Molly Brodak > Quotes

“There: see? Done with the facts already. The facts are easy to say; I say them all the time. This isn't about them. This is about whatever is cut from the frame of narrative. The fat remnants, broken bones, gristle, untender bits.”
― Molly Brodak, Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir

“I was fine. And not. Like most people.”
― Molly Brodak, Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir

“the ache of the now-you, which feels like the only you when you want something”
― Molly Brodak, Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir

“But I am wincing, and somehow look already defeated. Like a nonbeliever already, at six years old.”
― Molly Brodak, Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir

“Everyone lives alone in families. Everyone goes alone into action, love, and work. Sometimes, it's why we work. Everyone goes alone into sickness, too.”
― Molly Brodak, Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir

“So we stopped making up stories of how our horror was salvation and just lived it.”
― Molly Brodak, A Little Middle of the Night

“Perhaps a rosy
dawn is enough—something worth
softening for.”
― Molly Brodak, A Little Middle of the Night

“One survival technique is to get small. When resources are thin and you must stay where you are, as you must as a child, it helps to stay invisible.”
― Molly Brodak, Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir

“luck, selfishness, and privilege dressed to look like honest hard work”
― Molly Brodak, Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir

“I don’t believe the film of me will survive anyway
so I just keep living it.”
― Molly Brodak, A Little Middle of the Night

“To uncoil the wild little everything / inside this now, which I am crouching to fit into.”
― Molly Brodak, A Little Middle of the Night

“I had to hope myself open. // You wouldn't think from looking.”
― Molly Brodak, A Little Middle of the Night

“It's a question, I realize, that's borne out of a framework of quiet childhood neglect, the kind that threads no one cares through a child’s soft skull until it glazes over every little brain spark and network.”
― Molly Brodak, Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir

“Ford, GM, Chrysler: God, Holy Spirit, Christ. We lived at their feet.”
― Molly Brodak, Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir

“I might find a blueblack sky when I’m ready
to feel all the moments, not just the sleazy important ones.”
― Molly Brodak, A Little Middle of the Night

“All night I imagine stabbing / not the state's men, not the rich, / but my own throat, / and this is their power.”
― Molly Brodak, The Cipher