“Come hell or high water, I will separate you from your man-business. I don't care how, or if you kill me. If it means me, dead, holding your junk, I'll take your junk. Got that?”
“The thing is, Iris, I've never liked the idea of compromise. In films and in stories people who love each other — really love each other — make horrendous sacrifices. They give kidneys they move across the world they die. Or become the undead because you know I like that sort of book. Basically the heroine's lover calls and she answers. Which is stupid. You know why ”
Iris shook her head.
“Because he's always fucking calling.”
“I swear to the gods that if you answer one more of my questions with a question, I am going to go all Tyson and bite your damned ear off...”
“They were paragons of conservative propriety in public, but in private they swung like pinatas.”
“If I pee my pants I am going to be so pissed.”
“Did you take your sassy pills tonight, Jules?”
“Seriously, Jane. I will cut a bitch.”
“Where did you even learn that expression? Have you been watching RuPaul’s Drag Race again?”
“Ryu was being more than a little dramatic, but drama and Ryu went together like cheese and… Well, cheese goes with everything.”
“Besides, there’s no issue. Not yet, at least. Ryu’s in Boston; I’m in Rockabill; Anyan is in absentia. So I’ll just keep ignoring everything till I get walloped with it. Then I’ll panic and run to you.”
“Somewhere squidgy. Your belly, maybe?”
“I can’t believe you called my belly ‘squidgy.’ It’s not squidgy, it’s pillowy. And sexy!”
“I wanted to pull out his toenails and poke them in his eyeballs.”
“I was with you right up until you said, ‘Bring the pain.’ I’ve only ever brought cookies, or the occasional casserole.”
“I just think you should concentrate more on what you are good at, and the strengths you already have, instead of worrying about changing yourself into something you’re not.”
“Where do we find allies?"
Father Yarvi smiled. "Among our enemies, where else?”
“No man or woman likes to be a fool, but here's the thing my mother taught me long ago, and it is a lesson that stuck. You can spend hours speculating on a man's motivations, trying to pinpoint what clue you missed, what missteps you made, when the relationship turned, or why he didn't like you as much as you thought he did. And you could sit around like a fool letting someone else hold court in your mind when you were hardly a blip on his radar. Or you can just let it go and look at the person in the rearview mirror and keep driving.
To be honest, my mother never had to have this talk with me. I was too private to share my youthful heartbreak publicly. But I remember once as a teenager watching my mother nurse Aunt Martie after a particularly brutal breakup. [...] My mother, finally, at her wits' end, grabbed Aunt Martie by the shoulders, shook her violently, and said, "The sexual revolution didn't happen so you could sit by the phone sobbing like some stupid little girl. Enough. Fucking pull yourself together. He's just one guy."
Maybe that was the part that always stuck. I never wanted my mother to look at me with such horrified disrespect.”
“They were full of mysteries and secrets, like... like poems turned into landscapes."
"'Poems turned into landscapes.'" he murmured with a slight smile. "And what of Vestenveld's gardens? Do you see poems in them?"
"Your gardens are like your country's poetry. Very frilly and organized.”
“Los líderes son vulnerables, no controladores, y nos llevan a un lugar nuevo, no a la seguridad barata, rápida y sumisa.”
“Good sex isn’t complete without cuddling and aftercare.
Women instinctively know this. Men, if they’re smart, figure it out.”
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