Peter Swanson > Quotes

“Strangers are just friends we haven’t met yet.”
― Peter Swanson

“The thing is, and maybe I’m biased by all those years I’ve spent in fictional realms built on deceit, I don’t trust narrators any more than I trust the actual people in my life. We never get the whole truth, not from anybody. When we first meet someone, before words are ever spoken, there are already lies and half-truths. The clothes we wear cover the truth of our bodies. But they also present who we want to be to the world. They are fabrications, figuratively and literally.”
― Peter Swanson, Eight Perfect Murders

“Truthfully, I don't think murder is necessarily as bad as people make it out to be. Everyone dies. What difference does it make if a few bad apples get pushed along a little sooner than God intended? And your wife, for example, seems like the kind worth killing.”
― Peter Swanson

“Be Mindful of Death" (Memento Mori)”
― Peter Swanson

“Just because my boot was tapping didn't mean I liked the song”
― Peter Swanson, Nine Lives

“One of the paradoxes of her anxious life was that in the midst of doing something slightly reckless, Kate often felt the most normal. It was as though her anxiety, always with her, was given a reason for existing.”
― Peter Swanson, Her Every Fear

“I was also in Boston, had a good job, was married and in love. Why wasn't that enough.”
― Peter Swanson

“Mom, I live in the South End, not South Boston. They are entirely different neighborhoods.”
― Peter Swanson (Goodreads Author)

“Sometimes people are only good for part of their lives, and then they move on. Or we move on without them.”
― Peter Swanson, Kill Your Darlings

“If I loved you because you were a good person, then that would mean I would stop loving you if you did something bad. And that wouldn't happen.”
― Peter Swanson

“But she kept her eyes on him, forming a memory she would one day push to the very back of her mind. It would go into a room with other memories. Not gone forever, of course. But the room had a door and she knew how to shut it.”
― Peter Swanson, Kill Your Darlings

“Les livres sont comme un voyage dans le temps. Tous les vrais lecteurs savent cela. Mais ils ne vous ramènent pas seulement à l’époque où ils ont été écrits, ils peuvent aussi vous ramener à d’autres versions de vous-même. La dernière fois que j’avais ouvert le livre que je tenais entre les mains, je devais avoir onze ou douze ans. J’aime à penser que c’était l’été et que je veillais à une heure tardive, dans ma chambre exiguë, sous un simple drap, un moustique bourdonnant sûrement dans un coin de la pièce. Mon père écoutait ses disques dans le salon, trop fort, en fonction de son degré d’ébriété. La plupart des nuits se terminaient de la même façon, ma mère lui baissant sa musique - généralement du jazz, même s’il lui arrivait d’écouter des groupes de fusion, comme Frank Zappa ou Weather Report - et mon père râlant qu’elle ne le comprenait pas. Mais tout cela n’était qu’un bruit de fond, car je n’étais plus vraiment là, dans ma chambre. J’étais en Floride, en 1963, traînant parmi les promoteurs immobiliers véreux, les divorcées sexy, à boire de grands verres de bourbon. Et voilà qu’aujourd’hui, à bientôt quarante ans, mes yeux lisaient les mêmes mots, mes mains tournaient les mêmes pages que près de trente ans plus tôt, ces pages qu’un homme d’affaires ou une ménagère avaient tournées il y avait cinquante ans. Un voyage dans le temps.”
― Peter Swanson

“The happiest people are the ones who are able to forget the past. Don’t be sentimental about people, I guess is what I’m saying.”
― Peter Swanson, Kill Your Darlings

“I would continue to survive, knowing, as I'd known that night in the meadow, that I was special, that I was born with a different kind of morality. The morality of an animal -- of a crow or a fox or an owl -- and not of a normal human being.”
― Peter Swanson

“Why was the taking of a life considered so terrible? In no time at all there would be all new people on this planet, and everyone who was in the planet now would have died, some terribly, some like the flick of a switch. The real reason that murder was considered so transgressive was because of the people that were left behind . The loved ones. But what if someone was not really loved?”
― Peter Swanson (Goodreads Author)

“I'd like to say something here about how I'll be with Claire again soon, but I don't believe any of that nonsense. When we die, we become nothing. The same nothing we were before we were born, but of course this time that nothingness is forever.”
― peter swanson

