Home > Work > In a Dark, Dark Wood

In a Dark, Dark Wood QUOTES

In a Dark, Dark Wood QUOTES

1 " Generally, if people write to you, it's because they liked the book, although I have had a few messages telling me what a terrible person I am. But even when they're nice, it's still odd and uncomfortable-someone telling you their reaction to your private thoughts, like reading someone's opinion on your diary. I'm not sure I'll ever get used to that feeling, however long I write. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

2 " People don’t change,” Nina said bitterly. “They just get more punctilious about hiding their true selves. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

3 " It was growing dark, and somehow the shadows made it feel as if all the trees had taken a collective step towards the house, edging in to shut out the sky. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

4 " I always thought that being self-sufficient was a strength, but now I realize it’s a kind of weakness, too. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

5 " The night was drawing in, and the house felt more and more like a glass cage, blasting its light blindly out into the dusk, like a lantern in the dark. I imagined a thousand moths circling and shivering, drawn inexorably to its glow, only to perish against the cold inhospitable glass. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

6 " It's not that Nina doesn't feel stuff. She just deals with it differently than most people. Sarcasm is her defense against life. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

7 " There was something strangely naked about it, like we were on a stage set, playing our parts to an audience of eyes out there in the wood. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

8 " You’d think people would be wary of spilling to a writer. You’d think they’d know that we’re essentially birds of carrion, picking over the corpses of dead affairs and forgotten arguments to recycle them in our work—zombie reincarnations of their former selves, stitched into a macabre new patchwork of our own devising. Tom, "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

9 " I hate being driven—driving is like karaoke—your own is epic, other people’s is just embarrassing or alarming. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

10 " To tell the truth we had a bit of a . . . disagreement, let’s call it. Before I left.” “Oh, right.” I kept my voice neutral. I never know what to say in these situations. I hate people prying into my business, so I assume others will feel the same way. But sometimes they want to spill, it seems, and then you look cold and odd, backing away from their confidences. I try to be completely nonjudgmental—not pushing for secrets, not repelling confessions. And in truth, although part of me really doesn’t want to hear their petty jealousies and weird obsessions, there’s another part of me that wants to egg them on. It’s that part of me that stands there nodding, taking notes, filing it all away. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

11 " I know him by heart. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

12 " There is no gray when you’re young. There’s only goodies and baddies, right and wrong. The rules are very clear—a playground morality of ethical lines drawn out like a netball pitch, with clear fouls and penalties. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

13 " there’s one thing I dislike more than being hurt, it’s being seen to be hurt. I’ve "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

14 " There’s a kind of focusing effect that happens when you’re very ill. I saw it with my granddad, when he was slipping away. You stop caring about the big stuff. Your world shrinks down to very small concerns: the way your dressing gown cord presses uncomfortably against your ribs, the pain in your spine, the feel of a hand in yours. It’s that narrowing that enables you to cope, I suppose. The wider world stops mattering. And as you grow more and more ill, your world shrinks further, until the only thing that matters is just to keep on breathing. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

15 " So you write plays?” “Yes. I’m always rather jealous of novelists—the way you get to control everything. You don’t have to deal with actors massacring your best lines. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

16 " Well there's a vacancy. We're one down."
"What?"
"Melanie, she's gone. The landline's down and it was the last straw."
"Christ, you're kidding? It's like Agatha effing Christie and the Ten Little Eskimos."
"Indians."
"What?"
"Ten Little Indians. In the book."
"It was Eskimos."
"It bloody wasn't. " I sat down on the bed. "It was the N word, actually, if you're going for the original, then Indians, then soldiers when they decided that offing ethnic minorities was maybe a bit strange. It was never Eskimos."
"Well, whatever." Nina dismissed the Eskimos with a wave of her hand. "Is there any coffee down there? "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

17 " The brain doesn’t remember well. It tells stories. It fills in the gaps, and implants those fantasies as memories. I have to try to get the facts . . . But I don’t know if I’m remembering what happened—or what I want to have happened. I am a writer. I’m a professional liar. It’s hard to know when to stop, you know? You see a gap in the narrative, you want to fill it with a reason, a motive, a plausible explanation. And the harder I push, the more the facts dissolve beneath my fingers . . . "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

18 " It was... I don't know. I don't know how to put it. It was pride, I think. A kind of disbelief at my own stupidity. The thought that I'd loved him so much, and had been so mistaken. How could I? How could I have been so incredibly, unbelievably wrong? "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

19 " There’s a disappointment in the banality of what makes people tick, but at the same time, there’s a kind of fascination at seeing the inner coils and cogs. The "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood

20 " Somehow the realization stiffened my nerve. We weren’t sixteen anymore. We didn’t have to hang around like there was an invisible umbilical cord tethering us together. We’d gone our separate ways and all survived. "

― Ruth Ware , In a Dark, Dark Wood