10 Quotes by Monica Starkman

Each night they left the balcony door open so they could hear the surf lapping against the sand. And, once when the wind was high, and the waves pounded against the beach, he'd smoothed her hair and whispered, after having proved it so, 'Sex is like a storm; it gathers, it roars. And then it settles into stillness.

Can a therapist make me not want to get pregnant? Can a therapist undo the trouble with my eggs, my hormones, and whatever else isn't working? I can't help it, but it feels like an insult for the doctor to send me there. Like telling people with cancer they can think themselves healthy if they try hard enough to visualize their immune cells as little sharks gobbling up the tumor. It's just blaming the victim.

Pain was always cruel, but it was cruelest when it came to children. Sometimes she would see a child she recognized from a prior hospitalization, going through the admissions procedure. Crying not in the indignant frightened way first-timers cried, but weeping silently, as if grieving the inevitable separation and pain to come

God turned evil into good... God is gracious.

Once home where she could cry, no tears came. Only thoughts weighted with sorrow. Never to initiate life. Never to feel life moving inside her. Never to bring forth life and nourish it with sustenance from her own body.

And, now once again, Margo is enveloped by yards and yards of silence.

The cruelty of it. The desecration, Margo thought with disgust. Mangling an imperfect body because of an imperfect mind.

The cruelty of it. The desecration, Margo thought with disgust. Mangling a perfect body because of an imperfect mind.

Something out of nothing, she thought. The perfect parallel to pregnancy.