The
Woman in the Window
by A.J. Finn
QUOTES FOR DISCUSSION
Watching is like nature photography: you don't interfere with the wildlife.
Watching is like nature photography: you don't interfere with the wildlife.
Pg. 4
She never had real friends in New York; she was too
shy, too small.
pg. 9
This time last year, we'd planned to sell the house,
had even engaged a broker;
Pg. 12
She dropped by to tell us ("to your faces")
how much she ("and my Henry") resented the arrival of "another
yuppie clan" in what "used to be a real neighborhood."
Pg. 20
This past summer, his music wandered toward the house, approached
my living room, knocked politely on the glass: Let me
in. I didn't, couldn't - I never open the
windows, never - but still I could hear it murmuring, pleading: Let me in. Let me in!
Pg. 21
None of these people were my friends; most of them I'd
not met more than once or twice. Urban life, I suppose.
Pg. 21
She pressed my knee to the floor. "You're not paying me to go easy on
you."
I winced. "Can I pay you to leave?"
Bina visits once a week to help me hate life, as I like
to say.
Pg. 22
"Half the guys on these apps are using 5 year old
photos," she'll complain, her waterfall of hair poured over one shoulder,
"and the other half are married. And the other half are single for a
reason."
That's three halves, but you don't debate math with someone
who's rotating your spine.
Pg. 22
"I've never seen a black and white movie."
I make full moons of my eyes. "You're in for a
treat. All the best movies are black and white."
He looks doubtful...
Pg. 44
A strip of text at the bottom of the screen reports
that Granny Lizzie is typing. I wait a moment, then another; either she's
whipping up a long message or it's a case of senioritis. Both my parents used
to stab at the keyboard with their index fingers, like flamingos picking their
way through the shallows; it took them half a minute to bash Out a hello.
Granny Lizzy: Well, hello there!
Pg. 63
I note the tone, brisk and insistently upbeat; I clock
the language, informal but confident, and the precise punctuation, the
infrequent errors. She's intelligent, outgoing. Thorough, too - she spells out
numbers and writes by the way instead of btw, although maybe that's a function
of age.
Pg. 65
Who knows what goes on in a family? I learned this as a
grad student. "You can spend years with a patient and still they'll
surprise you,"
pg. 98
"I may do some good before I am dead." -
Jude, Part Sixth, chapter 1
Pg. 115
For an instant, and then for a moment, I'm holding my
daughter again - holding her before her first day of school, holding her in the
swimming pool on our vacation in Barbados, clutching her amid the snowfall. Her
heart beating against my own, a beat apart,
Pg. 120
My psychotherapist oath: I must first do no harm. I
will promote healing and well-being and play some others' interests above my
own.
Pg. 148
And then I feel it: the warmth of the living room.
And I smell it: the stale air of my home.
And I hear it: the squeal of the cat.
Pg. 170
"I want all of you at my house. You think I'm
delusional." He flinches. "And
you think I'm lying." Norelli doesn't react. "And he's saying I've
never met a woman I met twice."
Pg. 181
The averted gaze, the leftward glance, the delayed
response, the fidgeting - all the tells of a liar. I knew it before he opened
his mouth.
The clenched jaw, though: that's a sign of something
else. That's a sign of fear.
Pg. 187
Isn't it amazing," Bina says, "how according
to the Internet, some people might as well not exist?"
Pg. 191
I used to log their every activity, my neighbors, used
to chronicle each entrance and exit.
Pg. 197
At the top of the stairs, I take a breath. The air is
stale. David's right: I should ventilate. I won't, but I should.
Pg. 233
The closet door is ajar. Just slightly, but ajar. My
heart stops for an instant. But why should it? It's just an open door. I opened
it myself the other day. For David. ...Except I closed it again. I would have
noticed if I had been left open - because I did just notice it had been left
open. I stand there, wavering like a flame. Do I trust myself?
Pg. 236
I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm doing this.
Pg. 254
So much I haven't seen in so long. So much I haven't
felt, haven't heard, haven't smelled -
Pg. 256
When I emerge, scrubbed, shampooed, my skin feels new.
Pg. 350
I've been resisting Ed and Livy. Not all the time, not
fully; some nights, when I hear them, I murmur back. But the conversations are
over.
Pg. 425
