Judy Blundell Quotes

“But while I'd be their daughter, while I'd eat the roast and come home from dates and wash the dishes, I would also be myself. I would love my mother, but I'd never want to be her again. I would never be what someone else wanted me to be. I would never laugh at a joke I didn't think was funny. I would never tell another lie. I would be the truth-teller, starting today. That would be tough.
But I was tougher.”

— Judy Blundell

“I loved him like a fever. Then he left. He kicked through love like it was dust and he kept on walking.”

— Judy Blundell

“I drove in last night,' he said. 'I couldn't sleep, it was too hot. So I went outside. I was feeling melancholy. Then I danced with a beautiful girl, and I felt better. What's your story?”

— Judy Blundell

“I understood the word 'swoon'. It felt that way, like 'sweep' and 'moon' and 'woo', all those words smashed together in one word that stood for that feeling, right then.”

— Judy Blundell

When a family breaks you don't hear the crack of the breaking. You don't hear a sound.

— Judy Blundell

I knew that the deepest of tragedies was simple: to love, and not to be loved in return.

— Judy Blundell

“I loved all the parts of him, even the ones I didn't understand.”

— Judy Blundell

Truth, justice ... I always thought they were absolutes, like God. And Mom. And apple pie.
But you could make apple pie from Ritz crackers. You could make cakes without sugar. We learned how to fake things, during the war.

— Judy Blundell

“Faith seems to grab people and not let go, but hope is a double-crosser. It can beat it on you anytime; it's your job to dig in your heels and hang on. Must be nice to have hope in your pocket, like loose change you could jingle through your fingers.”

— Judy Blundell

“Loss.
Thats what it was, a hole I could never fill. It would be bottomless.”

— Judy Blundell

It had never occurred to me that I could do something without permission. 'May I' was a way of life for a girl like me.

— Judy Blundell

“I always wanted a father. Any kind. A strict one, a funny one, one who bought me pink dresses, one who wished I was a boy. One who traveled, one who never got up out of his Morris chair. Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. I wanted shaving cream in the sink and whistling on the stairs. I wanted pants hung by their cuffs from a dresser drawer. I wanted change jingling in a pocket and the sound of ice cracking in a cocktail glass at five thirty. I wanted to hear my mother laugh behind a closed door.”

— Judy Blundell

“I took off one of the high-heeled sandals, the white sandals my mother prized, and threw it into the pool. That's when I noticed him. He was on the other side of the pool, dressed in a white shirt and khaki pants. He had lowered the chair until it was flat, and he was lying back on it, face to the night sky, smoking a cigarette. He raised himself on his elbows and looked at the pool like he owned it. "Well?" he said. I didn't say anything ... "Aren't you going to let the other shoe drop?" I took off the other one and threw it in. "My kind of women," he said.”

— Judy Blundell

Darling, I have a tip," Arlene said. "Never, ever wait for a man.

— Judy Blundell

Could it really happen like this?" he asked. "That a girl like you can make me feel ... " "Make you feel what?" "Make me feel," he said.

— Judy Blundell

“I breathed in and out, perfume and smoke, perfume and smoke, and we lay like that for a long time, until I heard the seagulls crying, sadder than a funeral, and I knew it was almost morning.”

— Judy Blundell

“You're a watcher, aren't you?" Peter said. "I can tell. You watch and listen. But you know what I'm betting. The thing you can't see so clear is yourself." I was startled. Here I was, trying to come up with something to say about the weather, and he said something real. "What do you mean?" I asked. "You don't walk like a girl who knows how pretty she is, for one thing. That's a crying shame.”

— Judy Blundell

“I don't have a story," I said. "I'm still waiting for one.”

— Judy Blundell

“Baby, I was in a war. Of course I get it. That's where all the bad in the world comes from. Guys who like being mean. I was that guy once. We were all that guy, for at least a minute. We had to be.”

— Judy Blundell

Don't just tell me a mystery; give me a world. Suzanne Myers delivers a hurricane-ravaged island shimmering with atmosphere and dense with secrets. This tight, terrific tale had me turning pages all night long.

— Judy Blundell

“How do you say yoo-hoo in Arabic?" "I believe that yoo-hoo could be part of a universal language," Dan said. "Like ow. Or- you're stepping on my foot." "That's universal?" "No, you're stepping on my foot. Ow." Amy moved.”

— Judy Blundell

“If the body is pampered, the mind is free to concentrate.”

— Judy Blundell