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1 " That was the thing about being the mouse in the maze, Marlow thought as the flamingos finished trembling, went still. She was the only one surprised by where she ended up. "
― Megan Angelo , Followers
2 " But every time she remembered her phone wasn't there, she felt relieved, and free all over again. Like she'd been given more life to live. "
3 " She loved her father with ease and loved her mother with effort. "
4 " Having a baby is one of the best parts of life' she says. 'But still. It's only one of them.'" - Page 368 "
5 " She wanted the answer to the question. She was living in the before of something, and she was getting tired of it. The dangerous thing about the way she felt . . . was that she didn't know exactly what she wanted to happen, and she didn't care that she didn't know. Almost any change would do. "
6 " The frustrating part of it, writing a book she wasn't really writing, was that she had been good at this once, when she was young. "
7 " She wanted to be what she already was, even if nobody knew it yet: a celebrity. A person, exaggerated. "
8 " Her aloneness was so random, so total and unprovoked . . . "
9 " She was thinking that all that stretched in front of her was doing things she didn't want to do. "
10 " It’s all about the edit. "
11 " There was one main difference between writing now and writing when she was in second grade: back then, she didn’t own screens. Now, whenever a sentence of hers unfurled into something awkward or just never began at all, she gave up. She let her eyes jump from her drab Word document to the brighter planes of her phone and TV. Suddenly it would be 1:00 a.m., and she would be tapping out half-dream run-ons—into her manuscript if she was lucky, Facebook if she wasn’t. "
12 " I’m going to tell you the same thing I’ve been telling you since you were ten years old, Orla,” she said quietly, like she was trying not to embarrass her. “It’s not good to be a follower. "
13 " There aren’t actually heroes or victims or villains. Not in our story, and probably not in anyone else’s. I know you know this deep down: it’s all in the edit. "
14 " Is that what you think you'll be like? You'll wake up one day and feel like a mother? You never will, just so you know. The baby will come, and you'll wait to feel different. You'll wait for years and years. You'll always think you'll change one day. That you'll wake up and feel... Capable. Capable of protecting this precious little thing. But it never happens. So you keep being scared that you'll fail. And then, one day, you do. "
15 " . . . though she couldn't admit it directly, not even to herself. "
16 " The smile she gave back to him made her feel like she was someone else, someone used to being part of things. "
17 " But it didn't really matter how much time she spent clicking around his life, how many times she entered his name into a search box or how many days she managed not to. She was always waiting, still. "
18 " the device. "
19 " I always said we’d have a beautiful wall, "
20 " She understood now, in a way that she hadn't in college, that waiting for him was just part of her life. That she would never really stop. "