Lives Of Girls And Women Quotes
"Old frogs knew enough to stay out of our way, but we did not want them; it was the slim young green ones, the juicy adolescents, that we were after, cool and slimy; we squished them tenderly in our hands."
"Though he never turned around he knew if we put a foot in the water."
"In all his statements, predictions, judgements there was a concentrated passion."
"He cleaned the fish on his porch and, if he felt like eating, fried some immediately in a pan which kept its ancient, smoky grease."
"The deep, deep, layered clutter and dirt of the place swallowed light."
"He valued debris for its own sake and only pretended, to himself as well as to others, that he meant to get some practical use out of it."
"He had a heavy black moustache, fierce eyes, a delicate predatory face."
"In that world people could go down in quicksand, be vanquished by ghosts or terrible ordinary cities; luck and wickedness were gigantic and unpredictable; nothing was deserved, anything might happen; defeats were met with crazy satisfaction."
"They had the Irish gift for rampaging mockery, embroidered with deference."
"Nature is just one thing preying on another all the way down the line. Nature is just a lot of waste and cruelty, maybe not from Nature’s point of view but from a human point of view."
"Who knows? Maybe with less eating he would have lived to be old."
"There is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders."
"If they are here, then it is probably all true."
"How could people rest, how could they even go on breathing and existing, until they were sure of this?"
"Only a short time ago He and Mr. McLaughlin were all for the war. They are a changeable pair."
"My stupidity, my stubby blundering hands crumpling up the grimy handkerchief I was supposed to be hemming, put her into a dancing rage."
"I wanted to find a believer, a true believer, on whom I could rest my doubts."
"God was made by man! Not the other way around! God was made by man."
"This was my mother's nature showing in him, her boundless readiness to take up the challenges and promises of the outside world."
"You cannot learn to sew any more than a person who is tone-deaf can learn to sing."
"I was weak with relief and joy, in spite of public shame, which I was used to."
"I realized that I did not care a great deal, myself, about Christ dying for our sins. I only wanted God."
"Every year there was a hypothetical romance, or scandal, built up between her and Mr. Boyce."
"He knew where the Mediterranean was, most likely, but not the Sargasso Sea."
"She had a dark skin, not olive but dusty-looking, dim, with brown-pigmented spots as large as coins."
"How did she collect all her unsettling information about the future?"
"It seems such a brutal ending to what everybody was considering a rather comic story."
"It was like leading the white-haired senator out to public execution for his embarrassing pranks."
"Death was made possible. And not because it could not be prevented but because it was what was wanted—wanted, by all those adults, and managers, and executioners, with their kind implacable faces."
"She had studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music."
"We started going to the Town Hall for our practising."
"It was as if she thought to amaze us into self-forgetfulness."
"You can see by our outfits that we are both cowboys."
"I don’t care if the sun don’ shine, I git my lovin’ in the evenin’ ti-ime."
"You believe in capital punishment for women, too?"
"I don’t believe in capital punishment at all. But if you are going to have it—yes, for women."
"Well I was just layin’ there, officer, and she come up and sat down on me, what could I do about that?"
"What’s filthy? What did I say? You want to rub my back, honey?"
"Go right down the hall and go in the door where it says—ah, I can see now—Ladies."
"He is a brilliant boy but he must learn to put himself across better."
"Well what does that mean? To me it just sounds stupid. Explain it to me. I’m willing to listen."
"He will be years and years at University. He will have to get his Ph.D. Then they even go on after that, post doctoral, I don’t know what all. Years."
"Virginity is all a thing of the past. So be it. I don’t say I approve or disapprove but you can’t turn back the clock, can you?"
"Our bodies fell against each other not unwillingly but joylessly, like sacks of wet sand."
"I was furious now, to think of myself naked on that bed. Nobody to look at me but Jerry, giggling and scared and talking dialect."
"My need for love had gone underground, like a canny toothache."
"I felt no further acknowledgement was needed, no further intimacy possible."
"I moved languidly, exaggerating a slight discomfort. I remembered now, over and over again, Garnet’s face."
"I thought of my mother, who would publicly campaign for birth control but would never even think she needed to talk to me."
"I felt angelic with gratitude, truly as if I had come out on another level of existence."
"I opened my mouth to say whatever would make it clear to him, and I saw that he knew it all already."
"It seemed to me impossible that he should not understand that all the powers I granted him were in play."