Every tragedy that happens in the world happens to my mother, and this more than anything about her turns my stomach. She worries over people she’s never met who have a spell of bad chance. She cries over news from across the globe. It’s all too much for her, the cruelty of human beings.
Because everyone loves the Dead Girl.
Those words had been the bane of my childhood, a constant reminder that nothing turned out right, not just for me but for anyone, and that’s why someone had invented a saying like that. So we’d all know that we’d never have what we needed.
TV goes to a commercial for air freshener. A woman is spraying air freshener so her family will be happy.
I know the wisdom, that no parents should see their child die, that such an event is like nature spun backward. But it’s the only way to truly keep your child. Kids grow up, they forge more potent allegiances. They find a spouse or a lover. They will not be buried with you. The Keenes, however, will remain the purest form of family. Underground.
I could feel the night hanging on me like a soft, damp bedgown.
Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you?
If I say I don’t want to read the book, I don’t want to read the book.
Frank Curry thinks I’m a soft touch. Might be because I’m a woman. Might be because I’m a soft touch.
My brother slaughtered my family when I was seven. My mom, two sisters, gone: bang bang, chop chop, choke choke.
Women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves... we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side. Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.
People behaved mostly well and then they died.
He killed my soul, which should be a crime. Actually, it is a crime. According to me, at least.
I was never really on my side in any argument. I liked the Old Testament spitefulness of the phrase got what she deserved.
Libby must have marinated in anxious stomach acid for nine months, soaking up all that worry.
He promised to take care of me, and yet I feel afraid. I feel like something is going wrong, very wrong, and that it will get even worse.
Well, a little girl is more likely to trust a person who reminds her of her momma, right?” Depends on what her momma’s like, I thought.
My mother said she was the most popular girl in school, and I believed it. Jackie said she was the meanest, and I believed that, too.
People are strange.
They have no harsh edges with each other, no spiny conflicts, they ride through life like conjoined jellyfish – expanding and contracting instinctively, filling each other’s spaces liquidly.