Vladimir Quotes
"Lightning bolts of anger shot from my vagina to my extremities. I’ve always felt the origin of anger in my vagina and am surprised it is not mentioned more in literature."
"This is our world and this is what happened in it."
"They’re only interested in what they think, anyway."
"There’s something exhausting about being constantly bombarded by everyone’s best efforts."
"He couldn’t help it. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it’s possible to simply fall."
"It’s why you should never admire people. They’ll only disappoint you."
"The stretching, searching minds, the curiosities of what will become of oneself."
"I only write if I have something to say."
"I still feel the potentiality—the students working toward becoming something."
"They had God and their friends and the internet on their side."
"Extending me that courtesy is an act of feminism in and of itself."
"I find being among all that to be far more energizing than an enclosed and solitary space."
"I want to assure you I was not. I felt tingling and pained and embarrassed."
"They brought us to our knees with their softness, their consistent demand for the consideration of their feelings."
"I watched his display with what I knew was a look of ugly disdain, then laughed and told him not to worry, that I was seriously considering it."
"The truth is, we did fall in love. Our hearts would bleat when the other was near."
"Vanity has always been my poorest quality."
"I think you just don’t want to bother with me anymore."
"I sat in faculty meetings and fucking potlucks and I didn’t know this."
"She said that’s probably why he got the job."
"I mean, students are on that committee, right?"
"Don’t let anyone make you feel bad about your husband."
"They charge by the quarter hour after pickup time."
"I need to pick up Phee from the day care at three."
"I loved that the complexities of my emotions were understood by authors writing hundreds of years ago."
"I like those women who prided themselves on their success with men."
"Your father never did anything with Lena."
"None of those women suffered professionally or academically because of your father."
"I just don’t know why we have to read these whining women."
"The course is Women in American Literature."
"They may seem outdated to you now, but—"
"The only thing she would bring on a desert island was a round brush."
"It’s not like I can prevent her from getting hired."
"We were just three people, how much do we really identify as a family?"
"Pride, obviously. Thanks to your confrontation, I am now aware that my pride must be swallowed, and my silence must end."
"I want to start by saying how much I admire you. In my (ahem) years of teaching, I have not encountered a generation of students as committed to improving their structures, institutions, and worlds as you are."
"I will continue to instruct my classes. If you insist that I halt my normal duties, you give me no choice but to respond with legal recourse."
"I believe I have shirked my responsibility when it comes to openly discussing the events that have caused such a rift."
"They were girls, they didn’t know what they were doing."
"I don’t have the time or resources to care about this... I just want to live in a world where I can pretend that stuff like this doesn’t exist."
"As a teacher, I’ve found that strictness is often an effective way of diverting from one’s own laziness."
"We, who had experienced enough bitterness in life to expect flaws, faults, and complexities in every situation we encountered."
"Literary fame. That and a dollar will get me a dollar."
"If you’re unsure of your brilliance, give your time. A student who feels seen by you is yours forever."
"The recurring appearance of paintings and photographs forced me to consider the representation of experience as it was being represented, which was dizzying and exhilarating."
"Doesn’t the world have enough books in it? I should just give up."
"I was so safe, I told him, even when I would tell myself to try to get lost, I wouldn’t let myself stray too far from what I knew."
"Our table sat against the glassed-in wall of the porch looking over the brook."
"I admire that the body is there but that you skirt direct mention of it—ever since Roth and Updike it seems as though men can’t write a book in which the physical is present but not didactic."
"I’ve had enough time to get the right things and get rid of the wrong ones."
"Cynthia and me, Me and Cynthia." He bobbled his head around, his double chin as bulbous as a frog’s.
"Honestly, we're complicit, but not in a physical manner."
"I have to piss," he said over his shoulder, and slammed the door to the bathroom.
"You lied to me." He looked wounded, like a little boy who had been left out of a game.
"I'm not lying. I'm writing an epic poem and Cynthia’s working on her memoir."
"You give her drugs? Do you have any idea how fucked-up she could get? She’s a mother."
"Security some men call the suburbs of hell."
"It’s about a modern-day Don Quixote. An old man who refuses to see the world as it is."
I haven’t been drinking," I told him. "I can’t drive you.
I don’t give her drugs, son," John said in a weary voice. "She gives them to me.
"We burned and we were burned. Very French, like Balzac."
"Everything is still in front of you." Her eyes fill with tears and she thanks me.