He was born to be lonely, that’s what he knew for certain.
To me, all that urgent hopefulness was more frightening than if I’d found a pile of skulls with hair still attached.
No parents should see their child die, that such an event is like nature spun backward.
Things might not be great, but things would be okay.
People whispered comfort about Marian being called back to heaven, but my mother would not be distracted from her grief. To this day it remains a hobby.
I had that overwhelming feeling I get when I’m about to give up on a plan, that big rush of air when I realize that my stroke of genius has flaws, and I don’t have the brains or energy to fix them.
Millions of dollars later, and neither of them were happy. Money is wasted on the rich.
What can I say about a man who knows how I think and still sleeps next to me with the lights off?
She has never told me she loved me, and I never assumed she did.
I remember at one point starting a goofy story about a childhood field trip here, and I saw her eyes go blank, and I got secretly furious, spent ten minutes just winding myself up – because at this point of our marriage, I was so used to being angry with her, it felt almost enjoyable, like gnawing on a cuticle: You know you should stop, that it doesn’t really feel as good as you think, but you can’t quit grinding away.
Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects, Camille.
I would never steer a fellow sufferer from the relief of a blackout.
That’s the way plants down here work: The Mexicans get the shittiest, most dangerous jobs, and the whites still complain.
I DIDN’T STOP giving hand jobs because I wasn’t good at it. I stopped giving hand jobs because I was the best at it. For three years, I gave the best hand job in the tristate area. The key is to not overthink it. If you start worrying about technique, if you begin analyzing rhythm and pressure, you lose the essential nature of the act. You have to mentally prepare beforehand, and then you have to stop thinking and trust your body to take over. Basically, it’s like a golf swing.
Sometimes that’s what happens. No cigarette burns, no bone snaps. Just an irretrievable slipping.
It infects you. It ruined me.
They were women not strong enough or smart enough to leave. Women without imagination. So they stayed in Wind Gap and played their teenage lives on an endless loop.
Worries find you easily enough without inviting them. With Diane, worries were almost physical beings, leechy creatures with latchhooks for fingers, meant to be vanquished immediately. Diane didn’t worry, that was for less hearty women.
She was clearly rich. Her handbag was too plain to be anything but incredibly expensive.
I really wanted the book to make money, in an obsessive childish way – that feeling that if I wanted it enough, it should happen. It should happen.