The Sugar Queen QUOTES

2 " Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone. "

― Sarah Addison Allen , The Sugar Queen

4 " But she stopped herself. That wouldn't make it right. You didn't forgive because it was the only choice you thought you had. That didn't make it forgiveness, that made it desperation. She'd always been too desperate about Jake. Always. "

― Sarah Addison Allen , The Sugar Queen

6 " Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation. "

― Sarah Addison Allen , The Sugar Queen

8 " It was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I don't know where I was, but I didn't care. I didn't care because the only person who mattered was there with me. "

― Sarah Addison Allen , The Sugar Queen

10 " He fell in love with a skinny stray cat that would skulk around the dining hall during meals. Every day, Jake would offer it sausage or egg from breakfast and pepperoni or hamburger from lunch. Every day, it ran away from him. But Jake didn’t give up. Even when he had the stomach flu, he snuck out of the infirmary to try to feed it. He was not going to let it down. He would watch it from classroom windows. He even made up a poem about it that he sent home to his mother in a letter. Three months later, the little cat was finally hungry enough to trust him. It never occurred to Jake that the cat... "

― Sarah Addison Allen , The Sugar Queen

12 " Most locals knew who Della Lee was. She waitressed at a greasy spoon called Eat and Run, which was tucked far enough outside the town limits that the ski-crowd tourists didn’t see it. She haunted bars at night. She was probably in her late thirties, maybe ten years older than Josey, and she was rough and flashy and did whatever she wanted—no reasonable explanation required. “Della Lee Baker, what are you doing in my closet?” “You shouldn’t leave your window unlocked. Who knows who could get in?” Della Lee said, single-handedly debunking the long-held belief that if you dotted your... "

― Sarah Addison Allen , The Sugar Queen

14 " The area was encompassed in a bubble of warm, fragrant steam from the funnel cake deep fryers. It smelled like sweet vanilla cake batter you licked off a spoon. "

― Sarah Addison Allen , The Sugar Queen

16 " There were crooked photos on the wall of Della Lee as a child, with dark hair and eyes. Josey wondered when she started dyeing her hair blond. In one photo she was standing on top of a jungle gym. In another she was diving into the public pool from the high dive. She looked like she was daring the world to hurt her.
Della Lee's bedroom at the end of the hall looked like something out of Josey's teenage dreams. Back then Josey had politely asked her mother if she could hang a poster or two, if she could have some colorful curtains or a bedspread with hearts on it. Her mother had responded with disappointment. Why would Josey ask for something else, as if what she had wasn't good enough? The heavy oak bed, the antique desk and the sueded chaise in Josey's room were all Very Nice Things. Josey obviously did not appreciate Very Nice Things.
The walls in Della Lee's room were painted purple and there were sheet lavender curtains on the single window. A poster of a white Himalayan cat was taped on one wall, along with some pages torn out of fashion magazines. There was a white mirrored dresser that had makeup tubes and bottles littered across the surface. Some tote bags with names of cosmetic companies, like department store gifts with purchase, were stashed in the corner near the dresser. "

― Sarah Addison Allen , The Sugar Queen

18 " I make a great fried egg sandwich. Want to try it?"
Chloe stared at her with an encouraging smile until Josey finally laughed and nodded. "Okay."
"Great!" Chloe put on a pair of disposable gloves, then she took butter and two eggs from the under-the-counter fridge. "Go ahead and take a business card. You can call me here if you want. And the bottom number is my cell." She plopped a pat of butter onto the grill. When the butter melted, she cracked the eggs into it, close enough for their whites to merge. While they sizzled, she buttered two slices of sourdough bread and put them on the grill.
"I didn't know this place was called Red's," Josey said, reading the card.
Chloe smiled when she thought of her great-grandfather. "Another family tradition. My great-grandfather had red hair. So did my mother." Chloe sprinkled the eggs with salt and pepper and a pinch of dill, then turned them over with her spatula. She flipped the quickly toasting bread too. She'd spent her childhood watching her great-grandfather do this, and here at the shop was the only time she felt him near anymore. "Do you want this for here or to go?"
"To go."
Chloe sprinkled a little more salt and pepper on the eggs, made sure the yolks had firmed ever so slightly, then topped them with cheese. She let the cheese melt before scooping the eggs up and putting them on the buttered sourdough. "

― Sarah Addison Allen , The Sugar Queen

20 " She'd been a beautiful woman in her day, delicate and trim, blue-eyed and fair-haired. There was a certain power beautiful mothers held over there less beautiful daughters. Even at seventy-four, with a limp from a hip replacement, Margaret could still enter a room and fill it like perfume. Josey could never do that. The closest she ever came was the attention she used to receive when she pitched legendary fits in public when she was young. But that was making people look at her for all the wrong reasons. "

― Sarah Addison Allen , The Sugar Queen