Marjorie Celona > Quotes

“Y. That perfect letter. The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass. The question we ask over and over.”
― Marjorie Celona , Y

“Y
That perfect letter. The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass. The question we ask over and over. Why? Me with my arms outstretched, feet in first position. The chromosome half of us don't have. Second to last in the alphabet: almost there. Coupled with an L, let's make an adverb. A modest X, legs closed. Y or N? Yes, of course. Upside-down peace sign. Little bird tracks in the sand.

Y, a Greet letter, joined the Latin alphabet after the Romans conquered Greece in the first century -- a double agent: consonant and vowel. No one used adverbs before then, and no one was happy.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“I understand her immediately. She is an instigator, a fire starter, an accelerant of a human being, throwing herself into the middle of a crowd and lighting it up. She is fucking lighter fluid.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“She was fierce, quick to anger, her temper terrifying and unpredictable, her words deeply damaging when she wanted them to be. Because she had almost no need for people, she had no trouble hurting them. It seemed to enlarge her, give her strength. Quinn told her she had "poison blood".”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“Don’t believe anything anyone tells you. You have to evaluate the world with your own eyes.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“Don’t marry someone you love. Love makes you stupid.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“When you're in the thick of your life, it feels like a mess--one surprise after the next. But later, when you look back on things, it seems like a plot. One thing leads to another. Et cetera. You start to see the causal relationship between things.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“See, we're intellectual equals. I am as smart as your mother, and she is as smart as me. This is a problem. There's no pecking order. A relationship is like anything else. It needs a leader and a follower.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“On good days, Quinn and Eugene regard each other as pieces of strange furniture brought in by Yula to add further clutter to the house. Eugene likens his grandfather to a bookshelf put in front of a window, blocking all light, and Quinn thinks the boy is like a footstool pushed carelessly to the centre of the room, a booby trap, something to trip over and skin one's knee. Whirling around them like a dishcloth after dust is Yula, who serves them soup and wonders why her father and son can't see each other as she sees them.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“I say everything I want to say, everything that needs to be said. In my head, I am so eloquent.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“He's a little less cool than Jude--a little lower on the social ladder. He wears the same uniform as Jude, the checked shirt and baggy jeans, but his sneakers are all wrong--cross-trainers. Does he not notice the difference between sneakers and running shoes?”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“Knowing the story doesn't make it any better. We get what we're given, nothing more, nothing less.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“You can really fuck up in your life. You can fuck up and then have things be okay.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“We'll get to know each other bit by bit, and each time we meet shell tell me a little more about the circumstances of her life, and on and on we'll continue to probe, in an effort, I suppose, to reach the end of each other. Yet if we did--if we knew everything there was to know--we would become the most predictable , boring people in the world. If I have learned anything, it's that mystery is inherent to being interesting, especially when it comes to whom we decide to love. And so one day I'll call and I'll say I can't make it this time, and for the next few years it will continue this way, some visits kept, others not.”
― Marjorie Celona

“Take the vulnerable, sweet, and secret things in life very seriously,” he says when he sees me staring at him, “if you want to be true to yourself.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“No one has patience for love except their own.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“Am I a bad person? I think about this almost every day. Would I know if I was?”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“Vaughn plucks the wishbone from what's left of the chicken and holds it out for me to reach. It's the one thing in life he can't predict: who will get the lucky break.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y

“Don’t believe anything anyone tells you. You have to evaluate the world with your own eyes”
― Marjorie Celona

“Life seems full of impossibility. I don’t know how anyone gets through it.”
― Marjorie Celona, Y