Nightbitch Quotes
"You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs. You don’t let it rage into a mountain of light, because that’s not becoming of a girl."
"You tend the flame because if you don’t you’re stuck, in the cold, on your own, doomed to seasonal layers, doomed to practicality."
"You could always tell a mother by that look, one that encompassed not only exhaustion and boredom, but something more."
"She should have sleep-trained the boy, should have forced him into his own crib, his own room."
"But easy and nice is how bad habits form, after all."
"I would say you’re training to be a butcher, because we have a fridge full of meat."
"I am now a person I never imagined I would be, and I don’t know how to square that."
"The grocery store is a locus of oppression."
"If he could not offer his actual hands-on help, at the very least he could offer his gratitude with a shower of thank-yous every waking moment he was home."
"Her intuition, her feelings didn’t matter to him—they were unbelievable, in fact."
"As such, the mother’s powers supersede that of the un-childed woman, for the mother—especially the mother of infants and very small children—occupies that peculiar space of in between—not fully human or fully animal."
"In fact, it simply could not be cleaned, no matter how hard she tried!"
"To understand yourself anew. No longer to linger in the what ifs. To now know the truth."
"What if I just didn’t do a thing? Would he notice? Would he do anything?"
"She was doing This old man, he played one with the boy as she exited the house, bag on shoulder, boy in arms."
"She was well rested despite her few hours of sleep beneath the crab-apple tree, maybe even before, not groggy, not grumpy, but enthusiastic and, she imagined, completely capable of going on an early-morning jog."
"In this moment of full-armed embrace of the unknown, she found herself inspired to play—to real, fullhearted play—with her son."
"She surged with mommy adrenaline, the knowledge she was doing what was best for her child and focusing on his needs."
"She wanted it so badly, so that she could stand at the kitchen counter and eat coins of dry salami on buttery crackers and think about nothing."
"I mean, I’m not really into beauty or leggings or whatever, Nightbitch tried again. I didn’t even brush my hair today."
"I am spending my most productive years in unproductive, supine waiting."
"Who would she be with a full night of sleep? Someone else entirely."
"The lack of fairness surrounding night-nights was yet another source of rage for Nightbitch."
"I just think the dog stuff needs to stop, the husband countered."
"The kid has a refined palette, she continued. Beef tartare. There’s nothing wrong with it."
"She wanted to pound through the walls with her fists as she moved the wet laundry from the washer to the dryer."
"She imagined herself ripping the head off a songbird with her hands as she wiped the kitchen table with a sponge."
"Nightbitch had not felt this way since, what, high school? Junior high? Less than and left out and lame."
"She was a grown woman. She didn’t want to feel this way."
"She would not shred herself up inside, would not churn her guts to acid, would not grind her teeth in her sleep."
"She must rise from bed, tend to her child, her house, her own well-being."
"I am interested in longing, in longing so deep it threatens to splinter a person apart."
"Look at what I am capable of. I make life. I am life."
"We keep each other alive through an unbroken lineage of togetherness."
"She sings in German, or a language that sounds like German, it’s hard to tell."
"My god, Jen murmured then, in the moonlight, face streaked with mud. Oh my god. You. It’s you."
"I am your wife. I am a woman. I am this animal. I have become everything."