Eric Rickstad > Quotes

“I do not wish to know what happened to Scout Finch. I wish her to remain forever young in my imagination, her future one of infinite possibilities.”
― Eric Rickstad

“The Quiet One: invisible as an expelled breath and born halfway down the cracks through which he is destined to slip.”
― Eric Rickstad, I Am Not Who You Think I Am

“He wasn’t the young man he’d once been, and he did not grieve the loss.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“I don’t want to be exceptional. I just want to ride my bike.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lilith

“I find no comfort in it, eternity, everlasting life. When I am dead, I will be gone, and I will never know I existed. I will not know I ever was. Just as when I am asleep, I do not know I exist or ever existed.
I am not saddened or frightened. It is this that brings me comfort. Confidence. Confidence to do something now, in this life, with my life. This one and only life of mine.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lilith

“I find no comfort in it, eternity, everlasting life. When I am dead, I will be gone, and I will never know I existed. I will not know I ever was. Just as when I am asleep, I do not know I exist or ever existed.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lilith

“Most normal people who watch TV or movies and read books for fun— they’ve been sold a bill of pop-culture goods. Profiling never caught any killer.”
― Eric Rickstad, Remote: The Six

“Did you have Lockdown Mondays when you were in kindergarten?” Jennifer says. I tell her no, we didn’t. “How come?” “I . . . Things were different then.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lilith

“We speak of zombies as the undead, but I discovered in that moment that the true zombies are unalive.”
― Eric Rickstad, I Am Not Who You Think I Am

“This was the trouble with lying: it bred paranoia.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“What greater gift could a parent give a child than independence?”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“But arrogance and pride ran lockstep with hatred and stupidity. King”
― Eric Rickstad, Lie In Wait

“What Purple Hair had said rooted in her mind like a malignant tumor. She wanted to take a knife and cut it out.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“Blame it on their losing the parent lottery.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“There are people in this world, people who are truly sick, people who truly suffer, and you are not sick, you do not suffer, and you don’t ever want to be one of them or make light of others’ trials. And don’t waste food like that. Show respect. You can go without dinner tonight. But”—and Mama smiled her smile that could melt the sun—“I give you an A for creativity. It will serve you one day, you will see, that imagination of yours, that mind. You are special, my special one. Chosen to use your gifts.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lilith

“By night, moose haunted the roadsides, licking salt left by plows. By day, one of the creatures might be spied farther off in the swamp, dipping its great head into the bog, then lifting it ponderously, water pouring in strings from a head of an outsized, prehistoric horse, sullen eyes of a cow, and drooping lower lip of a giraffe.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“stung by humiliation, by his own impotency in the face of a system that gave lenience to perpetrators and forgot their victims.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“I’ll call her Jessica. Because that’s who she was. She was made a victim and I don’t care to give the person who did that the power to take her name away.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lie In Wait

“near where Julia was found. Clean. No physical”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“In my business, one thing you learn is to accept circumstances as they are and to recognize that cruel acts are done by the hands of some against the will of others, often only to get supreme satisfaction from the cruelty.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“Squirrels scampered in the road, performing their neurotic jig of indecision.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“Memory was a devil that wore many disguises.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“Death lurked everywhere. Death was alive and well.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“The whole world was weakening. He wondered if in two hundred years, humans would be reduced to gelatinous blobs hooked up to feeding tubes.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“Now that Rath was north of forty, he didn’t trust a doctor younger than forty-five, kids who couldn’t relate to the tolling bell of mortality accompanying daily life.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“his smoldering fuse sucking up the oxygen in the house as the inevitable explosion approached.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“IN THE BATHROOM, Jon splashed cold water on his face. He removed his glasses and set them on the sink edge, avoided his reflection. Often, he went weeks—sometimes months—without looking himself square in the eye, never really seeing himself. Just enough to shave. He’d done this for as long as he could remember.”
― Eric Rickstad, Lie In Wait

“Grout went to the side of”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“Even now, the images cast a shadow over Rath’s soul and left a bitter metallic taste on his tongue. Even now, he tried to beg off the misery squeezing his heart in its ugly, unforgiving grip.”
― Eric Rickstad, The Silent Girls

“Girls could do anything. If they worked like twice as hard as boys.”
― Eric Rickstad, What Remains of Her