Erica

“You’re wrong about my father,” she said. “I know he’s difficult—but he loves me. And I love him.” “No,” said Ruth firmly. “At best, let’s call it a desire to be loved. At worst, it’s a pathological attachment to a narcissistic man: a melting pot of gratitude, fear, expectation, and dutiful obedience that has nothing to do with love in the true sense of the word. You don’t love him. Nor do you know or love yourself.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Maidens

“Even in his final moments, I doubt he learned his lesson. But I didn’t kill him to teach him a lesson; I killed him to carve him out of this world like a tumor. And I’d do it again.”
― Layne Fargo, They Never Learn

“Sometimes, she'd said, you can't see the whole story until it's laid out on the page, and the only way to figure out what happens next is to write your way through it, one scene after the next, until it's done.”
― Elle Cosimano, Finlay Donovan Is Killing It

“Ruth always said that forgiveness could not be coerced – it was experienced spontaneously, as an act of grace, appearing only when a person was ready.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Maidens