Arnetta Scorgie

“He thought what happened to me would … destroy, would disillusion me about the Bureau, and he enjoys seeing the destruction of faith, it’s his favorite thing. It’s like the church collapses he used to collect. The pile of rubble in Italy when the church collapsed on all the grandmothers at that special Mass and somebody stuck a Christmas tree in the top of the pile, he loved that.”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal

“With our beloved prairie voles the female has her ovulation induced by the smell of male urine. It’s a sure sign there’s a male nearby and so her body gets ready for mating. The exact opposite of a human female getting a whiff of urinals in a nightclub and her vagina falling off in disgust”
― Sara Pascoe

“Not a single family finds itself exempt from that one haunted casualty who suffered irreparable damage in the crucible they entered at birth. Where some children can emerge from conditions of soul-killing abuse and manage to make their lives into something of worth and value, others can’t limp away from the hurts and gleanings time decanted for them in flawed beakers of memory. They carry the family cross up the hill toward Calvary and don’t mind letting every other member of their aggrieved tribe in on the source of their suffering. There is one crazy that belongs to each of us: the brother who kills the spirit of any room he enters; the sister who’s a drug addict in her teens and marries a series of psychopaths, always making sure she bears their children, who carry their genes of madness to the grave. There’s the neurotic mother who’s so demanding that the sound of her voice over the phone can cause instant nausea in her daughters. The variations are endless and fascinating. I’ve never attended a family reunion where I was not warned of a Venus flytrap holding court among the older women, or a pitcher plant glistening with drops of sweet poison trying to sell his version of the family maelstrom to his young male cousins. When the stories begin rolling out, as they always do, one learns of feuds that seem unbrokerable, or sexual abuse that darkens each tale with its intimation of ruin. That uncle hates that aunt and that cousin hates your mother and your sister won’t talk to your brother because of something he said to a date she later married and then divorced. In every room I enter I can sniff out unhappiness and rancor like a snake smelling the nest of a wren with its tongue. Without even realizing it, I pick up associations of distemper and aggravation. As far as I can tell, every family produces its solitary misfit, its psychotic mirror image of all the ghosts summoned out of the small or large hells of childhood, the spiller of the apple cart, the jack of spades, the black-hearted knight, the shit stirrer, the sibling with the uncontrollable tongue, the father brutal by habit, the uncle who tried to feel up his nieces, the aunt too neurotic ever to leave home. Talk to me all you want about happy families, but let me loose at a wedding or a funeral and I’ll bring you back the family crazy. They’re that easy to find.”
― Pat Conroy, The Death of Santini: The Story of a Father and His Son

“She turned and walked towards Krupp. She moved like smoke from the end of a cigarette in a still room, languorous, smooth. Her beauty stopped the conversation of the few people she walked past. Eyes of envy, lust, admiration, longing, followed her every move as she glided through the sumptuously furnished, dimly lit Champagne Bar. Krupp realised she was moving through the room deliberately towards him. He held his breath again as she approached him. His heart thumped against his lungs, making it hard to breathe out. Krupp sat up and he gulped when she saw him and looked straight into his eyes. He felt a tingle up his spine as she seemed to float, slowly, like a ghostly spirit between the tables. He wondered if she was real or a spectre. This could not possibly be Freya, he thought, and yet there was something …
She arrived at the table. She relaxed a knee. Their eyes met, a small smile on her lips. Krupp suddenly remembered his manners and stood, hauling himself up with the aid of his stick and the arm of the sofa. It could not have been an elegant move, he thought with annoyance. He should have remained seated.
“May I join you?” she said in perfect German.”
― Hugo Woolley, The Wasp Trap: Book 3 in the Charlotte's War Trilogy