Julie Bryant

“That there are no real rules that govern why some are born in turmoil and others never know a single day in which the next seems an ill-considered bet. It’s all lottery, Ana, all chance. It’s the flick of a coin, and we are born.”
― Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt

“The conversation, once everyone sat for dinner, was painstaking, fifteen people desperately waiting their turn to insert an opinion, nobody concerned with what anybody else thought about anything. Perhaps every conversation played out like this, and it was only now, aware of every move, every reaction, that Carmen realized it was a miracle human beings learned anything about each other at all.”
― Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt

“It was minor abuse. He’d touched Jeanette twice only, over her clothes. Just her breasts, Jeanette had said. That minor and abuse could even fit in the same sentence seemed preposterous. There was no minor in abuse, there was no Thank God, it could have been worse. Sexual abuse was no car accident.”
― Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt

“She mistook happiness for what it was - how we build lives out of the strings we hold. But we should have known deep down that she was lying to herself. She had said I knew the secret, what was really important in life, what made a person happy. If that was true, it didn't make sense when she went back home and left all that 'happiness' behind.”
― Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt: A Novel