Berv Val > Berv's Quotes

“Say to them, “Evelyn Hugo just wants to go home. It’s time for her to go to her daughter, and her lover, and her best friend, and her mother.” Tell them Evelyn Hugo says good-bye.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“If you are intolerable, let me be the one to tolerate you," I said, and then I kissed her and tasted the lemon juice on her lips.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“We all can’t go around treating people like dog shit and then expecting that a simple I’m sorry erases it.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Sometimes when I tell myself or Ava the story, it grows teeth and it’s something. Definitely something. Other times, it comes apart in my hands like air. But if I remember all the right details. If I tell them in the right order. If I pause in the right places, trail off in the right places . . .”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“I bite", Ava says, sliding out of the booth. "It’s a terrible, voluntary affliction".”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“What's the lesson here, Smackie?
Don't jump to conclusions?
Never lower your gaze first.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“Because you simply can’t sit back and allow your best friend to date an animal-man of your own creation and say nothing. You can’t. And say nothing? That would be just wrong. On so many levels.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“God this is depressing, Ava says. And boring. Aren’t you bored? It’s what I can afford, I tell her. Because even if she’s not here, I might as well talk to her all the same.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“Saw in her a wondrous world, an open hand, a person I knew in my bones would be someone I’d love.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“I miss you, Bunny. This summer was so hard without you. I barely wrote a word, I was so, so sad. Let’s never ever part again, please?” Ava laughs out loud at this. Actually laughs. Throws her feathery head back. Doesn’t bother to cover her mouth with her gloved hand. It’s a delicious, raucous sound. Ringing in the air like the evening’s missing music.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“How much did I invent in the end? Probably a lot. Why do you lie so much? And about the weirdest little things? my mother always asked me. I don’t know, I always said. But I did know. It was very simple. Because it was a better story.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“But you know when your feet just walk you to a place? Black clothes sticking to my body. Hands empty and open at my sides. Empty and emptied. Alone, alone, alone. Watching the swan, alone too, morning light on its white feathers as it glides along the dark water like a dream, I wish it was all a dream. Wish I could erase the night. Fill it with something else. Someone.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“If Ava were here, she would say Run. Break a window if you have to.
Or she would just look at me and the look would say all the thoughts of my whole soul back to me and I would feel comforted. I would be able to bear the pipes and steel drums with a smile.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“I feel my phone buzz in my pocket. I pull it out, thinking it’s her. She’s saying, Come back. She’s saying she didn’t mean it. Instead, on the screen is a text from a number I vaguely recognize. Words flanked by tulips and open-armed ghosts. U coming 2nite? :D”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“Whom you call c*ntscapades?- Ava”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“I look at Max beside me, swimming in his anarchy trench coat. I stare at his face. The knives and the wolf have fallen away like so much costume makeup. His features no longer shift, no longer recall transcendent moments or former lovers. His face is simply my face. Undisguised at last. Familiar as mud. Punched in with grief. Rage. Suddenly, I want to kill him. This thing I made out of hate and love and air and one fucking animal.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“Grinning at me like I’m Christmas.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“Samantha, oh, Samantha, whatever will you do?”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“She's looking at me like I'm something worse than a stranger.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“Do you know I almost died? In fact,” she turns to look at me, “I am dead.”
“Don’t.”
“Oh yes. I’m a ghost now, Samantha. I died of a broken heart. I died of grief. It’s in the autopsy. And it’s all your fault.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“And I let her go, let her leave, just sat there in a kitten dress, watching her say, I'm leaving. Gave her no words to come back by, no words to come back for. Just sat there with my mouth open, all my words still inside”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“When she repeats the word, the lilt in her tone suggests its aptness in my case. Perhaps, Samantha, you are lost in more ways than one?”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“I can't believe you're here," I hear myself say in a voice that does not sound like my voice. It is a voice filled with twinkly stars, with overly lashed cartoon eyes.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“I try to catch her eye, but it won’t be caught. When at last I see her looking at something close to my direction, I smile. But she looks past me, through me. A guy asks her to dance, and I watch her accept. “Hey,” the man I’m dancing with says. “Ow.” “Sorry.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“I told you, Cupcake will say, petting her. She’s a freak. Oh, you’re so funny, Bunny. I love you. I love you, Bunny. “Okay,” Ava says, “let’s stop.” “Why?” “You’re obviously not into this tonight.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“Then the zoo to say hello to the Moon Bear in his pit. Then out for Vietnamese iced coffees at the sketchy place we like downtown, where I almost got shot. “You did not almost get shot, Smackie. Jesus Christ. That was a car backing up or something,” she said when I brought it up. “Yes, I did.” “You need to get out more.” “I get out. I’m out with you, aren’t I?” Now we’re back at her place drinking the sangria she made that’s so strong I’m pretty sure it’s poison. It’s that time of evening she calls the hour between the dog and the wolf. A time that actually makes this sorry swath of New England beautiful, the sky ablaze with a sunset the color of flamingos. We’re on her sagging roof, listening to Argentine tango music to drown out the roaring Mexican music next door.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“We’re practicing tango, like we did all summer, taking turns being Diego for each other. Diego is an imaginary panther-footed man we dream will one day come into our lives and whisk us off our very large feet. He has the smoldery, dangerously mesmeric looks of Rudolph Valentino but with the trustworthy eye crinkle of Paul Newman, the smiling insanity and very long torso of Lux Interior of The Cramps, but with the swoon-inducing earnestness of Jacques Brel. Diego wears white suits or black Cuban shirts patterned with orange flames. He bakes bread for us in the morning. He cuts fresh flowers and leaves them in jars all over our apartment. He does not write poetry, but he reads it for fun. He has a pied-à-terre in Paris, a mansion in Buenos Aires. Most importantly, he tangos like a dream. I’m Diego right now for Ava, which means I’m leading and she can close her eyes.”
― Mona Awad, Bunny

“And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you— it’s born with us the day that we are born.”
― Homer, The Iliad

“τέτλαθι δή, κραδίη: καὶ κύντερον ἄλλο ποτ᾽ ἔτλης.
-
Be patient, my heart: for you have endured things worse than this before.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Why cover the same ground again? ... It goes against my grain to repeat a tale told once, and told so clearly.”
― Homer, The Odyssey