“Truthfully, I don’t think murder is necessarily as bad as people make it out to be. Everyone dies. What difference does it make if a few bad apples get pushed along a little sooner than God intended? And your wife, for example, seems like the kind worth killing.”
― Peter Swanson

“But the things we worry about are not the things that eventually happen.”
― Peter Swanson

“I am a happy person, always have been. But that’s just my personality, which has nothing to do with this broken brain that periodically and very convincingly tells me I’m a worthless person who doesn’t deserve to live.”
― Peter Swanson

“Rare breed of animal,” my father had once called me, and that’s what I felt like. Totally alive, and totally alone.”
― Peter Swanson

“I was fascinated by her raw beauty, while at the same time realizing that she would not age well. Her face, rounded and doll-like, would turn puffy, and her pin-up body would sag. But she wouldn't grow old, would she? I was going to kill her, wasn't I?
- The Kind Worth Killing”
― Peter Swanson

“…I took a moment just for myself, standing under the starry night, surrounded by nothing but darkness and nature. "A rare breed of animal," my father had once called me, and that’s what I felt like. Totally alive, and totally alone. My only companion at that moment was my younger self, the one who tipped Chet down that well. I imagined she was there with me. We locked eyes, not needing to speak to each other. We understood that survival was everything. It was the meaning of life. And to take another life was, in many ways, the greatest expression of what it meant to be alive. I blinked, and my younger self disappeared. She came back into me, and together we drove to New York City.”
― Peter Swanson

“If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. —Thomas de Quincey”
― Peter Swanson, Kill Your Darlings

“Oamenii nu sunt definiți de un singur moment din viața lor”
― Peter Swanson

“L’espace d’un instant, Hen eut une frayeur et crut s’évanouir. Sa vision se troubla, ses jambes semblèrent emportées par un torrent. Elle se ressaisit. Ce n’est sûrement qu’une coïncidence, se dit-elle en s’avançant pour lire l’inscription sur la base du trophée : TROISIÈME PLACE ÉPÉE, puis en plus petites lettres, quelque chose comme OLYMPIADES JUNIOR, suivi d’une date qu’elle n’arrivait pas à déchiffrer. Hen n’osait pas s’approcher. Se retournant, elle demanda à Matthew, d’une voix qu’elle espérait normale :

— Vous faites de l’escrime ?

— Grands dieux, non, répondit-il. Le trophée m’a plu, tout simplement. Je l’ai acheté dans un vide-grenier.

— Ça va, Hen ? demanda Lloyd en lui lançant un regard inquiet. Tu es un peu pâle.

— Oui, oui, ça va. Je crois que je suis simplement fatiguée.

Les deux couples se retrouvèrent de nouveau dans le vestibule pour se dire au revoir. Hen sentit le sang refluer à son visage. C’était juste un trophée d’escrime… comme il doit y en avoir des milliers, songeait-elle tout en les félicitant pour le dîner et en les remerciant pour la visite. Lloyd, la main sur la poignée de la porte, attendait de pouvoir s’échapper. Mira se glissa entre eux et embrassa Hen sur la joue pendant que, derrière elle, Matthew les saluait en souriant. Hen s’imaginait peut-être des choses, mais il lui sembla qu’il ne la quittait pas des yeux.”
― Peter Swanson, Before She Knew Him

“Remember that game we played last night, authors who can see the world and authors who can only imagine it?
Uh-huh.
It's the same with love, I think. Some people fall in love because they are excellent observers and they can see what is in front of them.
And some people fall in love because they only imagine what is in front of them.
They construct something that isn't there.”
― Peter Swanson

“The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree are of equal duration.’ I know it’s not justification for murder, but I think it underscores how so many people think that all humans deserve a long life, when the truth is that any life at all is probably more than any of us deserves.”
― Peter Swanson

“She decided she wasn't quite ready to make decisions regarding her day and took her second cup of coffee back outside to the patio.”
― Peter Swanson

“Books are time travel. True readers all know this. But books don't just take you back to the time in which they were written; they can take you back to different versions of yourself. (Eight Perfect Murders)”
― Peter Swanson

“A carousel. I feel like riding a carousel is kind of a fickle thing. You can get on and off and pick different partners.” “You mean different horses?” “Right.” “I don’t know,” Wendy said, sliding her arm through Thom’s and moving closer to him. “Maybe it’s a perfect metaphor for marriage. You go around and around, getting nowhere, and you feel vaguely nauseous the whole time.”
― Peter Swanson, Kill Your Darlings