Quotes from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“And even if Amina didn't yet know what it was to love like that, to burn until your spine has no choice but to try to wind itself around an empty shirt, she understood for sure that the people who said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all were a bunch of dicks.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Nobody likes these things life hands us. But part of becoming a man is understanding how to face them head on instead of running all the time. It's time you learned how to do that.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Why do fathers look ungainly in their daughter's bedrooms? Like mythical beasts wandered in from the forest of another world?”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Weddings are about fantasies—you understand? Your job is to photograph the fantasy, not the reality. Never the reality. If I ever see another picture like that, you’re fired.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“There are small blessings, tiny ones that come unbidden and make the hard day one sigh lighter.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“The commodification of beauty is an economic trap designed to enslave the modern woman.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Like many people whose lives had formed around a particularly painful incident, she had grown used to providing ellipses around the event of her brother's death to keep conversations comfortable. At some point the subconscious logic of this had spread to the rest of her life so that she rarely talked about things she had been deeply affected by. It wasn't hard to do.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Of course he had a female following. Was there anything college girls found sexier than being told what to think?”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Oh," she said, covering her face with her hand. It was not an oh of disappointment or an oh of surprise but an oh that Amina had never heard before, scraped raw with an emotion Amina would not know herself until years later, when she understood what it was to long for someone, to ache for their smell and taste on you, to imagine the weight of their hips pinning yours so precisely that you crane up to meet your own invisible desire. She watched as Paige crossed Akhil's room, undistracted by all the usual things that stopped people- the Greats, his desk, the leather jacket hanging from his chair- and moved straight for his hamper, which she opened up, pulling out a forgotten T-shirt and crushing it into her face. "Oh,", she said again, muffled. Oh. And even if Amina didn't yet know what it was to love like that, to burn until your spine has no choice but to try to wind itself around an empty shirt, she understood for sure that the people who said it was better to have loved and lost than never to to have loved at all were a bunch of dicks.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Amina would not know herself until years later, when she understood what it was to long for someone, to ache for their smell and taste on you, to imagine the weight of their hips pinning yours so precisely that you crane up to meet your own invisible desire”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“What are you girls, if not my very own heart growing up once and for all?”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“He’s fine,” Kamala said. “It’s not like that. You’re not listening.” “I am listening! You just told me he’s delusional, and I’m asking—” “I DID NOT SAY HE IS DELUSIONAL. I SAID HE WAS TALKING TO HIS MOTHER.” “Who is dead,” Amina said gently. “Obvious.” “And that’s not delusional?”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“I mean, if you’re really plunging—you said plunging, right?—into this book, then tethering yourself to every single guidepost along the way isn’t really going to make that happen.” Mr. Tipton’s mirth was palpable. “So you think critical reading is a useless activity? That your classmates are just, what, not experiencing the book?” “I think the best way to experience this book is to let it happen to you and think about what it all means later.” “Later when?” “Later when you’re a high school English teacher.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Kicked out for what?" Amina asked, and Dimple smiled like she'd won the $25,000 question.
"Atheism."
A small murmur went up in the room, followed by a few nervous glances. While everyone knew better than to actually believe in God, the outright denial of one seemed dangerous and possibly gauche”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“A collection of takeout boxes slumped together like old men in bad weather.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“The band in the ballroom announced the cover of a special request, and after a pause, the woman's voice sang out the breathy first line of Etta James's "At Last." Chairs barked as guests rose to greet the champion of all wedding songs, the one that always brought indifferent or fighting or estranged couples to the dance floor for momentary reconciliation.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Why is it that fathers so often ensure the outcome they are trying to avoid? Is their need to dominate so much stronger than their instinct to protect? Did Thomas know, Amina wondered as she watched him, that he had just done the human equivalent of a lion sinking his teeth into his own cub?”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Cooking was a talent of her mother's that Amina often thought of as an evolutionary way for Kamala to survive herself with friendships intact. Like plumage that expanded to rainbow an otherwise unremarkable bird, Kamala's ability to transform raw ingredients into sumptuous meals brought her the kind of love her personality on its own might have repelled.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Gina Rodgers raised her hand, triggering a class-wide bristle. Everyone wanted to impress Mr. Tipton, but it was Gina who always raised her hand first, like he was going to fall in love with her for her 4.3 GPA or something.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Mindy Lujan with her feathered hair, bullying blue-lined eyes, and potty mouth that rivaled Akhil's, managing to use fuck as a verb, an adjective, and a noun, often in the same sentence, as in, "Who the fuck does that fucking fuck think she's fucking with?”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Was it always this way? Did everyone from high school end up looking like weird facsimiles of other people's parents?”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“She shuddered. Pee talkers baffled her. How could they do that? Give you no opportunity to not listen?”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Thomas sniffed. “Don’t let’s start with all that.” “I am not starting anything! You yourself started this business!” “Enough, Kam. I am warning you.” “You don’t warn me when I’m warning you!”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“An hour later, Amina stood at a pay phone in a mall hallway, where poop and perfume and the grease from the food court formed the kind of atmosphere you might find in Jupiter's red spot”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“It was a fever, a hot rage of words.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Somehow, all the talk about tenure and anthropology had given her visions of a thick-walled, libraried adobe, the kind of place that was covered with kilim rugs and fertility sculptures. The white stucco in front of her looked only slightly more substantial than a roadside weigh station.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Thank God for Saturday mornings. A reprieve from the familiar, a day unworn by routines. Anything was possible.”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“We are all we have here. Do you understand? That is it. And we can all talk about old times and Campa Cola and wouldn’t it be nice if we could go back, but none of us ever want to go back. To what? To who? Our own families can’t even stand us for longer than a few days! No, we are home already, like it or not,”
― Mira Jacob, quote from The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

