Julie Bryant

“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

“I thought, for the first time, My God. Nobody asked you either, Mary. Nobody asked if God could build a temple out of you, if you wanted to turn your life into an offering.”
― Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt

“She knew a woman could learn to resent this post, but she would instead find a hundred books to read”
― 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