49 Quotes by Erika Swyler

She’d started swimming early in the morning, when the kids were asleep, when she thought he was asleep. She didn’t know her absence woke him, that the shift in the bed was an earthquake. When she climbed back in, she smelled like salt and seaweed. Sometimes her hair would still be knotted on top of her head. She tried to keep it dry. She didn’t want him to know. The problem with marrying the mermaid girl from the carnival was knowing that one day she’d swim away.

To think of the time I spend procuring books... How fitting: a book procured me. Utterly fantastic...

I’d not taken you for a fool. Silent yes, but a fool, no.

He sleeps as if making up for years of being awake.

If it’s possible to have a reading hangover, I have one.

They made an oddly joined puzzle, but the pieces fit in the right craggy places.

You killed him too. It just took longer.

A librarian remembers the particular scent of glue and dust, and if we’re so lucky – and I was – the smell of parchment, a quiet tanginess, softer than wood pulp or cotton rag. We would bury ourselves in books until flesh and paper became one and ink and blood at last ran together.

She’d wanted that, a grandfather. Someone who would stay. Michel had an eyetooth that turned sideways and she loved it more than anything else in the world. But someone wasn’t yours because you loved a tooth.