after that a Wednesday. I know this because I have to be aware of days now.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“Oh my god, Mei Ling is funny. Mei Ling is funny and depressed. My two favourite things in a potential friend. I am beaming. I am floating. Mei Ling, you saucy devil, you sly dog, you also hate this!”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“And even though what I felt was a terrible, terrible emptiness, a part of me had known that something like this was going to happen.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“I saw him as a circuit breaker; something that could put my big, unmeetable desires on pause. I had wanted to funnel all that wanting into him, into something that seemed manageable, immediate, tangible. I had hoped that falling in love would make all the disquiet go away.

And maybe it would have, for a while. But probably not forever.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“I’m re-watching Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23. It’s 9 p.m. and”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“Well I don’t really want to do anything but learn or, like, read because everything else seems kind of tragically depressing and meaningless and on the way to school I see people on the bus who are going to work and they look fucking devo.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“I had arrived late because I always arrive late.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“Ubers are luxuries strictly reserved for nights of blackout drunkenness in which public transport is no longer an option.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“stage”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“Ma fa sul serio? Ho messo in pausa la mia vita per lui, che non ha ancora lasciato sua moglie, e adesso è arrabbiato perché in una singola occasione su cento non ero immediatamente disponibile quando gli faceva comodo?”.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“Going on these apps is like going to a party in high school as a size fourteen: you are aware that while you are likely not any guy’s first option, by the end of the night you will probably be one guy’s last.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“Mi sembra che abbiamo messo al mondo una forza immensa e ora dobbiamo prendercene cura. Non mi sono mai sentita così prima, come se stessi custodendo una magia.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“Sono tornata: tornata dove le cose hanno un senso – o, almeno, dove io posso provare a trovargli un senso.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“Ero devastata, ma anche fiera di me. Forse avrei persino fatto quello che avevo minacciato – forse mi sarei fatta una nuova vita.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“what you have to remember is that these people are bored and they just want to hire someone so they can get on with their day. You just have to come across as competent and not unhinged.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot

“Diane looked at herself; I looked at her too. The view was unrewarding for both of us.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel

“She told me that she hadn’t got the marks to study architecture. She looked sad. I now interjected manically, with false bravado and an evident inability to read the room. I exclaimed, “But look at you now, huh?!” Diane looked at herself; I looked at her too. The view was unrewarding for both of us.”
― Madeleine Gray, Green Dot: A Novel