Mindy McGinnis Quotes & Sayings

Ray Parsons, you have no soul", she says, her voice gaining volume as she speaks. "You are a bag of skin. You are a pile of bones. Every cell that has ever split inside of you was a waste of energy. Where you walk you leave a vacuum. Your existence should cease. — Mindy McGinnis

I'd say he's not much older than you," Mother said when she noticed.
"Really?" Lynn peered closer at his face. "How can you tell?"
"Well," Mother peered up at the gray sky as she considered how to answer, "I guess it's in the way his skin isn't so tough, he's still got the little bit of baby soft on him. — Mindy McGinnis

But boys will be boys, our favorite phrase that excuses so many things, while the only thing we have for the opposite gender is women, said with disdain and punctuated with an eye roll. — Mindy McGinnis

I know that the parts of Anna's body they could recover are six feet below, as sheltered as can be from the worms and the ruin, resting on satin and in an utter darkness that even I can't contemplate. But I know that's not her. Whatever makes us flew from her with only one witness to the moment, someone who should have never known her at all. — Mindy McGinnis

You're Lucy, my little one, and that is no small thing. — Mindy McGinnis

If you have something, someone will take it from you, and with the loss comes suffering. It's best to be beholden to nothing. — Mindy McGinnis

There's a famous line from a poem about the ocean," Mother had finally said to end the discussion. "'Water water every where, but not a drop to drink. — Mindy McGinnis

There are parts of yourself that you hate; parts that you know other people wouldn't understand. — Mindy McGinnis

I suddenly remember Branley, her shiny, waxed legs stretched out in front of her while she talked about Alex loud enough to be heard, shooting snide glances and waiting for her to take the bait. And Alex reading Dostoyevsky like it was nothing, her own world blossoming around her.
Her own world. Population: 1. — Mindy McGinnis

But that's not going to help me sleep, so I pretend.
I pretend that I make the world a better place. — Mindy McGinnis

Another low moan rose from the grass. "That was a good shot," Mother said, nodding toward it.
"Not good enough."
Mother shrugged. "It was dark." She rose and stretched out her stiff body, a sign that she truly felt safe. "You'll get better."
Another cry. Mother licked her finger, tested the wind, and fired once into the night.
Silence fell. — Mindy McGinnis

Lynn pulled her own rifle into her lap, the cold metal bringing more comfort to her than Mother's touch ever could. Her finger curled around the trigger, hugging it tight in the life-taking embrace that she'd learned so long ago. She slipped onto her belly beside Mother, watching the sunlight bounce off the twin barrels of their rifles. Waiting was always the worst part, the crack of the rifle a relief. — Mindy McGinnis

So what happened?" Mom asks; there's a tone of resignation, the sound of a parent who has tried really hard for a long time and realizes that the end of the tunnel doesn't have a light so much as a black hole. — Mindy McGinnis

But Lucy had grown up safe and sheltered, and she believed people were good. "I trust him," she said, holding his gaze. What she didn't add was that she'd hold the devil's hand if he offered to help her over the mountains. — Mindy McGinnis

Before and after the crime, not just during, in order — Mindy McGinnis

We use objects to navigate spaces, making a map in our heads as neurons fire, pathways so well-worn we don't even know we reference them as we move from one location to the next, the same pattern. Every day. — Mindy McGinnis

I want this, I do, but the bigness of the world ... it ... it kinda scares the shit out of me. — Mindy McGinnis

We use the same consonant and vowel sounds but have never said them to each other before, and somehow that makes them all new again. — Mindy McGinnis

Emotions had welled close to the surface, and she thought her heart had never felt so full as it did standing next to the defiled grave of a whore while lunatics sang the national anthem. — Mindy McGinnis

You can't change the things you've done. It's now and the here on out you've got control of. — Mindy McGinnis

Not from here is one of the most damning insults that can be tossed, carrying with it the eternal question mark of what an outsider might be carrying inside of them, a mental or biological dark passenger that will rear up and bite your ass thirty years down the road. — Mindy McGinnis

But the gray ridge of the mountains that sliced through the map was a weight on her heart, an obstacle to be met. — Mindy McGinnis

