Status Updates From The Bloody Chamber and Othe...

"The heavy sword, unsheathed, grey as that November morning, sharp as childbirth, mortal."

"yes, a skull, so utterly denuded, now, of flesh, that it scarcely seemed possible the stark bone had once been richly upholstered with life."

"A dozen husbands impaled a dozen brides while the mewing gulls swung on invisible trapezes in the empty air outside."

"Yet I had not bargained for this, the girl with tears hanging on her cheeks like stuck pearls, her cunt a split fig"

"He stripped me, gourmand that he was, as if he were stripping the leaves off an artichoke – but do not imagine much finesse about it; this artichoke was no particular treat for the diner nor was he yet in any greedy haste. He approached his familiar treat with a weary appetite."

"Married three times within my own brief lifetime to three different graces, now, as if to demonstrate the eclecticism of his taste, he had invited me to join this gallery of beautiful women, I, the poor widow’s child with my mouse-coloured hair that still bore the kinks of the plaits from which it had so recently been freed, my bony hips, my nervous, pianist’s fingers."

"I did not want to remember how he had loved other women before me, but the knowledge often teased me in the threadbare self-confidence of the small hours."

"I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother’s apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage."