“...even the most independent people sometimes needed help. And if I'd learned nothing else from my life thus far, it was that you don't always end up where you think you're going.”
“I snorted "oh, beauty. What's that good for?"
Mary stared, her eyes round.
"It won you the prince, did it not?"
I snorted again, I prefer to think that he was captivated by my charming personality." I giggled to let Mary know I was trying to make fun of myself.”
“And yet, I felt a surge of exhilaration just thinking about that night. Not just because I'd met the prince and fallen in love and started on my course toward happiness ever after, but because I'd made something happen. I'd done something everybody had told me I couldn't. I'd changed my life all by myself. Having a fairy godmother would have ruined everything.”
“I have been thinking--"
He chuckled.
"Always a dangerous thing for a woman to do," he said.”
“Why did everyone like that story so much when it wasn't true? Why was everyone so eager to believe it? Was it because, in real life, ever after's generally stink?”
“Şimdi benden de güce ya da kendi kararımı verme hakkına sahip olmasızın yalnızca bir öpücük veya tatlı bir fısıltıyla sevişip, kadınlarla erkeklerin yatak odalarında yaptıkları diğer tüm şeyleri yaparak ikna gücümü kullanmam mı isteniyordu? Maalesef bunu düşünmek bile midemi bulandırıyordu.
(syf. 50)”
“People would rather believe in fairy godmothers and divine intervention than to think that you took charge of your own destiny.”
“Love is a wonderous thing. It moves mountains and stills a baby's cries. It beats inside every human's heart, yet is more precious than gold. It cannot be bought or sold or stolen. It keeps us alive.”
“Kaderimi değiştirmiştim. Bana yapamayacağımı söyledikleri şeyi yapmayı başarmıştım. Kendi hayatımı kendi kendime değiştirmiştim. Bir iyilik perisi her şeyi değiştirebilirdi.
(syf. 64 – 65)”
“Sence aşk nedir?” diye sordum Jed’e.
Dalıp gidiverdi.
“Aşk olağanüstü bir şeydir. Dağları yerinden oynatır; bir bebeğin çığlıklarını dindirir. Her insanın kalbinde bir yerlerde saklıdır. Faka altından da kıymetlidir. Satın alınamaz, satılamaz ya da çalınamaz. Yaşam kaynağımızdır.”
(syf. 107)”
“… hanımların görevi nahoş durumlardan uzak durmaktır. Böylelikle ruhlarımız – ve alnımız – hüznün kiriyle kararmaz. Kadınlar çiçekler kadar narindirler, dünyaya renk ve güzellik katmak için var olurlar. Can sıkıcı konularla uğraşmak erkeklerin görevidir.
(syf. 23 – 24)”
“You always believed we could survive in the outside world. I'm doing everything I can to give at least some of us a chance of not only surviving but truly living.”
“As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.”
“Cette recommandation (Aime ton prochain comme toi-même) paraît, à première vue, irréprochable mais à voir ce que la plupart des gens font de leur vie, à voir ce qu'ils font de leur intelligence, je n'ai pas envie qu'ils m'aiment comme eux-mêmes.”
“Japan
Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.
It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.
I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.
I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.
I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.
And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.
It’s the one about the one-ton
temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,
and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.
When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.
When I say it into the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.
And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,
and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.”
“But what was so great about marriage? I had been married and married. It had its good points, but it also had its bad. The virtues of marriage were mostly negative virtues. Being unmarried in a man's world was such a hassle that anything had to be better. Marriage was better. But not much. Damned clever, I thought, how men had made life so intolerable for single women that most would gladly embrace even bad marriages instead. Almost anything had to be an improvement on hustling for your own keep at some low-paid job and fighting off unattractive men in your spare time while desperately trying to ferret out the attractive ones. Though I've no doubt that being single is just as lonely for a man, it doesn't have the added extra wallop of being downright dangerous, and it doesn't automatically imply poverty and the unquestioned status of a social pariah.
Would most women get married if they knew what it meant? I think of young women following their husbands wherever their husbands follow their jobs. I think of them suddenly finding themselves miles away from friends and family, I think of them living in places where they can't work, where they can't speak the language. I think of them making babies out of their loneliness and boredom and not knowing why. I think of their men always harried and exhausted from being on the make. I think of them seeing each other less after marriage than before. I think of them falling into bed too exhausted to screw. I think of them farther apart in the first year of marriage than they ever imagined two people could be when they were courting. And then I think of the fantasies starting. He is eyeing the fourteen-year-old postnymphets in bikinis. She covets the TV repairman. The baby gets sick and she makes it with the pediatrician. He is fucking his masochistic little secretary who reads Cosmopolitan and things herself a swinger. Not: when did it all go wrong? But: when was it ever right?
.......
I know some good marriages. Second marriages mostly. Marriages where both people have outgrown the bullshit of me-Tarzan, you-Jane and are just trying to get through their days by helping each other, being good to each other, doing the chores as they come up and not worrying too much about who does what. Some men reach that delightfully relaxed state of affairs about age forty or after a couple of divorces. Maybe marriages are best in middle age. When all the nonsense falls away and you realize you have to love one another because you're going to die anyway.”
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