But I guess maybe Mom and Dad are smart enough to realize that pointing out the second hand on the clock isn't going to suddenly mend the fissure straight through my aorta.
Here's the thing, though- they were right.
We're deep into winter and I've stopped feeling like there is a spear in my chest every time he's up against Branlet in the hallway. — Mindy McGinnis

If either one of you is ever in a situation you're not entirely comfortable with - call me. I don't care what time it is. I don't care who is there or what is going on. You call me and I will come get you. — Mindy McGinnis

But sometimes it swings just right and there's a moment of suspension when I can't feel it. The rope goes slack and the laws of physics give me one second of relief. I can laugh and smile and feel something else. But those same laws undo me, and when it swings back there's a sharp tug on my heart to remind me that I forgot. — Mindy McGinnis

Sometimes I forget for one second and it hurts.
It's a different kind of pain than the constant, the weight that hangs from my heart. It swings from twine embedded so deeply that my aorta has grown around it. Blood pulses past rope in the chambers of my heart, dragging away tiny fibers until my whole body is suffused and pain is all I am and ever can be. — Mindy McGinnis

Where you go, he'll go," Stebbs said.
"I know it."
"Tough caring about people, isn't it?"
... "Wouldn't trade it," she said. — Mindy McGinnis

In a world like this, you pay it forward, 'cause more than likely you didn't deserve it when you got it the first time. — Mindy McGinnis

Some things are too important to wait. — Mindy McGinnis

Grace had learned long ago that the true horrors of this world were other people. — Mindy McGinnis

Dear child, do you even know all the rage that is inside you? — Mindy McGinnis

Venting your primal self in an emotional moment can be more than your socially constructed self can handle after the fact," Alex says, her eyes gliding over me. "Look at you. Your hands are shaking. Your voice is weak. And your conscience is reasserting itself. — Mindy McGinnis

Killing people was easier when the only face I ever saw was Mother's back then, anyone else was the enemy and shooting at an outline in a scope wasn't any different than taking down a deer, just in a different shape. — Mindy McGinnis

Right now life is on pause and I want it that way, because she can't slip away from me entirely until I start moving on. — Mindy McGinnis

She's the one most likely to call bullshit on even perfunctory get-togethers, unhappy with the charade of being friends when we aren't actually anymore. — Mindy McGinnis

They were so thrilled when I said I'm a virgin," I blurt out. "I'm so fucking stupid."
I start crying again, and Alex hands me a napkin. "You're not stupid," she says. "You simply don't assume people mean you harm."
"Yeah, well." I blow my nose loudly. "Last night that equaled being stupid."
"No, it means you're normal," Alex says. — Mindy McGinnis

I wore high heels for the first time and they kept sticking in the mud. — Mindy McGinnis

These are your friends now, Grace Mae. A madman who eats cancer in the dark and another who searches for a different kind of killer, the kind who smiles at you in the light of day. — Mindy McGinnis

Kiddo, you and me don't do so well in situations we can't control.'
'Don't think I care for that. — Mindy McGinnis

Newness wears off.
This is something I've learned about relationships. I've had more than a few run their course, the idiosyncrasies that were once endearing becoming annoying, the jump of my heart into my throat at the sight of her lessening to a skip, then a pause, then the bare recognition that at some point slips into dread, and you know it's time to end it.
It's different with Alex. The newness might have faded, which is inevitable, but it's grown into something better. The panic of not being able to come up with something to say to her has settled into the comfort of companionable silence, my hand resting on her knee, or her head on my chest. The frantic need to be near her and know how she feels has morphed into an almost pleasant ache of missing her when she's not with me, because I know we'll be together again. — Mindy McGinnis

I love Sara, but something was taken from me at the church, something that she can't relate to. Every time I walk outside I think maybe someone is going to grab me. I take a sip of a glass of water I got out of my own tap and swish it around in my mouth first, like maybe it's a threat. And I'm starting to understand why Alex walks around on the balls of her feet, why her back muscles are always tensed, like a cat ready to spring.
She knows. She gets it. So that's why I'm going to tell Sara that I'm okay and leave it at that. — Mindy McGinnis

I use my markers as I go from place to place. Seeing evidence of my small rebellions, spots where my death was allowed to vent and has impacted the world around me, no longer safely encapsulated inside. My life is made of these tiny maps, my paths always steady as I move inside a constricted area, the only one I should ever be allowed to know.
My violence is everywhere here.
And I like it. — Mindy McGinnis

