Black Glass: Short Fictions

by Karen Joy Fowler

An early work from PEN/Faulkner Award winner and Man Booker finalist Karen Joy Fowler, reissued and beautifully repackaged for new fans and old. First published in 1998 to high praise, and now reissued with the addition of a prefatory essay, Black Glass showcases the extraordinary talents of this prizewinning author. In fifteen gemlike tales, Fowler lets her wit and vision roam freely, turning accepted norms inside out and fairy tales upside down—pushing us to reconsider our unquestioned verities and proving once again that she is among our most subversive writers.So, Here is Carry Nation loose again, breaking up discos, smashing topless bars, radicalizing women as she preaches clean living to men more intent on babes and booze. And here is Mrs. Gulliver, her patience with her long-voyaging Lemuel worn Money is short and the kids can’t even remember what their dad looks like. And what of Tonto, the ever-faithful companion, turning forty without so much as a birthday phone call from that masked man? It is a book full of great themes and terrific stories—but it is the way in which Fowler tells the tale, develops plot and character, plays with time, chance, and reality that makes these pieces so original.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Collections, Literature, Short Story Collection

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 15, 1998

About the author

Karen Joy Fowler is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels and three short story collections. Her 2004 novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler’s previous novel, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the 2001 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Her debut novel, Sarah Canary, won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian, was listed for the Irish Times International Fiction Prize as well as the Bay Area Book Reviewers Prize, and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler’s short story collection Black Glass won the World Fantasy Award in 1999, and her collection What I Didn’t See won the World Fantasy Award in 2011. Her most recent novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction and was short-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Her new novel Booth published in March 2022.

She is the co-founder of the Otherwise Award and the current president of the Clarion Foundation (also known as Clarion San Diego). Fowler and her husband, who have two grown children and seven grandchildren, live in Santa Cruz, California. Fowler also supports a chimp named Caesar who lives at the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone.

Reviews

[Kitty | MyCuriousReads · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm…

I genuinely feel ambivalent towards the collection of short stories in Black Glass. However, I have an appreciation for Karen Joy Fowler’s voice on the page.

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

What do you do with a book when your head clashes with your heart? How do you possibly rate it?

That’s the dilemma I face with Black Glass. The collection has been dubbed “ferociously imaginative and provocative” and I absolutely agree. Karen Joy Fowler is a superb writer and her blending of magical-realist elements are innovative, erudite and risk-taking. I could not help but admire these stories – each and every one.

There are some, of course, that particularly shine. Lieserl, an epistolary story that focuses on Albert Einstein’s first daughter, is particularly well-written. It helps, though, to know the back-story of Einstein’s callous abnegation of responsibility for Liserl to truly appreciate what Ms. Fowler is accomplishing. Another strong story, The Faithful Companion at Forty, is a wickedly satirical piece about Tonto and his midlife meltdown and soul-searching about the Lone Ranger’s narcissism and disrespect (“For every day, for your ordinary life, a mask is only going to make you more obvious. There’s an element of exhibitionism in it.”)

Then there are others – the title story, by far the longest, when an introspective DEA agent summons a hatchet-wielding zombie, personified in the temperance crusader Carry Nation…and then is forced to combat her with voodoo. It’s daring, experimental, ferociously intelligent and, at times, downright hallucinatory. Then there’s The Elizabeth Complex, a clinical-study-of-sorts, integrating three Elizabeths into one: Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth Taylor and Lizzie Borden.

So – Carry Nation, Queen Elizabeth, Tonto, Albert Einstein, Mrs. Gulliver, a Japanese Christ-like messiah – all of them and more in a collection that shimmers with craft, inventiveness and more than a touch of outrageousness. If I were a professional critic, that’s the recipe for a 5-star read. But I’m not, and reading is subjective. The magical and sci-fi elements made me gasp in admiration, but I can’t say that it got inside my heart. It’s sort of like standing in an elegant window and seeing a totally original dress…all the time knowing that it would be perfect for someone else, but it’s not really “speaking” to you. The fault, I’m afraid, is in this reader, not in the author. Black Glass is not for everyone but it’s certainly for those who seek an inspired narrative voice.

[Sterlingcindysu · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the blurb above says, most of the stories are puzzling...not necessarily bad because when you figure it out you feel pretty smart. And if you don't figure it out, well, humph. Maybe you're not supposed to figure out everything in life. There has to be some mystery somewhere.

For example, in the last story, Game Night at the Fox and Goose...well, the woman who changes to a man--does he take her to another universe? And not return her? Is it worse? What happens?? A great article on this short story is at http://ltimmelduchamp.com/node/83. That one I didn't get. But the one, Elizabeth Complex, I caught the three Elizabeths (and perhaps thought she was referencing more) and I enjoyed that one.

I thought I had read something of hers before, but no. She has the perfect writer's name! It seems "published."

