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The doctor frowned. ‘This excitement troubles me,’ he said. ‘It is intoxicating, certainly, but might it not also be dangerous? An effect of the atmosphere of Hill House? The first sign that we have—as it were—fallen under a spell?’ ‘Then I will be an enchanted princess,’ Theodora said.

A most suitable spot, certainly; more suitable for suicides, I would think, than for books.

"Let’s just take a ride. We can figure it out later.” I stood and she smiled with real relief. Even with the new hair, new body, and new clothes, I could read her like the Bible. I spared myself her face, and whatever promises were written there, as I turned away and walked back toward the department store, leaving a trail of floral and citrus behind me.

No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice.

“That was the thing about violence. When you went looking for it you definitely were going to find it. It just wouldn't be at a time of your own choosing. It jumped up and splattered your nice new boots before you were really ready."

Don’t do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don’t do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.

Before I opened the door, I said, “I love you,” tossing the words over my shoulder like a handful of wildflower seeds.

“His empty hands. Hands that had held his boy when he was barely ten minutes old. The hands that had shown him how to tie his shoes. The hands that had rubbed salve on his chest when he'd had the flu. That had waved goodbye to him in court with shackles tight around his wrists. Rough callused hands that he hid in his pockets when Isiah's husband had offered to shake them.”

Buddy Lee had it all wrong. Ike wasn't afraid to get his hands dirty. He wasn't afraid to spill blood. He was afraid he wouldn't be able to stop.

That’s what you and Annie have together, this silly sadness. Arletha couldn’t have lived up to your imaginary mom adoring you from heaven. Hattie Lee was trifling since the day she was born, but I guess Annie will figure that out on her own. Y’all both are so devoted, but you've been more to each other than what either of your mammies ever gave. So give Annie some of that devotion you have been wasting on a daydream.

Even before the words launched from my tongue, I knew how ridiculous it sounded. My mother didn’t murder herself, but there was part of me that believed that if she had loved me more, she would’ve figured out how not to die that day. But that part of me was buried under so many layers of sadness, that I couldn’t make out its shape or edges.

The earthquake is the thing all humans face: the banal inevitability of death. We don’t know when it will come, but we know that it will. We take refuge in elaborate precautions, but in the end they are all in vain. We think about it even when we are not thinking about it; after a while it seems to define what we are. It comes most often for the old, but we feel it most cruelly when it also takes away the young.

It was another enactment of the ancient dialogue, its lines written centuries ago, between the entreating voices of women and the oblivious, overbearing dismissiveness of old men.

So what do you do when you're too big, in a world where bigness is cast as a moral failing? You fold yourself up like origami, you make yourself smaller in other ways, you take up less space with your personality, since you can't with your body. You diet. You starve, you run till you taste blood in your throat, you count out your almonds, you try to buy back your humanity with pounds of flesh.

“Please don’t forget: I am my body. When my body gets smaller, it is still me. When my body gets bigger, it is still me. There is not a thin woman inside me, awaiting excavation. I am one piece.”

Fully down the rabbit hole at this point.

“They didn’t cry,” Kaneta said. “There was no emotion at all. The loss was so profound, and death had come so suddenly. They understood the facts of their situation individually—that they had lost their homes, lost their livelihoods, and lost their families. They understood each piece, but they couldn’t see it as a whole, and they couldn’t understand what they should do, or sometimes even where they were."

I think what is becoming clear is that Lindy has a much better time hanging out with her friends than she does being relegated to the "guest room" while her husband shares the master bedroom of the house SHE OWNS with his (now their) other girlfriend. You don't need to be a part of this throuple, Lindy, you need a goddamn divorce. This man gaslit you into believing monogamy is slavery. My God.

The backlash to this book, has all these folks lashing (and acting) out, Lindy says in chapter titled "Good Kneivel" that she isn't clumsy, she curates her pain, and only shows what she wants us to see - so why then are they all so shocked and upset people think the husband is an asshole?

So the backlash to this book, which has all these folks lashing out, she says in chapter titled "Good Kneivel" that she isn't clumsy, she curates her pain, and only sees what she wants us to see - so why then are they all so shocked people think the husband is an asshole?

It doesn't sound like she's rationalizing polyamory so much as polygamy. But also, this is tail wagging the dog a bit... her husband got a girlfriend first, she's backing into being okay with it. Seems like ethically, it should go the other way? Anyway. This all dovetails nicely with the self-hatred. Cool, cool, cool.

I like Lindy West & I want to be on board, but "my husband told me once upon a time he wants to be polyam, and then years later I started getting calls about him kissing other women in bars, so it's my problem" is not.. it??? Girl. Wtf. No.

FOMO won out. Everyone has an opinion on this book and I WANT TO HAVE ONE TOO. But, considering The Discourse™ - I at least want to be (moderately) well informed.

Its name was Okawa; it lay in a forgotten fold of Japan, below hills and among rice fields, close to the mouth of a great river. I traveled to this obscure place, and spent days and weeks there. In the years that followed, I encountered many survivors and stories of the tsunami, but it was to Okawa that I returned time and again. And it was there, at the school, that I eventually became able to imagine.

She searches for words, trying not to cry, her tongue trying to find somewhere to hide as her teeth chatter. Ted has never carried a heavier guilt, because it’s himself he’s looking at then, every time his mom raised her voice. It is an act of violence when an adult yells at a child, all adults know that deep down, because all were once little. Yet we still do it. Time after time, we fail at being human beings.

You can’t love someone out of addiction, all the oceans are the tears of those who have tried. We’re not allowed to die for our children, the universe won’t let us, because then there wouldn’t be any mothers left.

“Doesn’t your generation understand irony?” he says. “Does YOUR generation understand irony?” she asks back at once, and he can’t work out if she’s being ironic or not. So he presumes she wins.

They stare at each other, the thirty-nine-year-old and the eighteen-year-old, with funerals in their eyes. It’s hard to cope with seeing yourself in someone else.

The artist was fourteen years old and knew nothing about art, but one day he would be grown-up and celebrated around the world, and would realize that he still only knew the same simple things: Art is a moment. Art is being a reason. Art is coping with being alive for one more week.