It's a reflex, something that's been ingrained in me. Do no harm. Be nice. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. — Mindy McGinnis

Regret was for people with nothing to defend, people who had no water. — Mindy McGinnis

So I had a choice: I could either not do anything for the rest of my life, or I could suck it up and act like it didn't bother me And you know what? If you pretend long enough that it doesn't bother you, pretty soon it actually doesn't. — Mindy McGinnis

There's different ways of doing things wrong, Lynn, and not all of it is choosing to hurt others. Sometimes it's the things you don't do that make you feel the worst. — Mindy McGinnis

Do you want to die like this?" Mother had asked, that night and every night since then.
Lynn's answer never changed. "No."
And Mother's response, their evening prayer. "Then you will have to kill. — Mindy McGinnis

Simply using the words sane and insane is a way for the population to draw a safe line through humanity, and then place themselves squarely on the side of the healthy." Grace's — Mindy McGinnis

She's like a wild animal ready to bolt, but with nowhere to go. She knows the hurt is inside and running won't help. — Mindy McGinnis

I am a wolf that my sister kept in a cage, until her hand was removed. — Mindy McGinnis

With Anna gone, we listen for footfalls, each of us avoiding the other with an intense concentration. Occasionally we cross paths by accident, our bubbles of personal space like a Venn diagram, becoming darker where they overlap.
Dad left.
Anna is gone.
I have never been here. — Mindy McGinnis

It's not safe for me to be out, but they rattled my cage. — Mindy McGinnis

I've been trying to do better about killing people," Lynn said. "Then fate puts you in my path. — Mindy McGinnis

Things have changed," Mother answered, her gaze drawn to the southern horizon. "So we change with them. — Mindy McGinnis

Why couldn't I want something easy?"
"Because that's not like you. You've always been fond of the difficult."
"True enough. I like you, after all. — Mindy McGinnis

Everyone thinks if you fix a male dog it will lower his aggression, but most of the biters are female. It's basic instinct to protect their own womb. You see it in all animals - the female of the species is more deadly than the male." "Except — Mindy McGinnis

The lamp on the side table illuminates his half-eaten dinner, now decorated with a fat winter fly bogged down in the mashed potatoes. It's still struggling a little, threadlike legs pushing against gravy. — Mindy McGinnis

Quite the opposite; my definition is too broad. I think we're all quite mad. Some of us are just more discreet about it. — Mindy McGinnis

That's life, little one - lots of little maybes and what ifs all lined up in a row. And if you put your mind to following some of them that never came about, you'll get lost and not find your way back to the way it really is. — Mindy McGinnis

I didn't know a living person could hurt you so badly.
When the pain originates with someone who is gone, it's your own memory that hurts you. Walking through the house, touching things they've touched, hearing sounds they heard, wondering what they would've thought of one thing or another. This is pain that I know, pain that I can handle, pain that is so much a part of me that if it were removed I would not be whole.
But when it's someone who's alive who hurts you, the pain can't be escaped. The things they've touched are still warm because they were just there, the sounds they hear reach your ears too - sometimes their own voice, and it's excruciating to bear. I know what he thinks about this, that, or the other because I can hear him saying so. But not to me. He doesn't talk to me anymore. — Mindy McGinnis

Type of men who gather up seven of themselves to attack two women in the middle of the night generally won't go back for dead friends. — Mindy McGinnis

I'm telling you, Claire. It doesn't matter. What you were wearing. What you look like. Nothing. Watch the nature channel. Predators go for the easy prey." I — Mindy McGinnis

To be aware of your own doom is no easy thing. — Mindy McGinnis

You chose to stop acknowledging a world that has treated you foully. What's saner than that? — Mindy McGinnis

A man who dips his sword in every well soon finds it spotted with rust, — Mindy McGinnis

Why do you always quote poetry at me when all I want is a straight answer? — Mindy McGinnis

When I say the things that don't make sense you answer me anyway. It's like having green in your shirt. — Mindy McGinnis

Men got two guns, you know. One for now," he tapped the barrel of his gun against her nose. "And one for later." When his free hand went to his zipper, she twisted underneath him, bringing her knee into his groin and pulling her knife from her boot.
"Mother taught me to carry a knife for always."
She left him holding his intestines in disbelief as she disappeared down the hill, his gun tucked securely in her waistband. — Mindy McGinnis

