Lisa Unger Quotes

I feel that familiar niggle of not wanting to disappoint anyone, ever, for any reason. Another female quirk, isn’t it? Always be polite, meet expectations, smile when you don’t want to, cry instead of...

I loved him so much. It didn't change all the reasons we couldn't be together, but it kept me returning to his body, kept my skin seeking his skin over and over again in the sad dance we did.

It was a funny, impossible little trap of nature, motherhood. It muddled your brain with floods of hormones and sleep deprivation, kept you constantly busy tending to a million needs, had you forever...

It was fear. Fear that, after all the years of protecting his health, his heart, his mind, setting bedtimes and boundaries, giving warnings about strangers and looking both ways before crossing the st...

It was so much simpler to see other people's wrongs and make them pay. It was so much harder to have compassion, to see yourself in others and find forgiveness.

Kindness, I think, comes from learning hard lessons well, from falling and picking yourself up. It comes from surviving failure and loss. It implies an understanding of the human condition, forgives i...

Memory is elastic, and no two people have the same version of any given event. Our versions of our own lives are necessarily fictional to some degree, wouldn't you agree?

No one ever talks about issues like dissociative identity disorder, fugue, or psychotic breaks in anything but the most negative light. No one ever talks about how the personality does this type of th...

Sarah’s death and how it haunted you, how you were swallowed by your guilt. But your mother was at least partially responsible for how you handled that situation as well. Let’s not forget that you wer...

She could push inside or walk away. She could force a conversation, which might turn into a fight. Or just let him come to her when he was ready. She hesitated a moment, conflicted. Then she opted for...

Something about her called away a piece of him, and it floated through the air and she breathed it in, and it was forever lost to her.

The choices we made ... These were the right choices. They were positive and proactive. And it was, for a time, good for everyone, most especially our boy. But were these choices really? Or were they...

The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift.

The watercolor sky—silver fading to blue fading to black, the high slice of moon and glimmering stars—reminded her that she’d always wanted to paint but didn’t know how, was in some ways afraid of the...

There have been plenty of chances to close my eyes and go back to the sleep of my life as it was, but I hadn't taken any of them. Do I wish now that I had? It's hard to answer that question, as the wr...

There was something eternal about loss, something endless. You could always lose the things you had, but you couldn't always get back the things you lost.

This was what happened. Abused boys became dangerous men. Those around them with a self-preservation instinct—even the people who loved them—started to move away.

Totally different outcomes; we’ve made totally different choices in our lives. Like I said, how you were raised is part of the big picture. It’s one important factor in a million. But in the end, it’s...

We count so much on politeness, those of us who are hiding things. We count on people not staring too long, or asking too many questions.

We hate our parents for having their own lives, don’t we, for making decisions for themselves that don’t seem to take us into account. They’re not people, not really. They’re parents; how dare they li...