The Almost Moon Quotes
"When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily."
"Dementia, as it descends, has a way of revealing the core of the person affected by it."
"The thing about dementia is that sometimes you feel like the afflicted person has a trip wire to the truth."
"Her hands clasped the curved ends of the armrests, and I could see how hard she pressed, her anger flaring up and out at me like involuntary claws."
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
"My mother looked at me. It was a horrible bottomless look."
"She was eighty-eight. The lines on her face were now the cross-hatchings of fine old porcelain."
"Being careful not to glance at my mother’s face, I stood at her feet, briefly bent down to close her legs, and then played the game that first Emily, and then Sarah, had begged me for when I tucked them in at night."
"I had never thought of how one cut up a body, only of the freedom to be had post-severing."
"I was always careful to wash the knife and the cutting board and to hold my hands underwater until they ached red from the heat."
"The cool air coming up from the meat freezer felt good against my face."
"I could not cut my mother up, so I walked over to her body and bent down near her head."
"While my mother lay on the floor only a few feet away, I opened the old brown refrigerator and sat on the bottom step of the stairs with its light shining on me."
"She’s being punished," my mother had said, as she walked briskly over to him and took his briefcase from his hand. "I made butterscotch fudge, and she ate it all."
"It’s a little like you sat down and decided to eat a baking sheet full of sediment," he said. "Anyone would be ill from that."
"There are no awards given out," she said.
"He’s a beautiful woman, your mother," Mr. Forrest said, looking at the picture.
"Be kind," Mr. Forrest said, his voice coming forth in a higher register than usual.
"You will always be stronger than she is," he said. "You don’t know that yet, but it’s true."
"Your mother is a survivor. I’ll no doubt send you home with a book or two that she wouldn’t know about otherwise, and you’ll return the photograph as a favor to me."
"Your mother is not a fucking bastard. Fucking bastards are simple by nature. Now drink up, because soon you’ll be in a room where no liquids are allowed."
"I thought of the nudes hidden in Mr. Forrest’s house."
"Where did you waltz off to?" my mother asked.
"Look, Helen, you know it’s hard for me," she said.
"He was hit by a car! I screamed it, but only inside my head."
"You won’t get very far bad-mouthing me to the neighbors, getting drunk with Natalie and her bilious mother."
"It’s just that I have . . . Well, you understand. You’re my daughter. I don’t fit in around here."
"Why don’t I brush your hair? Like Dad does."
"She was very uppity," my mother said later. "Very curious about who I was. My shroud would have served her well!"
"Should you tell her or should I?" she asked Mr. Forrest.
"You killed someone," he said, enunciating each word as if I couldn’t understand.
"I wanted a memento," I said. "A keepsake."
"Poison and medicine are often the same thing, given in different proportions."
"I’m the only one, Helen. Me. No one else."
"How she was touched inappropriately by a friend of her father’s."
"Imagine having to audition to be a waitress."
"I wanted to tell her that in terms of mystique, she’d won the lottery."
"You should get plastic surgery. I would if I were your age."
"If I get anything done, I’m going to get huge monster tits."
"I’m glad to know Manny wants to fuck my headless body."
"We climbed the stairs together, as if on the way to an important party just beyond the landing up above."
"I hate the phrase 'You never get over it,' but that’s a hard one. It stays."
"I don’t know how to explain it. I knew that she was at the end, and when I realized that, it just seemed a very natural thing to do."
"I think we shouldn’t make any decisions just yet. We’ll see how the next few days play out."
If I had to answer it," Sarah said. "If you were asked in a court of law.
"I imagined Jake standing in the downstairs bathroom, unable to speak for fear he might be heard."
"I’m not a bank," he said, before grabbing his hat and coat to go out."
"I’ll leave the car somewhere. I’ll call you and let you know where it is."
She lost her connection to the world," I said. "And I replaced it.
"It’s just that you can be so cold, and I know you’re not at heart. I’ve always known."
"There was a hot wave of dread began to prickle across my spine and back, tiptoeing along my shoulder blades and turning into gooseflesh."
"That’s me," she said, retrieving her phone from the pocket of her coat."
"I think of all the discarded items over all the years that had made me feel free."