“And then sometimes, rarely, in the middle of the night, he’d be sweet. Pulling me into his lap, kissing me, caressing me. Letting me fly but anchoring me with his eyes. Speaking words he’d never dare say in the light of day.”
“That was the funny thing about smiles--if you flashed the right one, no one knew there was more going on inside.”
“His weakness was me. He wanted me and he hated that maybe as much as I hated him.”
“I don’t know, Reeve. Because you do a lot of talking, and all I hear are mixed messages.”
“I’m unmixing them now. Listen. This is the one I want you to hear.”
“Why can’t we worry about each other?”
“The only thing shittier than the way men treated a pretty woman was the way women did.”
“It was a kiss that took—took my desire, took my passion, took my will.”
“Even in my thoughts, he watched me.”
“A flood of inadequacy poured over me, a feeling of I-don’t-belong, but if not here, then where? The room began to close in around me, blanketing me with acute heaviness.”
“I can’t figure you out, Emily.” His words were tight yet even. “I don’t know if I like you or if I just want to fuck you.”
“I understood exactly what it was to want to change. To try to change. To find it impossible.”
“I’m an awful host,” he said eventually. “I should tell you to make yourself at home, but all I care about is making myself at home inside you.”
“He had so much control over me, so much power to have me this close to destruction so quickly. I was exposed. Raw and vulnerable. Caught off guard by how easily he annihilated me each and every time. It scared me.”
“Now the door was open. Now one of us just had to walk through it.”
“I’m trying. I’m going to keep trying with you.”
“He’s a rich, powerful man. Rich, powerful men get away with things all the time. It’s the law of capitalism. It’s especially an issue when those rich, powerful men have ties to men who are richer and more powerful.”
“No,” I told him. “You tell me what I want. That’s what I want.”
“I was here because this was who I was—a strong, independent woman with distinct wants and needs that were only met when I submitted to a man.”
“A glance at his crotch gave me the slightest smidgeon of satisfaction. He was unmistakably hard. He might be punishing me, but he was punishing himself too.”
“He was always rough. Always raw. He fucked me however he wanted.”
“all I hear are mixed messages.” “I’m unmixing them now. Listen. This is the one I want you to hear.”
“There were at least a couple thousand people in front of me—all of them trying to show that they weren’t ugly too. A flood of inadequacy poured over me, a feeling of I-don’t-belong, but if not here, then where?”
“I want you to fuck me!” The words tumbled out. “Hard.”
“Besides, I don’t think that’s something you’d want to hear from your lover.” “Lover?”
“On the bed?” “No. Against the window. From behind. I want you to strip me and press me hard to the glass. So it will feel like anyone can see. And anyone who does will know that I’m special because I’m the one you’re fucking.”
“They were here for the attention and material gain. They were shells waiting to be filled with a man’s desires, blank screens projecting someone else’s wants.”
“And what exactly was it he was saying? That he wanted to take me into his bed? That he wanted to scare me and possibly hurt me and I was supposed to be okay with that?”
“Having them finally touched, finally fondled and caressed, was more erotic than I’d imagined. More pleasurable than I wanted it to be. I decided I would die if he ever stopped. God, how I needed him to stop.”
“What do you want? How do you want it? I never felt like I had a good answer. For the first time, I realized why. Because what I wanted was to not be asked the question.”
“They loved believing they’d affected a woman so much that she was reduced to communicating through gasps and groans.”
“Love just enough. What's enough? Enough to hold. When it hurts, you're loving too much. Just enough to hold. Anything more than a handful and you're in trouble.”
“In many ways, the partition of India was the inevitable result of three centuries of Britain’s divide-and-rule policy. As the events of the Indian Revolt demonstrated, the British believed that the best way to curb nationalist sentiment was to classify the indigenous population not as Indians, but as Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, etc. The categorization and separation of native peoples was a common tactic for maintaining colonial control over territories whose national boundaries had been arbitrarily drawn with little consideration for the ethnic, cultural, or religious makeup of the local inhabitants. The French went to great lengths to cultivate class divisions in Algeria, the Belgians promoted tribal factionalism in Rwanda, and the British fostered sectarian schisms in Iraq, all in a futile attempt to minimize nationalist tendencies and stymie united calls for independence. No wonder, then, that when the colonialists were finally expelled from these manufactured states, they left behind not only economic and political turmoil, but deeply divided populations with little common ground on which to construct a national identity.”
“Vanish.
Pass into nothingness: the Keats line that frightened her.
Fade as the blue nights fade, go as the brightness goes.
Go back into the blue.
I myself placed her ashes in the wall.
I myself saw the cathedral doors locked at six.
I know what it is I am now experiencing.
I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is.
The fear is not for what is lost.
What is lost is already in the wall.
What is lost is already behind the locked doors.
The fear is for what is still to be lost.
You may see nothing still to be lost.
Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her.”
“the fight is about believing the unbelievable’, and who also believes that ‘life flows through everything’.”
“Todo el mundo tiene demonios. La cuestión es simplemente saber hasta qué punto esos demonios son tolerables.”
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