Brian

“Sally wasn't crying about their dead mother or her cancer. She was crying because her husband, Alfonso, had left her after twenty years for a young woman. It seemed a brutal thing to do, just after her mastectomy. She was devastated, but no, she wouldn't ever divorce him, even though the woman was pregnant and he wanted to marry her.

"They can just wait until I die. I'll be dead soon, probably next year..." Sally wept but the ocean drowned out the sound.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“I exaggerate a lot and I get fiction and reality mixed up, but I don't actually ever lie.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“The day my father killed off my mother was the day he stopped knowing me.”
― Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

“She always seemed dead anyway, but nicely so, like an illustration or an advertisement.”
― Lucia Berlin