When she pulled the ribbon out of her mattress, at first light the next morning, it was brown.
When I was four I was watching ants walking up Stove and she ran and splatted them all so they wouldn’t eat our food. One minute they were alive and the next minute they were dirt. I cried so my eyes...
We spend most of our lives holding on to objects, he thought, and finally they fall from our cold dead hands and those who tidy up after us have the worry of what to do with all this stuff.
Wasn't it so often the girl --no matter how young-- who got blamed for having incited her molester with a look?
The girl remembered London as a place of infinite freedom. Now it seemed she'd rented out her whole life to the Joneses in advance. Service had reduced her to a child, put her under orders to get up a...
The Dora bag has straps, it’s like Backpack but with Dora on it instead of Backpack’s face. It has a handle too, when I try it pulls up, I think I broke it, but then it rolls, it’s a wheelie bag and a...
Thank you. Lib tried to think of some more conversational note to end on. It’s always intrigued me, she said, letting her voice rise, why you Sisters of Mercy are called walking nuns. We walk out into...
Swiping’s bad but if I was a swiper I’d swipe good stuff like cars and chocolates.
Sometimes love is a pie. There just isn't enough to go around. Or OK, maybe there is enough love, but not enough time and attention, so you have to grab your piece, and then the pie smashes and you're...
She wants to slap everyone today, to pick up the whole sweat-slick City and punch its lights out.
She leaped into space, high, higher than she'd ever been in her life. She came down with a clean snap, and the crowd scattered like birds from the swing of her feet.
No point my telling you he's not worth it, I suppose. . . I've seen enough men in my time. Whoever he is, he's not worth what you'll pay.
My eyes dawdled across the missalette. I had never noticed before that the official title of the ‘Lord have mercy’ prayer was the gracious phrase ‘Invitation to Sorrow’. Hey there, Sorrow, how’ve you...
Jenny wouldn't be dead if she'd never crashed into Blanche on Kearny Street. P'tit wouldn't exist if Blanche had never met Arthur. Facts as hard as rocks, and Blanche has to pick her way among them, f...
It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. When a bit of me hurts, I always mind.
It's all real in Outside, everything there is, because I saw an airplane in the blue between the clouds. Ma and me can't go there because we don't know the secret code, but it's real all the same.Befo...
It was easy to lose a part of your body, it seemed to her; there were so many ways, it was a wonder anybody reached their death intact.
It stands to reason that those who assault nature will suffer at her hands in the end.
It occurs to Blanche that English doesn't have French's useful distinction between , meaning that something's unconstrained, and , meaning that it costs nothing. thought, speech, love: the English...
If he guessed his mistake, if he wanted me back, I thought, let him suffer and work for it as I had worked and suffered. Let him follow me over a mountain of iron and a lake of glass, and wear out thr...