What Lies in the Woods Quotes

“Sometimes it seemed like the only thing I’d ever been good at was surviving being broken. I didn’t know how to be whole. So any time I felt like I was healing, I found a way to break myself again.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“There is a wilderness in little girls. We could not contain it. It made magic of the rain and a temple of the forest.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“That’s the thing about trust, isn’t it?” Ethan said. “You gather all the evidence you can, use your brain, weigh character and past actions. But the final inch of it—that’s faith. Trust means believing in someone. It’s not just a conclusion. It’s a choice.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“If they'd known the truth about Persephone, they would have thought we were strange, wicked little beasts — and we were. What little girl isn't?”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“That’s the thing about trust, isn’t it?… You gather all the evidence you can, use your brain, weigh character and past actions. But the final inch of it – that’s faith. Trust means believing in someone. It’s not just a conclusion. It’s a choice.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“There is a wilderness in little girls. We could not contain it. It made magic of the rain and a temple of the forest. We raced down narrow trails, hair flying wind-wild behind us, and pretended that the slender spruce and hemlock were still the ancient woods that industry had chewed down to splinters. We made ourselves into warriors, into queens, into goddesses.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“pain balanced by pain.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Nothing good comes from digging up old trouble.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods: A Novel

“Of course I believe,” I whispered to the dark, but there was no one to answer.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“We knew the world was cruel and dirty and dull, and it was all so brutally unfair that we refused to accept it. There was magic in the world. We only had to find it.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“I’d known from the start that he’d sought me out because my sad story was written on my face and he was hoping to borrow it.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“I couldn’t let go. I couldn’t stop. I was going to see this through to the end, even if it destroyed me.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“They told the story again and again, until they thought they owned it. We tried to forget. We didn’t tell the story. Not the real one. Not ever.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“The flesh does not acknowledge linear time, a therapist had once told me. The past is written alongside the present on our skins.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“You’re a really terrible father,” I said, matter-of-fact. “You know that, right?” “Of course I know it. I’m dumb but I’m not stupid,” he said. “It’s not like you’re winning Daughter of the Year prizes yourself.” “Oh, fuck off.” “Same to you.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“I tried the glove box, but all that was in there was the owner’s manual and a phone. My phone.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Persephone had made it out of the forest at last.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Sometimes, surrender was the kindest thing of all.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“What now?” she snapped, in the half second before he raised the gun and fired a bullet through her throat.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“The words on the page slid out of focus and refused to return. A tight, cold feeling flared along the back of my neck, pooling at the base of my skull, and I tasted something strange and sharp in the back of my throat. It couldn’t be true. It had to be a mistake.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“They couldn’t help digging the edge of a fingernail under your scabs so they could feel the shape of your wounds.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“But why should she be able to leave the woods, when I never had?”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“When I was eleven years old, I believed in magic. The meaning of belief has changed over the ages. We tend to think of it as a matter of fact. I believe this thing is true; I hold it to be factual. But once, it meant something different, a meaning that lingers when we say I believe in you. It is not a statement of factual existence, but one of faith and loyalty. To believe is to hold dear, to cherish, to claim as a truth more fundamental than fact. I believed in magic. We all did.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Don't worry. She does this. She likes to go out to the woods to think.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods: A Novel

“Trust means believing in someone. It’s not just a conclusion. It’s a choice.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Do you know what you’re doing there?” he asked. “A six-foot-two podcaster,”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“The house had an exuberant chaos to it. Crowded, but nothing like my dads’s. Everything had its place here.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“The meaning of belief has changed over the ages. We tend to think of it as a matter of fact. I believe this thing is true; I hold it to be factual. But once, it meant something different, a meaning that lingers when we say I believe in you. It is not a statement of factual existence, but one of faith and loyalty. To believe is to hold dear, to cherish, to claim as a truth more fundamental than fact.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“Sometimes it seemed like the only thing I’d ever been good at was surviving being broken.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods

“We tried to forget. We didn’t tell the story. Not the real one. Not ever.”
― Kate Alice Marshall, What Lies in the Woods