Emily > Recent Status Updates

“[Violet] hadn’t expected that love — if this was what she had felt — to be so similar to fear.”

“In every cloud, in every tree — filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded by her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women — my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!”

“We have each had a commencement, and each stumbled and tottered on the threshold and had our teachers scorned instead of aiding us, we should stumble and totter yet.”

“Take my books away and I should be desperate!”

“No books?” I exclaimed. “How do you contrive to live here without them?”

Sure seems like Catherine probably has a personality disorder like borderline.

“Man on can [Chef Boyardee] have two chins! That tell you it not good for you!”

“I just know I’m lousy at being friends with people.”

“Maybe you were trying to be friends with the wrong people?”

The author writes, “You’re welcome,” several times in the author’s note at the end, and I find this grating and rather cocky.

“‘I’ve taken precautions. We will be married 35 years this month. Don’t start doubting me now.’”

“‘Doubt and fear are not the same thing.’”

“Why am I the way I am? … Why was I cruel to Folk? Why was I awful to you? Because I could be. Because I liked it. Because, for a moment, when I was at my worst, I felt powerful, and most of the time, I felt powerless.”

“What does it say about a culture when its language describes people unequally? How is the language informing the culture? How do we expect people to use it?”

“Let’s clarify: to define something is to put boundaries around it. Everything within must be pertinent.”

“Sorry. Ope, sorry.” “Sorry. sorry! Ope.” And now you know this book takes place in the Midwest haha.

“A [drag] queen always lands on her heels.”

“There is something magically lovely about watching people sing. It’s like watching people be their most person. It’s like watching them be their true true.”

A trigger warning for this part would be good. It’s not graphic, but there is a depiction of panic connected with sexual assault in here, somewhere between 60-70% through the book.