Paula Garner > Quotes

“Here’s the truth about healing. It’s a fucking myth—an idea they try to sell you on to keep you from killing yourself. You love someone and they leave, but they never entirely go away. You feel them there, acutely, like an amputated limb.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“If something is unbearable, then how do you bear it? It’s an oxymoron. And yet I was here, wasn’t I? Somehow I was bearing it.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“I didn’t have room inside me for any more pain. As it turned out, though, I was wrong about that.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“There was life before you, and then life with you. There wasn’t supposed to be life after you.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“My dreams were of beginnings without endings.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“God, I miss you,” she said. “Missed? Or miss?” “Miss.” “But I’m right here,” I said into her hair. “I miss you anyway.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“She picked me up, dusted me off, and kicked my ass. Maybe we all need that from time to time. If we’re lucky, there’s someone there who cares enough to do it.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“It was like shoveling smoke.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“When we were kids, chocolate was one of the four major food groups.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“You really could do it — you’re just too dumb to know it.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“So while my body was to be regarded as a temple, hers was more like a motel for transients.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“Maybe that’s what marriage was, in essence — an unspoken agreement regarding division of neuroses and quirks so that the bases were covered and neither partner stepped on the other’s toes.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“I could never quite figure out if I needed to rescue Dara or be rescued from her.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“All I wanted was for things to be like they used to be. Except for all the parts that couldn't be. Which I guess, was almost all of them.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“We were battered and dinged, both well past the weight limit in personal baggage. And, like the rest of humanity, it would be our destiny to be tossed and torn by events unseen and unplanned. But that didn’t stop me from hoping we could somehow navigate it together.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“You love someone and they leave, but they never entirely go away. You feel them there, acutely, like an amputated limb.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“Here’s the truth about healing. It’s a fucking myth — an idea they try to sell you on to keep you from killing yourself. You love someone and they leave, but they never entirely go away. You feel them there, acutely, like an amputated limb.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“Some idiot part of me had managed to create a fantasy that the moment our eyes connected, it would all come rushing back, we’d still be us, and everything that had happened in the intervening years would just evaporate as we fell into each other’s arms.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“She looked so concerned that it made me feel bad. And good.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“And then there was Dara, the most talented one of us all, swimming on the “B” relay team, in early heats, battling it out with — and often losing to — girls who may have had two arms but didn’t have one-tenth her strength and skill. If I’d been her, I would’ve wanted to get as far away from swimming as possible. But she clung to it as if it were all there was in the world. And maybe for her, it was. And the thing was, she was still good — not the best, but better than many, even if she was technically handicapped.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“Could you please just tell me about the lesbian sex and help me take my mind off my troubles?”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“Right now “happy” seemed about as likely a place for me to visit as a beach resort on Neptune.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“Cemeteries are perfect for learning to drive,” she had explained. “No one’ll ride your ass for going slow, and you don’t have to worry about hurting anyone — everyone’s already dead.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“You seem like you’re doing okay.” I thought about it. “What’s ‘okay’?” She smiled a little. “Right. That is a good question.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“I stared at her, not knowing whether or not to hug her. Was she the same, or was she new? Did we know each other, or not? Was a hug the right thing? The only thing more bizarre in my mind than not hugging her was the thought of how she’d feel in my arms in the bodies we were in now.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“Are you okay?” She laughed bitterly. “What’s ‘okay’?” “I’ve never really known.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“I was thinking less and less about whatever used to occupy my preadolescent mind and more and more about stuff that would have made Meg blush if she knew. Like how she’d look in a bikini that coming summer. And the way she smelled, all warm sun and green apples and something heady, like a secret I wanted in on.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“It started the way so many good things do: with bacon.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“Since when do you turn down chocolate?” “I don’t like it anymore.” I stared at her as if she’d said she no longer breathed air.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs

“I liked her teeth. They were pretty. I liked her lips. I liked her whole mouth. I liked that my toothbrush was in it.”
― Paula Garner, Phantom Limbs