Faith Gardner > Quotes

“Justice is human beings’ best attempt at making sense of the senseless.”
― Faith Gardner, What January Remembers

“Life, it keeps going. That's pretty much all it is when you boil it down: perpetual motion.”
― Faith Gardner, The Second Life of Ava Rivers

“I remind myself she left in one piece,”
― Faith Gardner, The Mirror House Girls

“Besides, the library’s the world’s best-kept secret,” he said, surprising me, because he never for one second struck me as a bookworm. “It’s the only place where anything’s possible and everyone will leave you alone.”
― Faith Gardner, The Second Life of Ava Rivers

“Maybe joy is even more potent when you’ve known the depth of its opposite.”
― Faith Gardner, The Second Life of Ava Rivers

“It would be amazing if there were a reason for all this. A reason for her misfortune, a reason for her captivity and abuse, a reason for her return. I'm skeptical at first as we steep in the contemplative silence. But then I remember reasons are human inventions.”
― Faith Gardner, The Second Life of Ava Rivers

“Give somebody the keys to your mind, you’d better make sure you trust them.”
― Faith Gardner, The Mirror House Girls

“Fear and love, that’s all there is.”
― Faith Gardner, The Mirror House Girls

“I was relieved when that was ruled out. But I’ve been experiencing the splitting of the mind anyway, living in two realities at once. Though don’t we all to some degree? Actors on a stage. A reader scanning a page and imagining a world that doesn’t exist. A writer, a liar, a person who goes to a retail job and smiles at people they despise. Saying “fine” when someone asks how you’re doing. Aren’t we all splitting, all the time?”
― Faith Gardner, Like It Never Was

“Book clubs have never made sense to me. Books are where I go to escape people.”
― Faith Gardner, Amen Maxine

“The French have a term l’appel du vide, the call of the void—the brief, uncharacteristic pull you feel to hurl yourself off a high place for no reason at all.”
― Faith Gardner, Pearl in Deep

“We grow accustomed to the dark/ when light is put away.”
― Faith Gardner, The Mirror House Girls

“Wish we were just getting started.”
― Faith Gardner, The Mirror House Girls

“I had planned a life like this, contained in an apartment, surrounded by books, hanging on as long as I could. Wasn’t this life? Wasn’t this all it was?”
― Faith Gardner, The Prediction

“Takes a lifetime to build a person and one second to end them.”
― Faith Gardner, The Mirror House Girls

“Ever wonder if perhaps technology is only fueling our cultural anxiety? Why”
― Faith Gardner, The Prediction

“Elliott’s Saturday is Scarlett O’Hara’s tomorrow.”
― Faith Gardner, The Second Life of Ava Rivers

“But there’s no way to heal without discomfort. If healing was easy, no one in this world would hurt.”
― Faith Gardner, Like It Never Was

“Life is a beautiful wilderness.”
― Faith Gardner, The Mirror House Girls

“She can't keep a house; her cooking is inedible; she daydreams; she's melancholic and sarcastic; she doesn't like bridge, and reads tawdry novels, and stays up hours into the evening writing nonsense.”
― Faith Gardner, The Spin

“consider myself a word person, but I can’t tell you the plot of a book ten minutes after I finish it.”
― Faith Gardner, The Mirror House Girls

“Clean, pristine, expensive things make me nervous”
― Faith Gardner, The Mirror House Girls

“I’m an introvert, and that’s a euphemism. This whole crowded scene raises my blood pressure. Secretly, I can’t wait for everyone to leave, to shed this sundress and return to my sweatpants, to escape into a blanket and a book. The party started fifteen minutes ago and I’m already socially exhausted.”
― Faith Gardner, The Prediction

“Pepper spray,” I mutter to myself. “What the fucking fuck.”
― Faith Gardner, The Mirror House Girls

“But like love, goodness is never really unconditional. Push, push, push … at some point, somebody’s going to push back.”
― Faith Gardner, Like It Never Was

“Twinkle twinkle little star, I am dying in a car.”
― Faith Gardner, Eve in Overdrive

“if you’re gonna be miserable, at least get some shit done while you’re at it.”
― Faith Gardner, The Mirror House Girls

“I’ve got to keep busy, find something to clean, hum or sing or whisper to myself to fill the Big Empty. That’s what I call the inexplicable horror of being alone.”
― Faith Gardner, Breakneck Bay

“It hasn’t been easy for me to set boundaries, but I’ve learned that if I don’t, it means I’ve created no space for myself.”
― Faith Gardner, Eve in Overdrive

“It’s like, mind and body work in tandem, so she thinks she’s sick and then she convinces herself and it manifests in her body, so she actually is sick at this point. Her fake Lyme disease has totally crippled her for real.”
― Faith Gardner, The Second Life of Ava Rivers