Status Updates From Boating for Beginners

It's one thing to be confused in the world's eyes, but to be confused in your own eyes is where the problem starts.

She wondered about her memory. Would it be less painful if she could remember nothing? Was most pain a product of memory? She set herself, then, to think forward, to think of ways to survive. It must be possible.

Two thousand of her books ended in marriage; three hundred saw the male suitor going off to foreign parts with a broken heart; one hundred and fifty showed how a woman rejected may exact horrible vengeance and the other fifty had an untimely death just when the star-crossed lovers were nearing their final happiness. And Noah had said she could only take ten.

Then it had got more ambitious, more sinister; but it wasn't his fault, was it? He was a man pushed by grief and she had grieved him. An idea occurred to Noah at that moment: when he sat down to re-draft Genesis, he'd make sure everyone knew where the blame lay.
Women; they're all the same....

“Flood myths,” answered her bright friend sagely. “What seems outrageous to one generation becomes a commonplace to the next. You think this can’t happen; but later, when it’s history, no one will be surprised.”

(…) We can do our best to warn people as soon as we can prove it, but what makes you think anyone is going to believe a zoo keeper, a transsexual and a member of the rich middle class? Only if Noah starts getting that boat under way and it starts to rain, do we stand a chance of making them see sense. Would you believe this story? I wouldn't. A flood; when has there ever been a flood? It's not part of our history.

[Gloria] didn't know that on the wild nights no one can call you home except the one who knows your name. For Mrs Munde the wild nights came very often, her lion heart being what it was. She couldn't risk not reaching home again; and so if the Lord could bring her home, and the Lord wanted her to make hamburgers, she was going to do it. It seemed to her like a bargain.

She didn't know that on the wild nights no one can call you home except the one who knows your name. For Mrs Munde the wild nights came very often, her lion heart being what it was. She couldn't risk not reaching home again; and so if the Lord could bring her home, and the Lord wanted her to make hamburgers, she was going to do it. It seemed to her like a bargain.

(…) Suddenly she was offered a choice that gave her the space to be safe and eccentric at the same time. She took it, and the mind gave way a little — as minds do in the face of a massive compromise that can't be articulated. She's soggy round the edges and peculiar in her outlook but her heart is still loud; and to keep the roaring inside, however you do it, must be worth something.

When Mrs Munde delivered herself into the everlasting hands of the Almighty she did so because her heart was too loud for this muffled world. She was out of place. She loved the stars and she had no one to talk to; she found romance and it wasn't enough. She was not free-thinking in a sense that would have allowed her to question the institutions that made her moody: her family, her marriage, her career prospects.(.)

Something you love is never far away because you know it so well, because it has become part of you.

When Marlene had left to visit her dentist, Gloria sat back and sighed. 'Desi, are there really people who …'
Desi interrupted her. 'There are always people who ... whatever you can think of. Whatever combination, innovation or desperation, there are always people who …'

It was the first time that Gloria had been shocked out of her autonomous inner life. She lived at the bottom of a deep pool where her mother and the rest of the world were only seen as vague shadows on the surface.
Now she was being forced into a graceless breaststroke to find out what everyone else was talking about.

It was perhaps this book alone that had saved Gloria from becoming a complete emotional invertebrate.

At eighteen she realised that she would never have the bone structure to be decadent…

i can’t believe how casual this woman is about losing her whole arm 😭😭