77 Quotes by Lucia Berlin

The bus is late. Cars drive by. Rich people n cars never look at people on the street, at all. Poor ones always do ... in fact it sometimes seems they're just driving around, looking at people on the street. I've done that. Poor people wait a lot. Welfare, unemployment lines, laundromats, phone booths, emergency rooms, jails, etc.

On the plane to Mexico City, I thought about how death shreds time. My ordinary life had vanished.

I get mad at everyone because they are working, living. Sometimes I hate you because you're not dying. Isn't that awful?

Los borrachos están indefectiblemente solos. Los suicidas vienen acompañados al menos por otra persona, en general varias más. Que tal vez era la idea en un principio. Mínimo dos agentes de la policía de Oakland. Al final he entendido por qué el suicidio se considera delito.

By late afternoon I'm ready to strangle Riva Chirenko's daughter. I don't know her name. Nobody calls her Mrs. Tomanovich. She's Mr. Tomanovich's wife. Riva's daughter. Irena Tomanovich's mother. She's what's wrong with all of us women, that schleppe from the steppe. But at other times it is this same woman, Riva Chirenko's daughter, that I respect, revere. If I could only accept as she has done, just accept. Acceptance is faith, Henry Miller said. I could strangle him too.

He must think her one of those aggressive competent American women. I am competent, she thought, her head lying on the edge of the boat, tears swept away by the high waves.

One of my mother's favorite expressions is "Life is fraught with peril.

Fear, poverty, alcoholism, loneliness are terminal illnesses. Emergencies, in fact.

The world just goes along. Nothing much matters, you know? I mean really matters. but then sometimes, just for a second, you get this grace, this belief that it does matter, a whole lot.