Jo Berliner

“What did those people teach you?" he asked me one night, mystified. "What exactly do Catholics believe?"

I'd been preparing my whole life for this question. "First of all, blood. BLOOD. Second of all, thorns. Third of all, put dirt on your forehead. Do it right now. Fourth of all, Martin Luther was a pig in a cloak. Fifth of all, Jesus is alive, but he's also dead, and he's also immortal, but he's also made of clouds, and his face is a picture of infinite peace, but he also always looks like one of those men in a headache commercial, because you'rec causing him so much suffering whenever you cuss. He is so gentle that sheep seem like demented murderers in his presence, but also rays of sunlight shoot out of his face so hard they can kill people. In fact, they do kill people, and one day they will kill you. He has a tattoo of a daisy on his lower back and he gets his hair permed every eight weeks. He's wearing a flowing white dress, but only because people didn't know about jeans back then. He's holding up two fingers because his dad won't let him have a gun. If he lived on earth, he would have a white truck, plastered with bumper stickers of Calvin peeing on a smaller Calvin who is not a Catholic."

Jason was aghast. "Thorns?" he whispered. "But that's the most dangerous part of the rose.”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy

“I lacked the courage or the knowledge to invent a self,”
― Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy: A Memoir

“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

“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