Jo Berliner

“What a comfort is this journal. I tell myself to myself and throw the burden on my book and feel relieved.”
― Anne Lister, I Know My Own Heart: The Diaries, 1791-1840

“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

“How did we end up here? There was a moment, when she first turned back that blanket, when we looked into each other’s eyes and a blue current crackled between us and our bodies made a sudden decision: we were going to say the word “cum” to each other. It had to be done; the story had given us no choice; there was no turning back. “Who did it?” we wonder. She thinks it must have been a pervert who “gets off on voyeurism of porno,” but I think it was probably a businessman with a hotel fetish who shouted the word “amenities!” as he came. “A jizzness man, you mean,” she says, and I feel like I just taught a baby how to read.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy: A Memoir

“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