Mila

“Outside, a streetcar rumbles past, bell clanging. Streetcars must have been going past all this time. Why then has the effect been silence? Silence and his breath, their breaths, labouring, withheld, trying not to make any noise. Or not too much noise. Why should pleasure sound so much like distress? Like someone wounded. He'd put his hand over her mouth.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Women have curious ways of hurting someone else. They hurt themselves instead; or else they do it so the guy doesn't even know he's been hurt until much later.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“She wished him to owe his recovery to her alone - to her care, to her tireless devotion. That is the other side of selflessness: it tyranny.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Hands like stumps: those hands could rescue you or beat you to a pulp and they would look the same while doing either thing.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin