Fragile Quotes

“Everyone always talks about how well mothers know their children. No one ever seems to notice how well children know their mothers.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“People who stay in the same town with the same friends for their entire lives never get a chance to find out who they can really be, because they will always be considered as who they were.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“Motherhood was an ever widening circle of good-byes.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“You [meaning mothers] said good-bye a little every day -- from the minute they left your body until they left your home.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“Uselessness, she thought, was the permanent condition of parenthood.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“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 street, it wouldn't be enough. Fear that, as he stood on the threshold of adulthood, forces beyond their control would take him down a path where they could no longer reach him. Fear that he'd be seduced by something ugly and would choose it. And that there would be nothing they could do but let him go.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“All she could think of was how pure and unblemished, how soft and pink his baby skin had been. How his wonderful body, small and pristine, used to feel in her arms, how she'd kiss every inch of him, marveling at his beauty. When she was a new mom, she'd felt like she couldn't pull her eyes away. Now she cast her eyes back at her catalog quickly, not wanting to look at her own son, at what he'd seen fit to do to his beautiful body.....Not a big deal, Mom, he said reading her mind...Lot's of people have tattoos.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“People, no one tells you when you’re young, fade as time passes without them—all the little qualities and tics, the happy times, the sweet moments, become blurry and vague. It’s the bad things that stay with you, the ugly things that nag.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“Sometimes it seemed like that was all it was, motherhood—grief and guilt and fear. You said good-bye a little every day—from the minute they left your body until they left your home.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“seemed like that was all it was, motherhood—grief and guilt and fear. You said good-bye a little every day—from the minute they left your body until they left your home. But no, that wasn’t all. There was that love, that wrenching, impossible love.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“My husband used to say, ‘The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“And how the connections between them were as terribly fragile as they were indelible.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“She was annoyed by her mother’s lack of consideration for the rest of the family, not to mention her lack of foresight about the future. Elizabeth was unwilling to talk about alternatives to living alone in a gigantic old house that she might not be able to manage one day, the care of which would fall to Maggie and Jones.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“For my parents, Joe and Virginia Miscione We never understand what it means to be a parent until we are parents ourselves. I love you, Mom and Dad. Thanks for everything… then and now.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“Motherhood was a widening circle of good-byes.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“But what she hadn’t realized was that this imaginary respect she craved was only granted to older men. She hadn’t understood that when her body started to weaken and sag, when her beauty faded, she would become invisible.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“She didn't always like Jones. Sometimes she ached to punch him in the jaw really hard, so hard she could split her own knuckles with the force of it. But she loved him no less totally than she did her own son. It was that complete, that much a part of her. He was half of her, for better or worse.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“You know Travis, Maggie,” Leila said. “He’s toxic. Like, you can’t touch him—it burns. And Marshall. He’s just different when his father’s around. I hate to say it. I’m afraid of him. Of both of them. My own brother and nephew.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“need to protect my boys from their… poison.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“I think my family has done everything we can for Marshall,” said Leila”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“He’s almost an adult. We have to save ourselves sometimes, Maggie. You should know that.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“He thought of Mr. Ivy, Dr. Cooper, his aunt and uncle—all the people who believed in him, who put themselves out because when they looked at him, they saw something that wasn’t there. His father always thought that he knew better, that he was smarter than everyone else. If they were any good, Son? Trust me. They wouldn’t want anything to do with you. As it turned out, his dad was right. It felt like laughter, ripping through him in great uncontrollable peals. But when the screen went dark, he saw himself. The boy in the reflection was weeping.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“Admittedly, the modern teenager was a bit of a mystery to Jones. But he did know one thing: they were wired together like the Borg, constantly calling, e-mailing, texting, social-networking.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“With his total cholesterol over250 and his weight not far behind, there were no more Philly cheesesteaks, fries, and a large soda sitting in his car with one of the guys. Now it was turkey lasagna at home alone. He wondered if a longer life was worth living if you couldn't eat whatever the hell you wanted to eat.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“There was a story Chuck’s father used to tell about the boy who spread a rumor against a good doctor in the town where he lived. When the boy went to make amends, the doctor asked him to cut open a feather pillow and let the wind take the feathers away, then to come back the next day. When the boy returned, the doctor asked him to collect all the feathers and put them back in the pillowcase. Of course, it could never be done. Those feathers had been carried far, alighted in places where they couldn’t be seen or found but stayed there just the same.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“He wondered what it would be like to grow up in one place and stay there all your life, to forever be defined by your childhood relationships, to never know if you got to be the person you wanted to be, to always be the person you were when you were young.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“wondering why people held on to anger and sadness, gripped it tight, let it dictate the course of their lives, but found it so hard to find and keep love.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“Hateful feelings could crop up in a marriage, like weeds pushing their way through concrete. If you weren’t vigilant, they took over quickly, like kudzu, depriving love of light and air until it withered and died. It was a slow, silent death, impossible to imagine in the heat of new love.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile

“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 idea of putting brush to canvas, of making a mark that couldn’t be erased. The idea that she might create something that was laughable, pitiable, or silly had stopped her from ever taking a class or even buying paints. Foolish. It was foolish.”
― Lisa Unger, Fragile