Rose Madder

The concept of dreaming is known to the waking mind but to the dreamer there is no waking, no real world, no sanity; there is only the screaming bedlam of sleep.

It's best to be ruthless with the past.

It ain't the blows we're dealt that matter, but the ones we survive.

She isn't a big deal, of course, except to the people who matter in her life, but since these are the only ones she cares about, that's fine.

But she stayed where she was a moment longer, like an animal which has been kept in a cage so long it cannot believe in freedom even when it is offered.

In that instant she knew what it must feel like to cross a river into a foreign country, and then set fire to the bridge behind you, and stand on the riverbank, watching and breathing deeply as your only chance of retreat went up in smoke.

And so thinking, she slipped not into sleep, but into that umbilical cord which connects sleeping and waking.

She looked at the kids, who did not see [them] because they were past the age of twenty-five...

Si está en San Francisco la seguiré allí. Si está en Tokyo la seguiré allí. Y si está en el infierno la seguiré allí. ¿Por qué no?. Allí es donde acabaremos de todas formas y probablemente juntos.

¡Te voy a matar! Y, te lo aseguro, si Dios me lo permite, te mataré dos veces.

It’s best to be ruthless with the past. It ain’t the blows we’re dealt that matter, but the ones we survive.

As his arms went around her, she wondered how much of the human race understood about hugging- how good it was, and how a person could want to do it for hours on end. She supposed some did understand, but doubted that they were in the majority. To fully understand about hugging, maybe you had to have missed a lot of it.

To fully understand about hugging, maybe you had to have missed a lot of it.

It is only a deep echo, perhaps a reverberation of her husband’s madness, as soft as a rustle of batwings in a cave.

This man saw women like her all the time, women hiding behind dark glasses, women buying tickets to different timezones, women who looked as if they had forgotten who they were somewhere along the way, and what they thought they were doing, and why.

when you’re sitting in a corner with your hair stuck in strings to your sweaty cheeks and it feels as if you’ve swallowed a hot stone—

Oh, who would be so foolish as to do that? Only someone who didn’t know him, of course—someone who didn’t know him the way she knew him.

No es fantástica, por supuesto, salvo para la gente importante en su vida, pero puesto que estas personas son las únicas que le preocupan, no pasa nada.

- [...] A verdade nua e crua é que um sonho mau é melhor que um despertar mau. - É. Acho que isso é tão simples que as pessoas nem notam.