Emily Culliton > Quotes

“A marathon is meaningless and boring unless it is metaphorical.”
― Emily Culliton, The Misfortune of Marion Palm

“Overwhelmed, Jane’s teacher finds Ginny again in English and asks her to come back to help with her sister. She’s kicking the boys. So Ginny goes to sit with Jane but does not advise less violent behavior. She’s just glad her sister isn’t crying about their mother anymore. “Kick all the boys you want,” Ginny tells Jane. Jane is content: the Palm girls are united at last.”
― Emily Culliton, The Misfortune of Marion Palm

“She suspects that he made her feel better about a bad time and she was grateful. But gratitude should not merit love. Gratitude should not get the better of her.”
― Emily Culliton, The Misfortune of Marion Palm

“All that is unwatched or unguarded belongs to Marion or should belong to Marion.”
― Emily Culliton, The Misfortune of Marion Palm

“What did you expect? They’ve worked at the office for twenty years and are seen as a piece of furniture.”
― Emily Culliton, The Misfortune of Marion Palm

“Her mother’s behavior has not been unforeseeable, but Ginny can’t explain why. She loves her mother and also misses her, but there was something lacking in her mother’s eyes, or maybe her forehead, when she looked at Ginny.”
― Emily Culliton, The Misfortune of Marion Palm

“She reaches for her phone in her pocket, but remembers she left it in the basement after she returned it to factory settings and dropped it in a glass of tap water for good measure.”
― Emily Culliton, The Misfortune of Marion Palm

“Of course he had been angry that she hadn’t liked the poem. She should have liked it. She should have been honored by the poem and its honesty. “You wrote a poem about me getting fat” was what she said, and there was nothing left for him to say. What she said was also true.”
― Emily Culliton, The Misfortune of Marion Palm

“Marion makes a noise that means “Oh, wow. I didn’t know that.”
― Emily Culliton, The Misfortune of Marion Palm

“Nathan Palm misses both his wife’s voice and her breasts.”
― Emily Culliton, The Misfortune of Marion Palm

“A homely woman is an invisible thing. This is her and her disguise.”
― Emily Culliton, The Misfortune of Marion Palm