Haley

“Human life is quick. I do not mean: Life is short. I mean: The reason we feel like certain significant days happened only yesterday is because they did. Many of us have bodies that age preposterously out of proportion with how young we are. It’s like aging in theater time. We’re all seven-year-olds hired to play the parts of adults. A decade is not long. Two decades is not long. We say it is because we weigh it against the end of our life span. Our life spans are short and do not give us time to feel temporally in proportion.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“What a human in a dark room who has lost the ability to see themselves or others does not need is a metaphor. More effective would be to say, If you feel alone, you are. I’m sorry I cannot join you in that dark space but I won’t offend you with a metaphor. Yet. Grief is a bad mirror. It shows you manipulated images of yourself, your will, and the future. It cannot show you how the small work you do will add up to yourself. Inch by inch.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“When someone dies, where does the way they eat egg rolls go? No response.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“They were so quick to define you, to pin you down to something. Who didn’t like music? What dead person didn’t have a great smile? A great laugh? No one was calling you these things when you were alive. Alive, you got to be just you. Dead, they needed to encapsulate you, harness you into a favorite movie they could buy, a favorite motto they could tattoo. No one got that you were those things primarily because you were you, not because they made you.”
― Gus Moreno, This Thing Between Us