Jo Berliner

“A trick I often use, when I feel overwhelming shame or regret, or brokenness beyond repair, is to think of a line I especially love, or a poem that arrived like lightning, and remember that it wouldn't have come to me if anything in my life had happened differently. Not that way. Not in those words.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

“Did you know rats in big cities are getting aggressive from eating too many cigarette butts? They're addicted to nicotine and they want more." - Karen Lockwood, nearly screaming, while eating an omelet at a breakfast restaurant in the year of our Lord 2013”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

“This is the secret: when I encounter myself on the page, I am shocked at how forceful I seem. On the page I am strong, because that is where I put my strength. On the page I am everything that I am not, because that is where I put myself. I am no longer whispering through the small skirted shape of a keyhole: the door is knocked down and the roof is blown off and I am aimed once more at the entire wide night.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

“How am I still held by the code of silence? Why do I feel it's a betrayal to even write this down, these facts that float freely in the public domain? "Oh, a member of the media," as if the collection, arrangement, and publication of the facts is the real crime. Renata Adler wrote: " 'He has suffered enough' meant if we investigate this matter any further, it will turn out our friends are in it, too.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy