Lindsay Pierre
https://www.goodreads.com/toxicreine
Tom Lake
by
“What was it like?” she asks me again. It was like being a leaf in a river. I fell in and was carried along.
“It’s a lonely business, and then sometimes strangely claustrophobic, but this is it. This is what I wanted and what Liz was pulled away from, against her every fiber. This abstract performance art called Family Life is our one run at the ultimate improv. Our chance to be great for someone, to give another person enough of what they need to be happy. Ours to overlook or lose track of or bemoan, ours to recommit to, to apologize for, to try again for. Ours to watch disappear into their next self—toddler to tyke, tween to teen—ours to drop off somewhere and miss forever. It’s happening right now, whether we attend to it or not. Like after preparing a nutritious meal that no one really liked and a lot of blame-gaming over who forgot to take out the compost, your peevish, greasy “young adult” tramps off to take the shower she should have taken two days ago and the evening is shot to shit and not one minute of it looked like the thing you prayed for so long ago, but then you hear something. You head up the stairs, hover outside the bathroom door. “All the single ladies, all the single ladies…” — The kid is singing in the shower. Your profoundly ordinary kid is singing in the shower and you get to be here to hear it.”
― Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say
― Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say
“The rage dissipates along with the love, and all we’re left with is a story.”
― Tom Lake
― Tom Lake
“In retrospect, my inability to put it together was its own sort of gift. I would understand what they were doing soon enough, at which point I would finally understand what I had done to Veronica. Veronica had such a small part in the story and still I loved her more than everyone at Tom Lake put together. She stayed with me after the rest of them had faded, maybe because we remember the people we hurt so much more clearly than the people who hurt us.”
― Tom Lake
― Tom Lake
“The problem with being the only woman in a play in which the three other characters were men and the playwright was a man and the director was a man was that no matter what I said, I sounded petulant, female.”
― Tom Lake
― Tom Lake
“What was it like?” she asks me again. It was like being a leaf in a river. I fell in and was carried along.”
― Tom Lake
― Tom Lake
Book Club for Introverts
— 602 members
— last activity Feb 09, 2023 05:03PM
Does the thought of an in-person book club give you hives? Would you rather drink your wine and discuss your favorite reads online? Then we are yo ...more
Lindsay’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Lindsay’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Lindsay
Lists liked by Lindsay



































