I wanted to tell her that I loved her, and not in the complicated way I loved our parents, but in a simple way I never had to think about. I loved her like breathing.
The new mythology of love was that it bent to the fashion of the day, obligated to take the shape of doves, lilies, jewels. This is a lie. Love is sometimes as passionate as war.
Tender,” she said again. “Tender is kind and gentle. It’s also sore, like the skin around an injury.
That was the thing about being bereaved. People were overcome with sympathy. They did things for you without even considering whether or not it was the right thing to do.
Our whole lives, it was like we were always trying so hard to be perfect – for our families and our friends, for each other – when the funny thing was, we didn’t have to. In the end, we were better than that.
You asked about love. I don’t know about love, Daphne. I just know I don’t want anything but you. I don’t want to anywhere but with you.
You presume to name those who have no name. We are pandemonium and disaster. We are the dancing, gibbering horror of the world.
I’m not about love, but in this moment, I wish that I were.
You’re terribly selfish, you know. I’ve loved you so long, and it was never dear or precious to you. I might as well have not loved you at all.
He smiles an honest smile for the first time, and the difference is hard to describe but easy to recognize.
People make decisions, and maybe you don’t always agree, but those choices are still their own.
I just want that, the way I feel when you kiss me. Just having it makes all the bad things better.
Because I was conceived and born and I grew up. I’m breathing and my heart is beating and as much as it hurts ― as much searing, monumental pain it causes me ― I have to exist.
My father’s answer was revenge-has always been revenge-and the outcome was just, but not better. Nothing is fixed.
The treachery of demons is nothing compared to the betrayal of an angel.
Once, my mother told a whole host of angels that she’d rather die than go back to a man she didn’t love.
From the window, I watch the city and the freeway. In the distance, the sky-rises look like mystic spires, unbearably close and far. I want to pick them up and eat them. I want to scream out loud sometimes, but I never do.
All my life, I’ve understood the nature of where I come from, but I never thought it might be wicked until now.
You can’t keep acting like this,” Lillian says, and for the first time in months, it’s like she’s actually trying to be nice. “Tragedy isn’t this evil thing that came from outer space. It’s just there, you know. Along with everything else.
Whatever they said, whatever they told you about yourself, it’s not true