58 Quotes by Carmen Maria Machado

You have always suspected that you are shallow when it comes to desire, and there it was: all of those factors flipped your brain inside out and turned your cunt to pudding. Maybe you were always some kind of hedonist-cum-social climber-cum-cummer and you just never knew it.

No, Novikov's time traveler is the tragic dupe who realizes too late her trip to the past is what sealed the very fate she'd meant to prevent.

We deserve to have our wrongdoing represented as much as our heroism, because when we refuse wrongdoing as a possibility for a group of people, we refuse their humanity.

You tried to tell your story to people who didn't know how to listen.

But this story? This one's mine.

Every time her hand moves somewhere else, she whispers, “May I?” and the thrill of saying yes, yes, is like the pulsing of the tide over your face, and you would gladly drown that way, giving permission.

(If you read this story out loud, please use the following voices:ME: as a child, high-pitched, forgettable; as a woman, the same.THE BOY WHO WILL GROW INTO A MAN, AND BE MY SPOUSE: robust with serendipity.MY FATHER: kind, booming; like your father, or the man you wish was your father.MY SON: as a small child, gentle, sounding with the faintest of lisps; as a man, like my husband.ALL OTHER WOMEN: interchangeable with my own.)

The moral of that story, I think, is that being poor will kill you.

Do you ever wonder if the girls who come in here realize they're gonna grow up exactly as fucked as we are?