“Share too much and someone can hurt you.”
“Far too many people opened their hearts and lives at the drop of a hat. Why give someone that power over you? Why endow them with the ability to hurt you that much? Let someone in and you were asking for an emotional kicking some day.”
“When you can't be honest with people, you can't ever relax with them.”
“That's what came from having romance in your soul. You believe in things like love at first sight and perfect presents.”
“I don't want to rely on something that could be taken away at some point.”
“The only thing for it is to use men for sex and never let any of them get so close they could hurt you.”
“Christmas is a time for families.”
“I was in charge. Of it all. All the time. For ever.”
“I sometimes think people can see that I’m defective, that there’s nothing there. Behind the job and clothes and makeup there’s nothing to know. I sometimes think I’m this shell and I can’t work out why people like me. And when I’m with strangers it reminds me of that. That I’m insubstantial.”
“Double-promise for ever and ever, amen?”
“Does he understand now that 'what if?' isn't fair when, under a different set of circumstances, you were asked to polarise things into one moment in time, when you had to defend what you wanted at a completely different moment? Kamryn to Luke”
“If things go wrong, you don't have to accept you made a bum decision.”
“It might not be pleasant for the listener, it might disempower and unsettle the witness to a breakdown, but crying was good. Crying was an acceptable outlet, even if it made you feel raw and empty inside, it was still better than that buildup of resentment that grew from not letting your emotions out.”
“Everything, good or bad, was down to me.”
“(...) És a minha mais melhor amiga (...)”
“That’s what came from having romance in your soul, I suppose. You believed in things like love at first sight and perfect presents.”
“I had no illusions at all that I was beautiful, pretty or even able to attract the right sort of attention from men”
“I could grow to like this man, I realized. I could grow to like him a lot.”
“Crying was an acceptable outlet, even if it made you feel raw and empty inside, it was still better than that build up of resentment that grew from not letting your emotions out.”
“But whoever heard of enchanted bacon anyway?”
“Personal leadership is cultivating the wisdom to recognize our need for renewal and to ensure that each week provides activities that are genuinely re-creational in nature.”
“This was something new. Or something old. I didn’t think of what it might be until after I had let Aubrey go back to the clinic to bed down next to her child. Bankole had given him something to help him sleep. He did the same for her, so I won’t be able to ask her anything more until she wakes up later this morning. I couldn’t help wondering, though, whether these people, with their crosses, had some connection with my current least favorite presidential candidate, Texas Senator Andrew Steele Jarret. It sounds like the sort of thing his people might do—a revival of something nasty out of the past. Did the Ku Klux Klan wear crosses—as well as burn them? The Nazis wore the swastika, which is a kind of cross, but I don’t think they wore it on their chests. There were crosses all over the place during the Inquisition and before that, during the Crusades. So now we have another group that uses crosses and slaughters people. Jarret’s people could be behind it. Jarret insists on being a throwback to some earlier, “simpler” time. Now does not suit him. Religious tolerance does not suit him. The current state of the country does not suit him. He wants to take us all back to some magical time when everyone believed in the same God, worshipped him in the same way, and understood that their safety in the universe depended on completing the same religious rituals and stomping anyone who was different. There was never such a time in this country. But these days when more than half the people in the country can’t read at all, history is just one more vast unknown to them. Jarret supporters have been known, now and then, to form mobs and burn people at the stake for being witches. Witches! In 2032! A witch, in their view, tends to be a Moslem, a Jew, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or, in some parts of the country, a Mormon, a Jehovah’s Witness, or even a Catholic. A witch may also be an atheist, a “cultist,” or a well-to-do eccentric. Well-to-do eccentrics often have no protectors or much that’s worth stealing. And “cultist” is a great catchall term for anyone who fits into no other large category, and yet doesn’t quite match Jarret’s version of Christianity. Jarret’s people have been known to beat or drive out Unitarians, for goodness’ sake. Jarret condemns the burnings, but does so in such mild language that his people are free to hear what they want to hear. As for the beatings, the tarring and feathering, and the destruction of “heathen houses of devil-worship,” he has a simple answer: “Join us! Our doors are open to every nationality, every race! Leave your sinful past behind, and become one of us. Help us to make America great again.”
“I should get points for not saying every dumb thing that pops in my head.”
“Despite the rocky start, I wound up enjoying a beautiful day on the ranch with Marlboro Man and his parents. I didn’t ride a horse--my legs were still shaky from my near-murder of his mother earlier in the day--but I did get to watch Marlboro Man ride his loyal horse Blue as I rode alongside him in a feed truck with one of the cowboys, who gifted me right off the bat with an ice-cold Dr. Pepper. I felt welcome on the ranch that day, felt at home, and before long the memory of my collision with a gravel ditch became but a faint memory--that is, when Marlboro Man wasn’t romantically whispering sweet nothings like “Drive much?” softly into my ear. And when the day of work came to an end, I felt I knew Marlboro Man just a little better.
As the four of us rode away from the pens together, we passed the sad sight of my Toyota Camry resting crookedly in the ditch where it had met its fate. “I’ll run you home, Ree,” Marlboro Man said.
“No, no…just stop here,” I insisted, trying my darnedest to appear strong and independent. “I’ll bet I can get it going.” Everyone in the pickup burst into hysterical laughter. I wouldn’t be driving myself anywhere for a while.”
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