Tracy Sierra > Quotes

“Maybe bravery is just enduring. Maybe bravery doesn’t exist. All there is is getting through it.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“Easier to believe a woman’s lying than that bad things happened on your watch. Easier to believe the simplest thing is always correct. And it’s simple to say a woman is crazy.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“You think you hide your fears from your children, but they absorb them like they absorbed your blood.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“she knew better than most that deserving had little to do with getting. She was sure almost no one got to give permission for the worst things that happened to them.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“But then, of course, she remembered that although she felt utterly, completely altered, the world around her hadn’t changed.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“Jealousy wiggled in her skull that the sweep was able to believe badness, hauntedness, was isolated to this or that building; pain sealed in the past instead of lurking inevitably in the future. Wouldn’t that be comforting?”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“He was using the word ‘heartbreaker’ to mean ‘beautiful,’ ” she told her daughter, “because people want things that are beautiful, and are sad if they can’t have them. But no one is required to love someone else. No one’s entitled to your love or attention.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“Mama, you said monsters didn’t exist.” She lowered her head, feeling a great weight descend. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I lied.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“Reality can be more disorienting than dreams.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“Is there anyone who thinks they’re evil? Or does evil always see itself as superior?”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“Trauma doesn’t end when the trauma ends.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“But she knew better than most that deserving had little to do with getting. She was sure almost no one got to give permission for the worst things that happened to them.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“After all, she was full of broken pieces that had mended. Even if they’d knit together at odd angles. Even if they were still tender. Unlike the old saying, her broken places hadn’t healed stronger. But so far they had always come together enough to allow her to function.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“she no longer saw a higher power as an unquestioned given, certain her mother’s death proved any god inadequate. After all, if God had set it right, then God must also have set it wrong. Maybe he had stepped out of the picture altogether. Maybe had never been in it at all. She didn’t pretend to know.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“And of course he was someone living, and therefore had the advantage of being able to exist. To be looked at, considered, sympathized with.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“In his hard gaze she thought she saw the old man say, “I know you must have done something to deserve this,” saw that despite his losses, he still didn’t understand that suffering and misfortune fall as wide and uniformly as snow, melting out of visibility but leaving their pain behind.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“When he was sleeping, when his warmth and smell surrounded her like this, she could believe that someday the edges of her hurt would soften.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“Nothing lives forever,” she told them. “That’s what makes living things special.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“There was an infinite, empty place her mother’s love used to fill when she held her, tucked her into bed, packed her lunch, let her push the shopping cart, her mother squeezing her hand as they walked—bum-bum, bum-bum—like a heartbeat, a secret way to say, “I love you,” her mother saying, “My beautiful girl, how’d I get so lucky that you’re mine?” Even these little things had been turned immense in loss, memories that made her tuck her knees to her chest under the covers and fold around her newly hollowed center.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“Her husband didn’t judge her because of her dad’s fortresses of wreckage. Why should she end things over his father’s blazing volatility?”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“And her mother was a dot on a chart. Her mother was absence. She could feel that nothingness. There”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“It was an evergreen pain, knowing that things that took so long to build had been, could be, so easily destroyed.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“But every time her mother-in-law hugged her goodbye, the older woman’s affection was so genuine, so enveloping, it filled that void of love her own father never poured anything into. She would close her eyes, inhale that nearness, that acceptance, and for the first time since she was a child wordlessly breathe, Mother, Mama, Mommy.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“Over the course of years, the yearning for family, for acceptance, incrementally wore away, a stone eroded by waves.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“I don’t like princesses,” the little girl piped up. “We live in a democracy.” She gestured at their daughter as if to say, “Exactly, she gets it!” “I like princesses!” said the little boy. “They’re good at singing.” “Good point.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“the jury needed to believe her mother had done something wrong, had somehow deserved to be violently, painfully destroyed. Because that would mean what had happened to her mother could never, would never, happen to them. Maybe”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“About two months after her mother-in-law’s death, her husband focused somewhere above her shoulder and said, “I know you can have a hard time—responding—to my dad. Was there something you did? Something you maybe said that set him off?” His words branched inside her in an endless fractal root system, nearly impossible to pull out once planted.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“People are creatures who can get used to anything. That’s the best way to define us.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“What tortured her most thinking back on it later was how happy she’d been to hear her husband leaving in the dark hours of that morning.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching

“Trauma doesn’t end when the trauma ends. Everyone’s past forms their present.”
― Tracy Sierra, Nightwatching