Naomi’s Reviews > The Power Notebooks > Status Update

“Virginia Woolf on economic independence: ‘What a change of temper a fixed income will bring about….I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.’”

“Of course, right behind the fear that I can’t manage on my own is another more terrifying fear: that I can. I am not looking. I am not happy or unhappy. It is like a peace treaty has been signed without my realizing it. The restlessness a former version of myself would have felt has been pushed away, repurposed into efficiency. It is an intoxicating feeling, not needing anyone, but also isolating in itself.”

I am loving this book. Every page is quotable. “D and I are convalescing. I’m getting over my eight years with H and the collapse of our marriage; D is getting over a girlfriend he was with for a little while. What we both need is an old-fashioned sanatorium in the Alps with wicker chaise lounges and nurses serving us iced tea and cold mountain air. What we have is each other.”

“My sister Emily once said to me, ‘There is no man anywhere so psychotic, so drunk, so helpless, so brutal, so indifferent, even just so annoying, that some woman somewhere isn’t dying to take care of him.”

“I tried to think about this from his point of view. When you no longer love someone you are living with, signs of their continuing existence are annoying. You would prefer that they would cooperatively go out in a puff of smoke, and their stubborn refusal to do so can feel unfair.”