Ask Again, Yes Quotes
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Ask Again, Yes Quotes
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“The thing is, Peter, grown-ups don't know what they're doing any better than kids do. That's the truth.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“We repeat what we don’t repair,”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“They'd both learned that a memory is a fact that has been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room or anyone who was standing on the grass beneath that telephone pole.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“There was no real way for a person to try something out, see if he liked it...because you try it and try it and try it a little longer and next thing it's who you are.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“She'd learned that the beginning of one's life mattered the most, that life was top-heavy that way.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“...and sometimes when he watched her - searching for something in her bag, or peeling an apple with her knuckle guiding the blade - he felt a shiver of panic that he'd almost not met her.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“It wasn't that she didn't love him, he knew. It was that she loved him so much that it frightened her, loved him so much that she worried she might have to protect herself from it. He tried to let her know that he'd figured that out, finally, that there was no need to explain, but then he realized that she might not know it herself.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“And he’d figured out that the fun was often not the thing itself—the party, the keg stand, the naked running into the duck pond—but the endless talking about it after, the reliving and describing, and laughing about it in front of people who wished they’d been there. Used to be he was one of the kids listening, one of the kids who missed everything, but now, since college, since Kate, he was in the stories.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“Kate thought about their wedding day as a conclusion to something, where he thought about it as a beginning. Rising action versus falling action. They were reading different books.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“Now she wondered if presence was the thing her new neighbor had, if it was something a person had to be born with and could never be learned.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“There was no predicting where life would go. There was no real way for a person to try something out, see if he liked it - the words he'd chosen when he told his uncle Patsy that he'd gotten into the police academy - because you try it and try it and try it a little longer and next thing it's who you are.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“They’d both learned that a memory is a fact that’s been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room, anyone else who was standing on the grass beneath that telephone pole.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“This was the great shock of America, winters that would cut the face off a person, summers that were as thick and as soggy as bogs.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“The thing is, Peter, grown-ups don’t know what they’re doing any better than kids do. That’s the truth.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“He couldn’t explain to her that he needed the trees and the quiet as a correction for what he saw on the job, how crossing a bridge and having that physical barrier between him and his beat felt like leaving one life and entering another. In”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“They’d both learned that a memory is a fact that’s been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“and try it and try it a little longer and next thing it’s who you are.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“A brand new person, made of nothing.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“And that all the things that had happened in their lives had not hurt them in any essential way, despite what they may have believed at times.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“He felt lost long before his mother left his life, he wanted to tell her, but it would ruin their dinner, their night. He thought of Frankie and Molly doing their homework with music and talking and laughter in the background. The doorbell ringing, kids stopping by, Kate on the phone, pots boiling over, everything a chaos of love. Then he thought of himself at their ages, alone in a silent house, listening for a creak on the stairs.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“She knew that if she asked him to stay, he would. He’d settle right in on the couch and stay the night, the whole week. He wouldn’t ask for a blanket. He wouldn’t ask for a shower. He’d stay exactly where she needed him to be until she told him it was okay to go. Just imagining him there made her feel easier, made her feel as if she’d been thrown a rope, made her feel as if the very room they were standing in was more solidly constructed. She wanted him to stay so badly that she had to sit down, turn away from him a little or else he’d know.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“But things are meant to change, Peter said. Because life changes and people change. As long as we change together, we’re okay.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“She did remember some things, but those memories were of a poor quality, like someone had smeared Vaseline on the lens.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“but that was the story with men and women since the beginning of time. They never saw each other clearly until it was too late.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“He thought of what the Christian Brothers had said about a body being merely a vessel, about the spirit being the pilot light of one’s self.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“In the old country someone would have opened a window to let the man’s spirit fly out, but any souls let loose here in the South Bronx would be free only so far as they could bat around four walls until, exhausted, they wilted in the heat and were forgotten.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“not all problems looked the same, but that didn’t mean they weren’t problems.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“Speaking was a habit she'd gotten into years ago, in the distant past, and now that she'd stopped she felt no desire to start again. It was pointless anyway - all the blah-blah-blabbing and, still, no one understood each other.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“And while he lightened her burden, he felt he’d lightened his, too. It was the truth, what he’d said.”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes
“They’d both learned that a memory is a fact that’s been dyed and trimmed and rinsed so many times that it comes out looking almost unrecognizable to anyone else who was in that room, anyone else who was”
― Ask Again, Yes
― Ask Again, Yes