Sabina Murray > Quotes

“Autumn Cannibalism depicts a plastic couple in intimate embrace in the act of eating each other. Although the features are not uniformly rendered—the hands detailed, the heads leavening into each other like rising bread—the anthropophagy is clearly a function of sexual intimacy. The man pinches a doughy inch from his lover’s waist while spooning cream from the breast region (although there is no breast here, only a white enameled flatness) while the woman’s left arm dangles about his neck, her hand languidly holding a knife. The knife cuts into the torso of the man, which presents itself as a loaf of bread. Although perhaps my description of the anatomy is lacking, the cyclical nature of love—one’s feeding and feeding, the plastic ability of the bodies to nourish as food, the constant flux of the forms, the flow of man into woman, their rendering as a single, spiraling form—should seem more familiar. Or maybe it doesn’t, this elemental desire, the lovers reduced to ingredients and appetite.”
― Sabina Murray, A Carnivore's Inquiry

“He belonged to the Adirondack Club, or something like it. It meant that he had climbed all the Adirondacks. “How many Adirondacks are there?” I asked. And he answered me, but the information never made it into my head. I saw his mouth moving. I saw the number floating in the air and then it evaporated. I also saw, from Rand Randley’s overly friendly expression, that he was as tortured as I was by the conversation, but neither of us could seem to stop. “That’s a lot of mountains,” I said. “Can you excuse me for a minute?”
― Sabina Murray, A Carnivore's Inquiry

“They’d done a good job with the head, the great drooping lips and meaty cheeks. The soprano sang to the head for close to half an hour. I looked over at Boris. He was tapping on the floor with his foot. His pants had ridden up and the sock on his right foot—a thin black nylon sock—had slid into his shoe. There was about a two-inch space of exposed fleshy ankle. I reached down, carefully, slowly, and pulled up Boris’s sock. Boris looked over at me but didn’t care, and soon—without much explanation—the opera ended.”
― Sabina Murray, A Carnivore's Inquiry