Quotes Flashcards
(12 cards)
“Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”
‘We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance. You have to work at it.’
“Better never means better for everyone… It always means worse, for some.”
‘Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?
‘The night is mine, my own time, to do with as I will, as long as I am quiet.’
Chapter 7
‘I ought to feel hatred for this man… I don’t know what to call it. It isn’t love.’
‘Give me children or else I die’
Chapter 11
‘This is not recreation, even for the Commander. This is serious business. The Commander, too, is doing his duty’
Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it.
I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will . . . Now the flesh arranges itself differently. I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear, which is hard and more real than I am and glows red within its translucent wrapping.
The problem wasn’t only with the women, he says. The main problem was with the men. There was nothing for them anymore . . . I’m not talking about sex, he says. That was part of it, the sex was too easy . . . You know what they were complaining about the most? Inability to feel. Men were turning off on sex, even. They were turning off on marriage. Do they feel now? I say. Yes, he says, looking at me. They do.
