77 Quotes by Lucia Berlin

The day my father killed off my mother was the day he stopped knowing me.

I like my job in emergency. Blood, bones, tendons seem like affirmations to me. I am awed by the human body, by its endurance. Thank God – because it’ll be hours before X-Ray or Demerol. Maybe I’m morbid. I am fascinated by two fingers in a baggie, a glittering switchblade all the way out of a lean pimp’s back. I like the fact, in Emergency, everything is reparable, or not.

Some lady at a bridge party somewhere started the rumor that to test the honesty of a cleaning woman you leave little rosebud ashtrays around with loose change in them, here and there. My solution to this is to always add a few pennies, even a dime.

Whenever Ter read a book, rarely – he would rip each page off and throw it away. I would come home, to where the windows were always open or broken and the whole room would be swirling with pages, like Safeway lot pigeons.

I’ve never understood how so many barely literate people read the Bible so much. It’s hard.