Five Favorite BREAKABLE Quotes
As a novelist, every book is a story from the heart. There’s
a connection with every word you write. But when Brittany asked me to offer up
my favorite quotes from Breakable, I couldn’t pass up the chance.
See, even though I love the whole story, there are
definitely moments – moments that
make me laugh, or make me feel – where I have to stop and savor when I’m
reading back through the manuscript.
I hope you’ll read the book and enjoy these moments as much
as I do!
FAVORITE QUOTE #5:
Stacy’s mother is, unfortunately, one of the people in Stacy’s life who
contribute to her eroding sense of self-worth. I love this moment, because in
it, Stacy shows her dry-side as an internal self-defense:
I met Older Me’s gaze, trying not to be
obvious about my questions, while Mom prattled on about how to walk into a room
like you owned it. Strange, I’d always thought she was born walking around as
if her farts were gold-plated. I hadn’t realized she’d cultivated the talent.
FAVORITE QUOTE #4:
Stacy is an artist, struggling for inspiration for a major competition. There’s
a moment when she considers painting the people who make life hardest for her.
I always enjoyed that passage because it felt like she took her pain and turned
it into something productive:
I flipped back to the image of Finn and
imagined turning the idea into a painting – using a spatula for hard lines to
depict the sharpness of his features, heavy thick paint for his rhinoceros
skin, fat brush strokes for his eyebrows, like caterpillars over his eyes, his
long mouth a venomous slash of red and purple.
For Karyn I’d use glossy pastels – waxy
crayons that shone on the paper. They’d do justice to her hair. I could layer
red and white and beige and cream to make her cheeks blush. Then, when
everything was done, use a tool to scrape her eyes out of the heavy wax so they
cut through the viewer like they did through me. Her dimples would be hard to
get right. I’d need to cut them into the acrylic, like her eyes. Holes in a
poisonous blanket.
As her face came to life in my mind, I
sniggered and pulled out the crayons to give it a shot. My hand moved quickly,
inspired. A snapshot of possibilities sprang up on the paper in minutes – a
shiny, waxy, plastic face that hid the darkness beneath.
I’d run a candle flame along the edge
of her paper so it burned unevenly. The sooty remains would leave a dark stain
on anyone who touched it.
My imagination ran away with me…
FAVORITE QUOTE #3: In
this scene, Stacy’s adult self (called “Older Me”) offers her some insight. I
don’t usually go in for “moral of the story” stuff, but this was a lesson I
learned that it seemed like Stacy needed to learn too. And Older Me was just
the person to teach it to her…
Older Me kept talking. “You think the
way these people treat you is the end of the world. But I can tell you, it
isn’t what happens to you in your life that destroys you. It’s what you do
about it.”
“Are you trying to say it’s my fault
everyone–?”
“No. I’m saying that you’ve had crap
thrown at you. You can either clean yourself up and keep going and prove
everyone wrong -- show them you didn’t deserve to get it in the first place. Or
you can roll around in it and think you deserve it, and start acting like you
do.”
Oh. “Is that what you did?”
She nodded. “Crappy things happened to
me and I gave up. And believe me, when you give up, the crap just piles on
thicker until pretty soon you don’t even realize it’s crap anymore.” She inched
closer to me, her eyes piercing mine. “Stacy, if I had the chance to go back
and live it again – to be in your shoes – I’d do it in a heartbeat. Because
you’re going to walk away from this and figure out it wasn’t your fault.
“One day you’ll look back and realize
that everyone you grew up with didn’t get it right. They didn’t actually know
you. They didn’t really hear you. They were just so messed up, they threw all
their own crap on you.
“But the thing is, if you can
understand that it’s their problem, you’ll brush it all off and walk away
clean. While they’ll still be looking for someone to dump on. You’ll win. It’ll
be worth it.”
I couldn’t look away from her. “I don’t
know…” Her words seemed so right. But I didn’t want to believe them because it
meant I had to fight. And I was so tired
of fighting.
FAVORITE QUOTE #2: There’s
one line that always make me giggle. Something Stacy thinks to herself during
her session with the Psychiatrist:
Doc raises his hands. “We’ll move on in
a moment. But let me ask you one more question: If you walked out of here today
and someone you admired – say, someone like Mark – were to ask you to get
involved in a secret relationship now. Would you do it?”
Totally.
But I say, “No.” I’d have hair implants and call myself a cat
if it meant Mark would stroke me one more time.
FAVORITE QUOTE #1: My very
favorite quote in the book, though it covers an incredibly painful moment in
the story, is Stacy’s analysis of her physical ordeal. I can’t tell you how she
got to this point, or what happens afterwards, without ruining the story. But
for me (and for Stacy) this moment always stands alone, crystallized:
There’s a special kind of pain reserved
for dancing with shattered glass. It comes in stages:
The initial assault is fear; you see
the glass coming and you know it’s going to hurt.
Then there’s the moment everything
explodes and the glass tears at your skin, catching, peeling, shaving you away
and you think, I might die.
Then the pieces fall and break into new
pieces. You’re heading to the floor too, but they beat you there and all the
tattered parts of you land on all the splintered parts of it. They are needles
in open wounds. Knives on raw flesh.
And then the fire arrives – hot,
burning flames that lick the wounds. And every time you move, the tiny pieces
that stuck with you cut a little deeper and the flames roar higher.
In short, it sucks.
If only it ended there.
So there you have it! Thanks for taking a peek inside
Breakable. If you decide to read the
whole book, I’d love to hear from you at
www.aimeelsalter.com
or on Twitter (@AimeeLSalter) with
your favorite
quote!
