love n relations

  • “in the semi-darkness we could stretch out our arms, when the Aunts weren’t looking, and touch each other’s hands across space” (ch1, pg10)

  • “i hunger to commit the act of touch” (ch2, pg17)

  • “arousal and orgasm are no longer thought necessary; they would be a symptom of frivolity merely” (ch16, pg101)

  • “it’s so good to be touched by someone, to be felt so greedily, to see so greedy” (ch 17, pg 106)

  • “i want to be with someone” (ch18, pg109)

  • “it’s lack of love we die from” (ch18, pg109)

  • “can i be blamed for wanting a real body, to put my arms around?” (ch18, pg109)

  • “someone has spiked the grape juice…. we too need our orgies” (ch21, pg131)

  • “each of us holds in her lap a phantom, a ghost baby” (ch21, pg133)

  • “some approach to true love…. i think about the blood coming out of him, hot as soup, sexual, over my hands” (ch23, pg146)

  • “for him, I must remember, I am only a whim” (ch25, pg164)

  • “i would pretend not to be present, not in the flesh” (ch26, pg165)

  • “he was no longer a thing to me” (ch26, pg166)

  • “you can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself. nevertheless i was jealous” (ch26, pg166)

  • “that night, after I’d lost my job, Luke wanted me to make love. Why didn’t I wanted to? Desperation alone should have driven me” (ch28, pg187)

  • “how were we to know we were happy, even then? Because we at least had that: arms around” (ch29, pg198)

  • “we could even have a fight about that, about unimportant, important. what a luxury it would be” (ch31, pg206)

    • “Love is not the point” (ch34, pg 228)

  • “the more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. ” (ch34, pg233)

  • “the fabric of his sleeve is raspy against my skin, so unaccustomed lately to being touched” (ch37, pg244)

  • “then i would knock softly, a beggar’s knock” (ch41, pg276)

    • on secret relationship w Nick

  • “neither of us says the world love, not once. it would be tempting fate; it would be romance, bad luck” (ch41, pg278)

  • “she has died that I may live” (ch45, pg294)