“So not every person fits into the little rooms we build to hold them. There are infinite combinations of human and inhuman, male and female, brown and white.”
“She was ugly, was all they'd told her. But she didn't find them beautiful, so what did it matter?”
“Outside of monsters, meat is meat. Science is a powerful teacher. And hunger is a cruel mistress.”
“A creature is what it is, even if it can't show its true face.”
“Could a mare only like mares or stallions, or could a mare like whatever she damn pleased? Maybe she just didn't know enough yet to understand what she was or what she wanted. Or maybe she was lots of things, just as her skin was a mixture of browns. Maybe she didn't have to like anything.”
“People need to be touched and talked to, they need to know somebody else in the world cares.”
“Nettie's one-eyed glare was flat, her patience gone. "I'm the feller that's going to kill you."
"You're not a feller."
"That's not yours to decide.”
“People fear monsters. Monsters fear the Cannibal Owl.” Nettie”
“Because you were raised by ignorant people. They taught you to use things before you understood them. To kill things before you recognized them. To hate things before you knew them. But you'll appreciate a thing better when you know where it comes from, when your hands know the shape of it.”
“Being a person was mighty twisty, and yet she didn’t want to go back to being nothing.”
“Because a shadow was a thing that defined itself, and Nettie didn't have to fit anyone else's shape.”
“Nettie scanned the shed for anything useful, but all she saw were big, clumsy things, like hoes and plows and men.”
“When your heart is broken you plant seeds in the cracks
and you pray for rain.
And you teach your sons and daughters
there are sharks in the water
but the only way to survive
is to breathe deep
and dive.”
“I wore a groove in the kitchen floor with endless trips to the fridge, hoping against hope that I had somehow missed a plateful of cold sausages on the previous 4,000 excursions. Then, for no obvious reason, I decided to buy a footstool.”
“Everyone says she’s mad.’
‘How do they know?’ I asked.
‘Because she’s different from other people, I suppose.’
‘Is that being mad?’
‘No. Not really, I suppose madness is not seeing things as others see them.”
“She would have to be more careful from now on how she behaved around him. What would be considered innocent behavior in her time could definitely be taken as forward and suggestive in this day and age.”
“No, dearie. I don’t need any seeds. And besides, I’m growing moor flowers. Wildflowers.” “I didn’t know you could, in this soil.” “You can’t, of course. That’s the point. Flowers are freethinking things. They grow where they please. I’d like to see you try and tell a moor flower where to grow.”
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