sienna’s Reviews > On the Calculation of Volume III > Status Update

"The truth was, Olga said, that neither of us was right—there are no real events in the midst of the eighteenth of November. It's like a dream, and there's nothing you can do. The question is how to prepare yourself to wake up."

"Do women leave under the cover of darkness? Do they slip into the night alone while the children are sleeping? Do they tiptoe out at first light and close the door behind them without a sound? Do they take their leave with a glance at the town's name, a blue sign at a nearly deserted station? I don't know, but I don't see anyone waving."

I didn't like how he divided the world into two piles, one for each of us, when the world was full of what was shared...Men's thoughts had passed through women's minds, women's thoughts had been shared with men, and men had passed them on to other men, who had then shared them with women. All of them filtered through each other. I didn't understand why he wanted to split the world in two...It was all interwoven.

"Who told Homer his first stories? How could we possibly know which stories had been crafted by men when everything small children heard came from women? The first author in history, or at least the first one we know of, was a woman. Everyone knows that, I said. He didn't, he said. He had filled our glasses with water, and I took a sip or two before admitting that I couldn't remember her name."