I'd lost everything I had. I didn't have the heart to take from someone else." "Plus I would've sniped your ass. — Mindy McGinnis

So then the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association merged to create the National American Woman Suffrage Association, which personally I think is rather a mouthful,' Adelaide said as she set down her wineglass.
'I'm sure others have much shorter terms,' the doctor said, sawing into his steak with more vigor than necessary.
'Such as?' Grace asked.
'There are plenty who just call us bitches, dear. — Mindy McGinnis

Do no harm. Be nice. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
But what if I don't want to catch the flies? What if I'd rather see them swatted? — Mindy McGinnis

The dead know nothing, and the living have secrets. — Mindy McGinnis

Little things build up if you live with someone. — Mindy McGinnis

Sometimes the loveliest places harbor the worst monsters. — Mindy McGinnis

the insane are simply people who have chosen not to participate in the world in the same manner as the majority, — Mindy McGinnis

She likes boys, and she can get them. You were hurt by that, but it wasn't Branley who hurt you. It was Adam. — Mindy McGinnis

Sometimes the actions of the sane make no sense. — Mindy McGinnis

But how can I find fault with your deeds when without them our paths would never have crossed? If you are mad then I owe my life to a madman, and he is no less dear to me for his actions. Truly evil people do exist, this I know, but I do not count you among them. Instead, I choose to see you as a good person who has done bad things, and who among us cannot be dubbed so? — Mindy McGinnis

We're cleaning cat ears.

Rhonda doesn't require us to come in on Sundays, but somebody has to feed the animals. Yesterday Alex and I helped five cats and two dogs find homes...We agreed we probably could have placed a couple more cats if their ears were nice and pink inside like in the wet-food commercials. We told Rhonda to take a much-deserved break today and we'd come in, feed everybody, and make our cats a little more like the ones on TV.

So I skipped church to clean cat ears. — Mindy McGinnis

They found each other's hands in the dark, and an angel with chipped marble wings watched over them as they slept. — Mindy McGinnis

Just know that there's bad men in the world, and dying fast by your mother is a better way than theirs. — Mindy McGinnis

A puppy feels like life and love. Their entire bodies are soft - fur, skin, the pads of their feet new and delicate. They radiate warmth in the way science can explain, but it goes further than that. The heat of affection pours out of their eyes and makes their little butts wiggle like crazy as soon as they see a person - they don't even care who. They're love, encapsulated. — Mindy McGinnis

Anna told me I would understand about boys one day.
She said that everything would change and I would look at them differently, assess their bodies and their words, the way their eyes moved when they talked to me. She said I'd not only want to answer them but that I'd learn how, knowing which words to use, how to give meaning to a pause.
Then a man took her.
A man took her before I learned any of these things. He took her and kept her for a while, put things inside of her. Of course the obvious thing, but also some others, like he was curious if they'd fit. Then he got bored. Then he got creative.
Then my sister was gone and I thought: I understand about boys now.
And she was right. Everything did change. I look at them differently and I assess their bodies and watch their eyes and weigh their words.
But not in the way she meant. — Mindy McGinnis

Once I asked my dad how you know when you're in love. He said you just know, and that if you have to ask the question then you haven't been in love yet. And he's right. Because there aren't words for this. No combination of letters could ever represent what she is to me. — Mindy McGinnis

Who is your supervisor?" she asks, glancing around the room as if suddenly realizing she's the only adult here.
"God," I say. — Mindy McGinnis

We hear you shoot like a man."
"You heard wrong," Lynn said coldly. "I shoot like a woman. — Mindy McGinnis

I don't want the memories that I have. — Mindy McGinnis

It all went the wrong way, like a carefully scripted scene I imagined ahead of time falling apart because nobody else knew their lines. — Mindy McGinnis

I'm living my life waiting for the man who comes for me like one did for Anna, with hungry eyes behind the wheel and rope in the trunk. I'm ready. But I don't know how much longer I can wait. — Mindy McGinnis

It's a madness so discreet that it can walk the streets and be applauded in some circles, but it is madness nonetheless. — Mindy McGinnis

Lynn kept her eye to the scope, unable to look away from the path of the only bullet she had ever fired with love in her heart. — Mindy McGinnis