Marie-Helene Bertino > Quotes

“The ego of the human male is by far the most dangerous aspect of human society.

THIS HAS BEEN WELL-DOCUMENTED.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“What we love, we mention."
"Then I must love you because I mention you all the time.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino

“Anyone questioning whether god exists need only consider the brevity of a dog’s life span. If there was a god, let alone a benevolent one, dogs would have life spans similar to parrots.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Grief is a bad mirror. It shows you manipulated images of yourself, your will, and the future. It cannot show you how the small work you do will add up to yourself. Inch by inch.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Even the word itself, human, means flawed. It means everything is technically correct but some unanticipated trouble has fouled it up. If the assignment had been to be human, to fail, then I succeeded. But if it was to create a comprehensive document of life on Earth, I was always doomed. Language is pitiable when weighed against experience.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Human beings, Adina faxes, did not think their lives were challenging enough so they invented roller coasters. A roller coaster is a series of problems on a steel track. Upon encountering real problems, human beings compare their lives to riding a roller coaster, even though they invented roller coasters to be fun things to do on their days off.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“We carry our ancestors in our names and sometimes we carry our ancestors through the sliding doors of emergency rooms and either way they are heavy, man, either way we can't escape.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

“If you are anything other than humbled in the presence of love, you are not in the presence of love.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

“Some years age you and some make you young.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“To reach the end of your life and wish you had time for a few other roads — what could be more human?”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Seeing his face after months was as immediate as a pointed gun.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Safe as Houses

“Being physically present in one place while your mind is in another is loneliness.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“When you're little, she faxes, sadness is a kid you can kick out of your game. A simple, fast-food feeling that leaves as soon as the bully is gone. Deeper sadness gets buried into one's coastal shelf, accessible only by your adult version.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Human life is quick. I do not mean: Life is short. I mean: The reason we feel like certain significant days happened only yesterday is because they did. Many of us have bodies that age preposterously out of proportion with how young we are. It’s like aging in theater time. We’re all seven-year-olds hired to play the parts of adults. A decade is not long. Two decades is not long. We say it is because we weigh it against the end of our life span. Our life spans are short and do not give us time to feel temporally in proportion.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“You can’t say you know a city unless you know three ways to everywhere.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

“Red wine tastes like a dark-walled library and white wine smells like a woman looking away.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“People with money list what they did without. Poor people list what they had.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“The human life span was perfectly designed to be brief but to at times feel endless. A set of years that pass in a minute, eternity in an afternoon. Yet in the same way competing weather fronts produce a climate that’s right for a tornado, brevity versus eternity (the push-pull that contains everything) is the condition for romantic love, sorrow, betrayal, joy. Countless meaningless profound transactions.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Mother shelving important parts of herself into places even she'll forget.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“In the jaundiced light of a streetlamp, Sarina realizes why people have children: to see the face of the one they love at the ages they’ve missed...”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

“If she believed the boardwalk T-shirts, a woman was a ball or chain, someone stupid you’re with, someone to lie to so a man can drink beer. If she believed television fathers, women were a constant pain, wanting red roses or a nice dinner out. If she learned how to be a girl from songs, it was worse. If she learned from other girls, worse still.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“When you're alone, you are in the right place to watch sadness approach like storm clouds over an open field. You can sit in a chair and get ready for it. As it moves through you, you can reach out your hands and feel all the edges. When it passes and you can drink coffee again you even miss it because it has been loyal to you like a boyfriend.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Safe as Houses

“Good morning, the city says. Fuck you.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

“When you’re alone, you are in the right place to watch sadness approach like storm clouds over an open field. You can sit in a chair and get ready for it.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Human beings who are squeaky wheels get everything they want. Quiet humans who don't complain get nothing.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Once in a while, I smell Clive on my skin and it stops my day. It's a train crossing; I wait to pass. Eventually the lights stop flashing, the barriers lift. I keep moving.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Safe as Houses

“Dogs, she faxes, are the best we can do.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“If when I explain human behavior you insist on logic, we won’t get far.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Adina hasn’t experienced romantic love like the ones portrayed in movies, or a more realistic love like the ones portrayed in more realistic movies. But to love a mother who grew alongside her. A friend when she left the Earth. To love a dog. To love vocation.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“That’s a drummer’s love story. If you want a prettier one, you’ll be waiting forever. If you could separate your body into four distinct rhythms, you’d be cracked too”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas