- “Anaesthesia, that’s one technique: if it hurts invent a different pain.” (8)
- “Have a beer.” (23)
- “Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.” (25)
- “I believe that an unborn baby has its eyes open and can look out through the walls of the mother’s stomach, like a frog in a jar.” (28)
- Mockingbird Hill. (31)
- “I had no idea what I would do with the power once I got it, if I turned out like the others with power I would have been evil.” (33)
- He means baseball, he’s a fan. (35)
- “Here everything echoes.” (37)
- “I’m trying to decide whether or not I love him.” (39)
- “I’m fond of him, I’d rather have him around than not; though it would be nice if he meant something more to me.” (39)
- “Maybe that was why I failed, because I didn’t know what I had to let go of.” (44)
- “I have to behave as though it doesn’t exist, because for me it can’t, it was taken away from me, exported, deported.” (45)
- “Everything I value about him seems to be physical: the rest is either unknown, disagreeable or ridiculous.” (54)
- “Perhaps it’s not only his body I like, perhaps it’s his failure; that also has a kind of purity.” (54)
- “I believe in them the way other people believe in God: I can’t see them but I know they are there.” (61)
- “There were only two things you could be, a winner or a loser.” (68)
- “Being socially retarded is like being mentally retarded, it arouses in others disgust and pity and the desire to torment and reform.” (69)
- “I have to be more careful about my memories. I have to be sure they’re my own and not the memories of other people telling me how I felt, how I acted, what I said: if the events are wrong the feelings I remember about them will be wrong too, I’ll start inventing them and there will be no way of correcting it, the ones who could help are gone.” (70)
- Fear has a smell, as love does. (77)
- Love is taking precautions. -79.
- It’s like death, I thought, the bad part isn’t the thing itself but being a witness… But I never say anything. – 82.
- It never occurred to me till now that they must have hated us. – 86.
- “I do,” I said. “I do give a shit about you…” … I wondered if that was the equivalent of saying I loved him. -87.
- “I know it’s tough,” he said, “but it’s better this way.” – 88.
- Once people believed the flight of birds was a portent; augury. -93.
- He didn’t love me, it was an idea of himself he loved and he wanted someone to join him, anyone would do, I didn’t matter so I didn’t have to care. – 111.
- I should have buried it. -119.
- It used to be good, then I started to really love him and he can’t stand that, he can’t stand having me love him. -124.
- Perhaps that was the only time there could be anything like love, when he was asleep, demanding nothing. – 125.
- This is the wrong room. -126.
- You said it would be here. – 128.
- The innocents get slaughtered because they exist. -128/129.
- It would have been different in those countries where an animal is the soul of an ancestor or the child of a god, at least they would have felt guilt. – 129.
- But they’d killed the heron anyway. -130.
- If you look like them and talk like them and think like them then you are them. – 130.
- How did we get bad. – 130.
- It was like cutting up a tapeworm, the pieces grew. -130.
- Leave no traces. -130.
- Though children think everything is alive. – 131.
- Because of my fear they were killed. -132.
- I didn’t like them but distaste excused nothing. -132.
- Les soldes- sellouts. -133.
- I needed to finish, I had never finished anything. – 134.
- The last time. – 135.
- I recognized that menacing gentleness, at school it always went before the trick, the punchline. – 136.
- Token resistance. -136.
- The only defense was flight, invisibility. -136.
- Indrawn breaths rasping. -137.
- We are the ones that don’t know how to love, there is something essential missing in us, we were born that way. -138.
- Or perhaps we are normal and the ones who can love are freaks, they have an extra organ, like the vestigial eye in the foreheads of amphibians they’ve never found the use for. -138.
- But she loves you… Bullshit… She loves you. -138/139.
- Their signs marked the sacred places, the places where you could learn the truth. -146.
- I didn’t love him… He didn’t belong here. But he existed, he deserved to be alive. -147.
- He wanted me to lie down on the ground. -147.
- I didn’t want him in me. -148.
- Don’t… I don’t want you to. -148.
- For him I could have been anyone but for me he was unique. -149/150
- He didn’t want our relationship to influence anything; it was to be kept separate from life. -150.
- They didn’t want them spreading or changing into anything else. – 151.
- You’re interfering. -152.
- He’s not so noble. -153.
- Maybe they love eachother. It would be logical, they were the ones that could. -153.
- I’m not going to sit up and beg for a little third-rate cold tail. -154.
- I respect you for it, I really do… I knew he was lying. -154.
