The best quotes by the author we have brought to you
“Anything could be a weapon. The kids knew it. Dave too. A spatula from a kitchen drawer, a fishing pole, an electric cord. Shelly Knotek would employ all of those – and anything else within her grasp – to beat her girls if she perceived they’d done something wrong. No matter how big. Or how small. When she found a punishment that worked, she looked for ways to make it even more effective, more brutal. The act of beating her children seemed to fuel her and excite her. She seemed to savor the rush of adrenaline that came with being on the attack.” (If You Tell Quotes)
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Enduring their mother was what bound them together. And while they might have had three different dads, they were always 100 percent sisters. Never half sisters.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Eventually fired for good, a stay-at-home Shelly brought no benefits to the new household whatsoever. She didn’t cook. She didn’t clean. All she seemed to like to do was lie around and tell everyone in earshot what they should be doing, though she was never shy about telling others what she deserved, and how they should help her get whatever she wanted.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Every guy knows the moment when he meets the girl. The One. The one who spins him around like a top that turns so quickly it digs deep.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“I loved my mother because I didn’t know I had a choice. I had to love her.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“In time, Tori could see that she was in the middle of a war between her parents. It was a knock-down, drag-out, and she was all but certain to be collateral damage.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“It isn’t a mask that she wears to cover the past but an invisible badge of courage.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“It takes only the mention of a single word to take her back to the unthinkable.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Killing someone is something you never get over,” he said. “Not even for a second. It’s always there.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Lara knew Shelly better than anyone. She’d watched her stepdaughter operate and work things in a way that were at utter odds with the truth. If the sky was blue, Shelly had a way of insisting it was green. She was a master manipulator. This time she wasn’t going to get away with what she’d done.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Lying was like taking a breath to Shelly. Sami could never grasp why her mother felt compelled to lie when saying nothing at all would be a smarter course.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Nikki knew she was in prison. But prison, she decided, had its perks. She was away from her mother’s nasty tirades. She didn’t have to walk on eggshells only to find out she’d nevertheless done something wrong. In a way, she was free. The best part was the massive collection of books her mother stored in the walk-in closet in Nikki’s bedroom.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“No one can help a troubled person who doesn’t think they need it.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“On the outside, Sami was blonde, pretty, popular. She was homecoming-court material. She was smart, and funny too – the kind of girl who got the attention of the boys with a funny quip. Yet by her senior year, Sami was taking a “fuck it” approach to life. She’d grown tired of covering up what her mom had been doing to her and her older sister. She’d learned from Nikki’s experience that not rocking the boat didn’t stop bad things from happening. It only allowed them to continue.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“She loved her sisters more than anything, though she also wondered why her mother saw her so differently, treated her with such hatred.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“She’d done exactly what she’d wanted to do. Making people unhappy was her way of having fun.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Shelly never felt bad about anything. At least not when it came to other people’s feelings. The girls noticed she’d shed a torrent of tears for dead pets, but never for another person.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Shelly thrived on segregating people. The girls from each other. Their father from the girls. Shane, Kathy, and Nikki were isolated from everyone. Putting a wall between people allowed her the opportunity to do whatever she wanted. People were game pieces. Toys to be abused. It didn’t matter who they were.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Shelly, persistent and ever resourceful, always found a way. And once she got the hefty credit line, she immediately went to work at whittling the balance down. She did it in a frenzy too. It was as though spending money had become a drug. Or maybe a replacement for one. Shelly wrote as many as thirty checks a day at stores at the mall in Aberdeen.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Since Shelly Knotek came into his life, Ron’s world was now a black hole of money trouble, legal trouble, and family trouble. And Shelly was right there, stirring the pot, making things worse and worse.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Sometimes hitting the pause button on a life beginning to spiral out of control by moving to a new house can actually reset the situation and make things better. Nikki hoped that would be the case.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“There was no denying Shelly’s beauty. Red hair framed a face with a freckled nose, and her blue eyes had thick lashes like the undulating fringe of a sea anemone. But to Lara, the kind of beauty Shelly possessed was like that of nightshade berries. They appear to be delicious but are actually dangerous.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“To survive Shelly meant avoiding her whenever possible. Even early in their marriage, Dave would retreat from her constant barrage of angry demands. Yes, she could be sweet. Yes, she could be fun. But as time went on, those attributes took a back seat to her uncontrolled anger, a temper that scared him. He knew that something wasn’t right with her. She was off. The screaming. The violent temper. The slamming of the doors until the hinges broke from the wooden frame. All of that. Dave would sit in his truck with a sleeping bag and pillow and ask God what to do.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“Victims of abuse can still love the monster. This ambivalent loyalty might just be the predator’s ultimate form of damage.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“When it came to manifesting anger, Shelly Knotek was a kind of jack-in-the-box. She could be in a dead sleep in the middle of the night, then bolt from bed with an angry scream at one of the girls or Shane. And she was like the villain in a slasher flick. She went zero to sixty, from calm to rage, in less than five seconds.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
“When somebody pushes, pushes, and pushes you into a corner, pretty soon you’re not going to want to be in that corner anymore. People would ask me later why I just didn’t leave. Take the kids and go. You just didn’t do that with Shelly. You can’t. She wouldn’t allow it. She’d hunt you down.”
Gregg Olsen
If You Tell
