The Mere Wife
Quotes from the Book
I read stuff. Books are not my only friends, but we’re friendly. So there.
If you look at the sky that way, it’s this massive shifting poem, or maybe a letter, first written by one author, and then, when the earth moves, annotated by another. So I stare and stare until, one day, I can read it.
Death is the Santa Claus of the adult world. Except Santa Claus in reverse. The guy who takes all the presents away.
I'm dark matter. The universe inside of me is full of something, and science can't even shine a light on it. I feel like I'm mostly made of mysteries.
Because every time someone finds a new animal, or a new amazing thing on earth, it means we haven't broken everything yet.
You hold no horrors for me
I {} you more than [[[{{{}}}]]].
I can't imagine a universe in which I try to unlove her.
Yes, I’m a reader. Kill me. I could tell you I was raised in the library and the books were my only friends, but I didn’t do that, did I? Because I have mercy. I’m neither a genius nor a kid destined to become a wizard. I’m just me. I read stuff. Books are not my only friends, but we’re friendly. So there.
I like the sky. It's rational to me in a way that life isn't.
Did he just say stormsharks? My inner nerd is elated. Can anything I will ever hear from now until the end of time sound cooler than stormsharks?
I don't think of the sky as any kind of heaven item. I think of it as a bunch of gases and faraway echoes of things that used to be on fire.
Life and death aren’t as different from each other as I thought they were. This isn’t like walking into a new country. This is like walking into a new room in the same house. This is like sharing a hallway and the same row of framed family pictures, but there’s a glass wall between.
I know everyone has dreams of flying, but this isn’t a dream of flying. It’s a dream of floating, and the ocean is not water but wind. I call it a dream, but it feels realer than my life.
Looping. Some days are so dark I can't see anything but a miserable fog of number after number, word after word, clouds of verbs and nouns and none of them the ones that will make time go backward.
Even people who've never seen a miracle can believe in miracles.
I think about celestial junk. Like, maybe every planet in this solar system is discarded by giant hands. Each star a crumpled ball of paper, a love letter lit on fire, a smoldering bit of cigarette ash.
And there's the loudest sound I've ever heard and the brightest white I've ever seen, and I'm made of it, I'm- I'm made of light I'm made of heat And I'm flying
My thing is a Mystery and not just a Mystery, but Bermuda--no sun, only Triangle. Unknowable. Unsolvable.
You’ve never seen surprise until you’ve looked into the eyes of an ascending bovine.
It felt like she took off running without me. Her fingers clenched in on mine. Then relaxed, like she'd lost all her bones.
I need to get onto Aza’s ship. I know where it’s going. I think I know, even though all I really know, all I’ve really known since I was five, is that Aza is my universe.
Some days I'm just sixteen, and sixteen isn't what I want to be.
People, alas, don't document things with any kind of precision. They fill Twitter with blurry photos.
Nothing like trouble to make a day pass faster.
Side note: invalid. Whoever invented that word, and made it the same word as not-valid? That person sucked.
I think of the note. I want to say me too. I want to say I know. I want to say I can read the gaps in your sentences. I can read the space between your letters. I know your language. It’s my language too. I want to say that.
The sound coming out of me is nothing like a cough, nothing even in the same category of a song, but some kind of bird of prey roar, shredding my throat, pulsating my fingers, and Milekt beneath it, singing inside my voice, amplifying me, and making me stronger.
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About Maria Dahvana Headley
More by Maria Dahvana Headley
The Mere Wife
The Year of Yes
Book details
- Author
- Maria Dahvana Headley
- Genre
- Fiction
- Goodreads rating
- 3.53 (20k ratings) →
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