Ally North > Quotes

“Maybe shame needed your permission to enter in. Maybe it was a manmade construct, like time.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Genesis

“Because everyone leaves in the end. Everyone. Sooner you accept that you’re on this wreck of a planet alone the sooner you can get on with makin’ the best of it.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Genesis

“4. I dream about you every goddamn night. Every time I even close my eyes. But my dreams blur the edges and I’m driving myself mad thinking that one day that’s all I’ll have left of you. Blurred edges in my dreams.   5. I want you to know that I”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“I listened to you, now you listen to me,” she said, her tone gentle, but there was an undercurrent there—something dangerous just beneath. “I’ve changed. I’m better than I was because I wanted to be better for the children. For Lewis. For you. I fucked up, I shouldn’t have left you, I shouldn’t have—” she gestured, grimacing, “the chloroform. Was a poor choice.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“For anyone who has suffered at the hands of small-minded people, and for all those still battling the lingering ghosts of religious trauma.   ”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Genesis

“The sun may be a million miles away, but still it lights the moon.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“How dare they. How dare they use God to justify such blatant evil.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Genesis

“Remember what you told me? About anger and happiness and how you get to choose?” He nodded, slow and careful. “Family is like that too. When you’re old enough, you get to choose.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“But isn’t that what awaits us all”
― Ally North, The Wilds & The Weeds

“When you’re the preacher’s only child—only daughter, no less, it’s um. It’s hard? The entire town is always watching you. When you’re small you feel important because everyone knows who you are, everyone wants to be your friend.” Why was she telling Joey all this? “But when you get older, it’s as if those same people who adored you are just waiting for you to slip up. They seek gossip the way I imagine other people seek enlightenment or happiness. They crave it, just to distract themselves from how unremarkable their own lives are.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Genesis

“You know how you reach a certain age and you realize your parents are just people? Like, just as flawed and fucked up as we are?”
― Ally North, The Wilds & The Weeds

“What I find interesting is that you claim your parents’ deaths are of little consequence, yet growing up, your favorite book was about immortality. About a family who is physically incapable of dying.”
― Ally North, The Wilds & The Weeds

“Reverend Dawson stopped him. “We’re prepared to pay you good money. We need your help to right this wrong.” “You’ve got the Lord on your side!” Frex bellowed jovially. “What the hell do ya’ll need me for?” Silas shook his head. “Because we don’t know what to do about JT London." Frex smiled. “Why not just pray for her?” ”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Genesis

“You listen to me and you listen well,” Esther said, stretching out to hold Abby’s hand. “Happiness and love are not finite goods to be bartered and rationed. They expand upon each other; they grow and touch others and shed light into dark corners. You should want happiness all the more for the sorry state of the world so that you can share it.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“When we were leaving Wry, when I was ill…he said I hope you die. So he thinks it’s his fault.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“And it wasn’t that Summer was afraid of the shattering—actually, the pull to break free was becoming increasingly hard to ignore—but what came after, that was what gave Summer pause. When the marble was rubble at her feet, what could possibly be left standing, when the façade was all she’d ever known?”
― Ally North, The Wilds & The Weeds

“Born with wings, flying at last.”
― Ally North, The Wilds & The Weeds

“don’t kill him.” She couldn’t explain it, couldn’t understand it herself, but some hidden, primal part of her had flared to life in that instant. He was a monster. A madman. She hated him. And yet, she didn’t want to see him slain.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“Joey had just…she’d shot him. Right there in front of her.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“The circle of rope that had been tied around his waist dangled like a stretched noose. He’d slipped out of it.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“Frex laughed, but not unkindly. “Don’t doubt there will be a war, and I don’t doubt they’ll claim it’s to free the slaves.” Abby looked at him. “What else would it be for?” “There’s a million reasons men go to war and just one reason they don’t.” He looked at her. “Benevolence.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“Abby folded the paper in quarters, hiding it deep in the pocket of her trousers. She’d find her way to a town and then, first chance she got, she would turn Joey in. Tell the nearest sheriff exactly where he could find her. Then she’d take that reward money and use every last dime to help Jack and Olive get back home to London. Back to whatever life she’d robbed them of. To their real family, who’d undoubtedly lost hope long ago.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Genesis

“Happiness and love are not finite goods to be bartered and rationed. They expand upon each other; they grow and touch others and shed light into dark corners. You should want happiness all the more for the sorry state of the world so that you can share it.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“Turns out it’s for that treehouse he’s building—a bell”
― Ally North, The Wilds & The Weeds

“It was a formidable entry, rich in the architectural overcompensation of men.”
― Ally North, The Wilds & The Weeds

“My people are wise enough not to make laws about that which cannot be governed.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“Because your version of God is powerless. He’s fiction, and poor fiction at that. He’s words in a fucking book that you use to control and condemn and compel.” The rumble grew and grew and the earthquake shook the ground and Abby was the epicenter. “I saved myself with my own hands—not because I’m strong, not because I believe, but because I wanted to live. And believe me, the desire to live is enormous motivation when you realize you’ve only just then been handed the chance to do so freely. Your power comes from a set of laws made up by men for the purpose of keeping people scared, but it’s fallible. Fear is powerful but it lacks strength. That’s what I learned that day, hanging onto those rocks, watching my father ride away. I learned that I have more power in my own two fucking hands than your God could ever hope to summon from the whole of the universe.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“Fontaine de Jouvence,” Thea said, nodding at the sign. “Fountain of Youth.”
― Ally North, The Wilds & The Weeds

“that Abby was a coward.”
― Ally North, Bloom Town: Exodus

“It had been building inside Summer for days. Weeks, even. A newfound confidence. And she was constantly wanting, now that she’d realized how good it could be.”
― Ally North, The Wilds & The Weeds