Julie Mulhern > Quotes

“(About a woman's funeral) Do you remember the part in The Wizard of Oz when the witch is dead and the Munchkins start singing? Think that kind of happiness. I swear every woman there was ready to break into song. Maybe a few of the men, too. (p. 80)”
― Julie Mulhern, The Deep End

“None of this was part of the plan all the girls I'd grown up with had been given. Not a written plan, unless the book about Cinderella counted. The plan was in the water we drank, the air we breathed. It was poured into the pavement on the streets we called home. Marry a nice man, one who was a good provider, and live happily, or at least comfortably, ever after.

Safe to say I'd followed the plan. I'd married a banker. Had a baby. But the plan had failed me. It left me alone huddled in a window seat with every emotion I'd refused to let myself feel seeping through my pores until the air in my bedroom was heavy with sadness and angst and confusion. (p. 235)”
― Julie Mulhern, The Deep End

“When the rush is over, I’m having a nervous breakdown. I worked for it. I earned it. And no one will deprive me of it.”
― Julie Mulhern, Stayin' Alive

“in the”
― Julie Mulhern, Stayin' Alive

“might pass, a week, and then a smell or a sound or a song would remind us of the holes in our hearts. Time might heal, but it didn’t erase, not those written indelibly on our hearts.”
― Julie Mulhern, Killing Me Softly

“But marriage isn’t sparks. It’s a banked fire that promises to keep you warm the whole of your life.”
― Julie Mulhern, Evil Woman

“People accord you exactly the amount of respect you accord yourself.”
― Julie Mulhern, Watching the Detectives

“I clutched a pillow to my chest, stared into the darkness and wished I didn’t know what I did. But, once bitten, Eve’s apple cannot be returned to the tree. It hardly seemed fair. I hadn’t plucked the damn fruit. I’d had it shoved into my hands then down my throat.”
― Julie Mulhern, The Deep End

“Mother always said you could take a person’s measure by how they treated the people who served them.”
― Julie Mulhern, Tight Rope:

“My morning swim doesn’t usually involve corpses.”
― Julie Mulhern, The Deep End

“For all the talk about acceptance and rainbows and inclusion, women still wanted the man they were lusting after to lust after them.”
― Julie Mulhern, Fields' Guide to Abduction

“I have a teenage daughter, a mother with strong opinions, a Weimaraner named Max who plots to take over our house on his path toward world domination, and a husband.”
― Julie Mulhern, The Deep End

“I knew that her adultery wouldn’t just hurt Greg, but also my niece and nephew. I knew the man who dropped her off without making sure she was safely inside wasn’t worth destroying her marriage. And I knew she couldn’t fill a hole in herself with other people.”
― Julie Mulhern, Clouds in My Coffee

“Yours is a country of children looking for easy fixes. Take a pill. Snort a line. Cover the pain rather than dealing with it.”
― Julie Mulhern, Fields' Guide to Abduction