Books

“She cleared her throat once or twice, and said something about poor people should eat a lot of herrings, as they were most nutritious, also she had heard poor people eat heaps of sheeps' heads and she went on to ask if I ever cooked them. I said I would rather be dead than cook or eat a sheep's head; I'd seen them in butchers' shops with awful eyes and bits of wool sticking to their skulls. After that helpful hints for the poor were forgotten.”

"Sometimes I think I'm the only one in our neighborhood with any worthwhile dreams. I have two, and there's no reason to be ashamed of either one. I want to kill Vadim. And I want to write a book about my mother."

"My voice stayed even through this, but I wasn’t trying. It was this thing still inside me- this quiet that had hold of my limbs and seemed to be running the rest of me."

"Maybe it will be good to remember the feeling of being alone. I’m always running around telling everyone how important it is for people to be alone for a while, which is weird because the only thing I learned while living alone was that I hate myself."

"Sometimes it’s fun to know no one at a party — some other high school’s kegger or an asshole’s blowout in a posh hotel — but a casual champagne engagement brunch in someone’s apartment on a Sunday morning isn't one of them. "