Suddenly revenge is so close he can actually taste it. It tastes like steak, rare.
The Wheel of Fortune rotates, fickle as the moon. Soon those who were down will move upwards. And vice versa, of course.
He got his driver’s license, he got his high school diploma, he got his university degree. He got a worried little furrow between his eyes. He did what he thought was expected of him, and brought the official pieces of paper home to her like a cat bringing dead mice. Now it’s as if he’s given up because he doesn’t know what else to bring; he’s run out of ideas.
But I’m ravenous for news, any kind of news; even if it’s false news, it must mean something.
Aunt Vidala said that best friends led to whispering and plotting and keeping secrets, and plotting and secrets led to disobedience to God, and disobedience led to rebellion, and girls who were rebellious became women who were rebellious, and a rebellious woman was even worse than a rebellious man because rebellious men became traitors, but rebellious women became adulteresses.
But if you happen to be a man, sometime in the future, and you’ve made it this far, please remember: you will never be subjected to the temptation of feeling you must forgive, a man, as a woman.
We’re using up the Earth. It’s almost gone. You can’t live with such fears and keep on whistling. The waiting builds up in you like a tide. You start wanting it to be done with. You find yourself saying to the sky, Just do it. Do your worst. Get it over with.
I feel my heart, wave upon wave, salty and red, continuing on and on, marking time.
Being upset is a warmer, close-up feeling, not a chilly distant feeling like laughing at people.
It was always a cruelty to promise them equality,” he said, “since by their nature they can never achieve it. We have already begun the merciful task of lowering their expectations.
Powerful but insecure men don’t take well to rejection. Rage could result.
Torture is like dancing: I’m too old for it. Let the younger ones practice their bravery.
Nothing wrecks your nails like a lethal pandemic plague,” but we did our nails anyway.
Things, the word she used when whatever it stood for was too distasteful or filthy or horrible to pass her lips. A successful life for her was one that avoided things, excluded things. Such things do not happen to nice women.
Which way will the cat jump?
I shouldn’t have taken a vow of silence, I told myself. What did I want? Nothing much. Just a memorial. But what is a memorial, when you come right down to it, but a commemoration of wounds endured? Endured, and resented. Without memory, there can be no revenge.
What is it about winter that causes people to drive as if their hands are feet?
Such a cruel thing, memory. We can’t remember what it is that we’ve forgotten. That we have been made to forget. That we’ve had to forget, in order to pretend to live here in a normal way.
She was a more charitable person than I was; I admired her in that, but I could not emulate her.
For the heart was both key and lock, and he who could master the hearts of men and learn their secrets was well on the way to mastering the Fates and controlling the thread of his own destiny.