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“P.S.” Kimmie continues, nodding toward my sculptor of Adam’s lips, the assignment was to sculpt something exotic, not erotic. Are you sure you weren’t so busy wishing me dead that you just didn’t hear right? Plus, if it was eroticism you were going for, how come there’s no tongue wagging out of his mouth?”
“And what’s exotic about your piece?”
“Seriously, it doesn’t get more exotic than leopard, particularly if that leopard is in the form of a swanky pair of kitten heels . . . but I thought I’d start out small.”
“Right,” I say, looking at her oblong ball of clay with what appears to be four legs, a golf-ball-sized head, and a long, skinny tail attached.
“And, from the looks of your sculpture,” she continues, adjusting the lace bandana in her pixie-cut dark hair, “I presume your hankering for a Ben Burger right about now. The question is, will that burger come with a pickle on the side or between the buns?”
“You’re so sick,” I say, failing to mention that my sculptor isn’t of Ben’s mouth at all.
“Seriously? You’re the one who’s wishing me dead whilst fantasizing about your boyfriend’s mouth. Tell me that doesn’t rank high up on the sik-o-meter.”
“I have to go,” I say, throwing a plastic tarp over my work board.
“Should I be worried?”
“About what?”
“Acting manic and chanting about death?”
“I didn’t chant.”
“Are you kidding? For a second there I thought you were singing the jingle to a commercial for roach killer: You deserve to die! You deserve to die! You deserve to die!”
― Laurie Faria Stolarz, quote from Deadly Little Games

“Tell me, Choi Yoori...are your lips as soft as they look?”
― quote from Welcome to the Underworld

“...she said all writers were prima donnas, drunks, social misfits, pompous, or depressed. Brilliant, maybe, but completely crazy.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, quote from Drowning Instinct

“Every game has its Jacks,' she said, the sadness of it pulling down the elation of sudden understanding. 'The thing that acts as a wild card. It can't be counted on or predicted. A weapon, even. But he's in other places, too, isn't he? And do you know what else a Jack is, Puck?...I do.”
― Ruth Frances Long, quote from The Treachery of Beautiful Things

“You sure are a purty thing,” he murmured, his voice husky. “I bet that buck of yours’ll be hot on our trail to git you back. That is if he ain’t dead.”
The stench of the man’s body filmed the lining of Loretta’s nostrils. She hated the contemplative look on his face. If she admitted she was married to a Comanche, he would consider her fair game and use her himself. His men would follow suit with Amy. The thought made Loretta’s stomach roll. She was a woman grown, married to a wonderful man who had given her dozens of beautiful memories. No matter what these animals did to her, she’d survive. Amy might not.
“I don’t have a buck who’ll come after me, so you needn’t worry,” she replied evenly. “Luckily, you and your men arrived in the nick of time.”
He ran his gaze over her Indian clothing. “You’re lyin’, sweet thing. What’sa matter? You afraid I’ll get too friendly if I find out you’ve been pleasurin’ Comanches?”
Struggling to stay calm, she said, “You’re a smart man. I heard you and your men talking. You were hired to rescue captives, not abuse them. Touch one of us, and it’ll be the mistake of your life. We haven’t been pleasuring anyone. And if we end up pleasuring you, I guarantee you’ll hang for it.”
― Catherine Anderson, quote from Comanche Moon

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