Jessica Taylor > Quotes

“Nobody could hold the same place in your heart as your sister. Love or hate her, she was the only person who grew up exactly like you, who knew the secrets of your household—the laughter that only the walls of your house contained or the screaming at a level low enough the neighbors couldn’t hear, the passive aggressive compliments or the little put-downs. Only your sister could know how it felt to grow up in the house that made you you.”
― Jessica Taylor, A Map for Wrecked Girls

“He wanted to learn how the world worked, and I wanted to learn how to work the world.”
― Jessica Taylor, Wandering Wild

“Henri held herself as if only her arms could keep her pieced together, and I saw that behind all her fake control—throwing herself at a teacher, carving our dad out of her heart—was something fragile. I wish we’d seen it sooner—my dad and Mr. Flynn, they had a responsibility to see it, to do better. Those moments were my sister spinning out.”
― Jessica Taylor, A Map for Wrecked Girls

“I’d never told anyone the future I imagined for my sister and me, dreams that had been part of me as far back as I could remember, so long they’d grown roots and wings.”
― Jessica Taylor

“Henri said our names were fitting because we were destined to be together in our old age, like our great-great-aunts. Two gray old ladies in the bodies of teenage girls. Someday we’d live in a big house with faded curtains, a dozen or so cats, and a handful of our marbles long ago lost. On all accounts—our destiny, her clairvoyance, and our soon-to-be missing marbles—I believed her.”
― Jessica Taylor, A Map for Wrecked Girls

“Henri held herself as if only her arms could keep her pieced together, and I saw that behind all her fake control—throwing herself at a teacher, carving our dad out of her heart—was something fragile. I wish we’d seen it sooner—my dad and Mr. Flynn, they had a responsibility to see it, to do better. Those moments were my sister spinning out.
”
― Jessica Taylor

“I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”
― Jessica Taylor, Wandering Wild

“Our tragedy, I guess, was that in all that time we did everything we could to not know each other. But somehow, we did know each other, better than we'd thought.”
― Jessica Taylor, Who We Were in the Dark

“Grace was a trick, an illusion, a stretch of my imagination. She'd designed herself to be exactly that. And the more I learned of her, it seemed there was more I didn't know.”
― Jessica Taylor, Who We Were in the Dark

“Now our father lived in a world where we didn’t belong, with a needy girlfriend who didn’t look much older than Henri, a saltwater pool in need of daily skimming, and a flashy Porsche that needed to be raced around the roads of wine country.
Fortunately, we didn’t need him either—that’s what Henri said.”
― Jessica Taylor, A Map for Wrecked Girls

“She ran a streak of foundation under each eye, highlighter down the bridge of her nose, and bronzer beneath each cheekbone—a layer of armor before battle. Because that’s what these parties were to her, a war on all the heartbreaking boys in the San Francisco Bay Area.”
― Jessica Taylor, A Map for Wrecked Girls

“I thought about this new scene, this story that Grace had created for us. Maybe we were her inventions. Ready and willing to bend to her will. I just didn't know there was only so far to bend til we'd break.”
― Jessica Taylor, Who We Were in the Dark

“Like everything else we had, this kiss could only exist here.”
― Jessica Taylor, Who We Were in the Dark