- They know everything about each other, I though, that’s why they’re so sad; but Anna was more than sad, she was desperate, her body her only weapon and she was fighting for her life, he was her life, her life was the fight: she was fighting him because if she ever surrendered the balance of power would be broken and he would go elsewhere. To continue the war. -155.
- She hates men. -155.
- Maybe it was true. I leafed through all the men I had known to see whether or not I hated them.- 155.
- We cannot approach them directly. -157.
- I could look. -159.
- When the heartline and the headline are one, Anna told us, you are either a criminal, an idiot or a saint. -160.
- They think I should be filled with death, I should be in mourning. But nothing has died, everything is alive, everything is waiting to become alive.- 160.
- The sunset was read, a clean tulip color paling to flesh webs, membrane. -163.
- Leaves overlapping leaves. -163.
- Double thump, clutched heartbeat. -164.
- I love you. -165.
- I’m grateful to him, he’s given me the part of himself I needed. -165.
- This time I won’t let them. -165.
- He still doesn’t understand, he thinks he has won. -167.
- Saving the world, everyone wants to; men think they can do it with guns, women with their bodies, love conquers all, conquerors love all, mirages raised by words. -168.
- She is locked in, she isn’t allowed to eat or shit or cry or give birth, nothing goes in, nothing comes out. -169.
- She is not bored, she has no other interests. -169.
- I ferry it secure between death and life, I multiply. -172.
- A half-remembered face in a high-school year book..- 172.
- I’m through pretending. -173.
- Almost like love. -173.
- I am by myself; this is what I wanted, to stay here alone. From any rational point of view I am absurd; but there are no longer any rational points of view. -173.
- It was ill will. -174.
- Cold comfort but comfort, death is logical, there’s always a motive. -174.
- Sun gone, sky darkening, it was rain later. -174.
- Approaching but never striking. -175.
- I’ve succeeded. -175.
- My fingers are empty as gloves, eyes ordinary, nothing guides me. -175.
- Sleep descents over my face, black oblong, dreamless. -176.
- I’m crying finally, it’s the first time, I watch myself doing it: I’m crouching down beside the lettuces, flowers finished now, gone to seed, my breath knots, my body tightens against it; the water fills my mouth, fish taste…” -176.
- Why did you? They chose it, they had control over their death, they decided it was time to leave and they left, they set up this barrier. They didn’t consider how I would feel, who would take care of me-176.
- But nothing happens. -177.
- I can make them come out, from wherever it is they are hiding. -177.
- Deep gray, the clouds descending, closing in. – 177.
- I am afraid to take off my clothes. -178.
- Smell of loss; irrecoverable. -178.
- I willed it. -178.
- Logic is a wall, I built it, on the other side is terror. -179.
- I hear breathing, withheld, observant, not in the house but all around it. -179.
- I think it might have been a dream, the kind that creates the illusion of being awake. -180.
- The air smells of earth, midsummer. -181.
- Everything from history must be eliminated…-181.
- The house shuts with a click behind me. -182.
- It sees me but it ignores me, accepts me as part of the land. -183.
- I’m not strong enough yet. -183.
- I must resist the fence, I’m too close now to turn back. -186.
- I’lll save it until I’m immune, ready..- 186.
- If I blink she will vanish. -188.
- They can’t be trusted. -189.
- He wouldn’t help me, he would be on their side..-190.
- Perhaps they think I drowned myself, that would be the kind of blunder they would make. -190.
- They’re here because I wouldn’t sell. -190.
- Nothing is on my side, not even the sun. -191.
- That is the way they are, they will not let you have peace, they don’t want you to have anything they don’t have themselves. -192.
- It’s not my father. It is what my father saw, the thing you meet when you’ve stayed here too long alone. -193.
- I knew he wasn’t dead. -193.
- The rules are over. -194.
- Did I do that? -194.
- I can’t stay here forever. -195.
- They are out of reach now, they belong to themselves, more than ever. -196.
- To have someone to speak to and words that can be understood: their definition of sanity. -196.
- This above all, to refuse to be a victim. Unless I can do that I can do nothing. -197.
- If I die it dies; if I starve it starves with me. -198.
- I watch him, my love for him useless as a third eye or a possibility. -198.
- To trust is to let go. -198.
- His voice is annoyed: he won’t wait much longer. But right now he waits. -199.
- The lake is quiet, the trees surround me, asking and giving nothing. -199.
jul 25 2012 ∞
dec 23 2013 +
dec 23 2013 +