Great Big Beautiful Life

“He was the one who built the House of Ives as the world knows it. But I’ve always thought of him as the beginning of the end. The stepping stone that decided the entire path. The first domino that tipped. The one who, for better or worse, set every moment of my life into motion.”

“It’s just that somehow, almost everything you say makes me want to kiss you.”

“She lies to me too. For whatever it’s worth, Margaret Ives isn’t telling me the truth.”

“I feel like you’re mine. Like you’re mine in a way no one else ever has been.”

“Don’t try to talk me out of it, Alice. Every time we try to protect each other, all it does is cost us more time together, and I’m not willing to lose any more. I want to be with you. Nothing else is going to matter to me more than that. Not at the end of my life. Not even now. Nothing will matter more than who I spent my time with, and I want it to be you. I need it to be you.”

“That’s what my family used to make themselves very rich—and like Dove Franklin says, powerful too. But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Even if you’re the one to build the monster, you’re never going to be able to control it. It’ll gladly eat you alive and floss with your bones, once it’s finished with everyone else.”

“But this is who I am, and even if you don’t understand it, couldn’t you just pretend for a few days a year that you respect me? That you like me? Because I can’t figure out how to be anyone else, and it’s lonely, it’s so fucking lonely being the person who doesn’t belong in this family.”

“I think she loves me because I’m her daughter. But I’ve never felt sure she loves me because I’m me. Does that make sense?”

“Every bad thing that every perfect stranger said about him mattered. Because he wasn’t used to discounting it. He was used to people’s opinions of him having been formed by…well, him. His actions and intentions, their personal experience with him.”

“Because then, suddenly, they’re incredibly proud, but they’re proud of the accomplishment, not of the work. So you feel like you have to keep accomplishing instead of just creating. It affirms the idea that the value in what you do is how people react to it, and not just in the making of it. I’ve written stuff I’m really proud of that hardly anyone read. I’ve written stuff I’m proud of that no one liked. That doesn’t mean it didn’t deserve to be written.”

“It feels like you’ve lived their whole life with them. And I just can’t help but think, we’re not supposed to know how it all ends, this early. It’s too much of a burden.”

“Well, if you’d like, I can get you my mom’s phone number and the two of you can compare notes about all the more impressive jobs I could’ve had, and then I can reach out to your dad and let him know I agree you should’ve played basketball in high school.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound like a robot learning to love.”

“I understood what really mattered. I understood my priorities. I understood what, in this life, was nonnegotiable for me. A lot of people don’t find that out until it’s too late. They wait to say things, and they don’t get the chance. So collecting other people’s stories, learning from their mistakes, it is a gift too. You are who you are right now in part because of what you did for Len and his family. You can’t control any of that other stuff you worry about, but you can control what you do.”

“Don’t say that. I want you in my business. I’m inviting you into my business.”

“I wanted to punish them, honestly, but I couldn’t figure out any way to do it. The best I could come up with was giving them more spectacle, feeding their unquenchable thirst for drama. They wanted a madwoman, and that’s what I was. I ripped up our gardens and left all the flowers in trash cans at the gate. I left the house barefoot, and chopped off my hair with a pair of kitchen scissors. I wore the same dress I’d worn to our wedding to the burial, and I relished every headline about my deranged behavior, because at least it seemed like proof that I had some control over who they said I was. After a couple of weeks, that stopped soothing the ache and all I wanted was to be alone. To feel my pain completely, without interruption. I sent my mother home, paid the staff, and let them go.”

“Sad for Peggy. That was my favorite song on the album. ‘Peggy All the Time.’ And I don’t know, I just knew it had to be true. That you couldn’t write a love song like that if you hadn’t found a once-in-a-lifetime love. And I didn’t want her to have lost the person who gave her that.”

“You know, my mother was ahead of her time. The kind of woman who wanted to have it all. She knew she deserved it too. But the problem is, once you love someone, you can’t have it all anymore. Love comes with sacrifice. That’s how it works.”