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I almost gave this 4 stars because a few of the stories weren't so strong. But is every novel I give 5 stars to perfect from beginning to end? Certainly not. I think the strong stories will stay with me for long time, and they are enough to make this collection excellent.

[Susan (aka Just My Op) · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I have learned to distrust words, even my own.”

This collection of short stories is nothing if not odd. Some of the stories I really enjoyed, some not so much. “Black Glass,” the first story in the book, falls into the first category. It is strange, disjointed, and wonderfully creepy.

There are no realities. There are too many realities. Time is meaningless. Contradictions are the norm. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it just felt as though the author couldn't decide which storyline she wanted to follow. And there were the ones that had me mentally scratching my head – huh? What does this mean? “Shimabara” was one of those.

It felt like reading fiction after partaking of too much recreational drugs of the LSD bent.

“Letters from Home” was pretty straightforward, and touching too. I loved “The Faithful Companion at Forty” and liked the odd “Duplicity.”

In the last story, “Game Night at the Fox and Goose,” a character says, “I could take you there.”...The universe right next door. Practically walking distance.”

I feel like I have been to the universe next door and back again.

I was given an advance reader's copy of this book for review.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karen Jay Fowler is a smart writer. The stories are all tightly written, extremely imaginative. Her eyes range all over the place, and she ties together very unlikely and disparate tales, persons, visions, actions, eras, and makes me believe I. Their possibility. The title story Black Glass brings to mind Carlos Castaneda, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and oh, l don't know -- the writer of Ipcress File. The story of Tonto or any non-blond, non-white sidekick of some empowered hero is clever. Mrs. Gulliver's story in letters to Lemuel Gulliver is intriguing. Letters from Home--"I have learned to distrust words." Says much.

[Jack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not recommended. While a few of the short stories boast novel premises ("novel" here meaning a welcome unfamiliarity) most are bizarre without merit, and while they could have been redeemed through a controlled lyricism or a focused narrative with clear momentum- or preferably both- they fail to be. Few display any sort of narrative movement nor reach any conclusion, which, when combined with Karen Joy Fowler's rather staid prose style, begs the question from the reader of what their attentions are being spent on. The result is a collection uniformly incoherent and usually dull, precisely what the art of the short story should not be.

[Erikaeclipse · Rating 2 out of 5]

I won the book through Goodreads and was a Goodreads First Reads winner. I found the book very confusing. It was all over the place and was hard to focus on. For some people this might be the book for them, but I have no patience to try to figure out what is happening. I think it has creative ideas and great potential but it is not the book for me.

[Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Black Glass" is a well-written collection of short stories filled with great characters and humorous situations. My favorites were "The Faithful Companion at Forty" and "Duplicity," but there were several other I enjoyed quite a lot.

[Marisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

For someone who doesn't really like short stories, I sure have been reading a lot of them recently... I think if short stories are more your thing, this book would be a 5-star for sure. They're well-written and engaging, without being too full of themselves.

[Andrew Freeman · Rating 5 out of 5]

So amazing! Such a great writer!

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bizarre set of short stories, several w/ a science fiction / magical realism bent. For many of the stories I was never quite sure I knew what was happening, and this was tiring (Fowler has stated that she is always hoping to surprise). As a result my favorite stories were those I understood (+ below). Themes w/in this collection include a play between realism and fantasy; what is real vs what is false; relationships between men/women/families. In an interview Fowler has stated that the strange things that happen in the world have made traditional realism a small field indeed (she sites the Kennedy assassination; I think of Trump winning the election, the world teetering on the precipice of climate catastrophes, AI, etc). She points out that if we think that anything in our lives makes sense, is part of some pattern, it is probably because we've forced our memory of events into a form or meaning that we can understand; this implies that we are deluding ourselves, that we desperately want things to mean something, that we mold our own perceptions (that anyone who has made it through childhood could be a writer - didn't Flannery O'Connor say this?). Lives are filled with random acts, nothing means anything, all is chaos - this is maddening and terrifying, and we all react by crafting our memories into form.
In the same interview she stated that she uses the fantastical to play with ideas of perception and psychology. For example, in the title story, is Carrie Nation really a zombie, or is our narrator coming off a big trip? In this story Fowler is juxtaposing the war on drugs with the much older war on alcohol, a fight that I think is now generally considered ridiculous. Neither was a real success story and may in fact have done more harm than good re: legislation, criminalizing users, etc. Is Fowler using satire by having the DEA agent potentially on psychedelic drugs?
I did appreciate Fowler's unique focus on women. In several stories she writes about the women who, one could argue, are left behind (lieserl, letters from home, duplicity).

**spoiler alert**
--black glass - DEA agent Harris believes that Carry A Nation, prohibitionist, has been re-incarnated and is wreaking havoc on establishments of ill repute
--contention - Claire's kids whine about what she has made for dinner while she daydreams about the laziest man in the world
--shimabara - a 15-year-old boy leads a group of rebels
--the elizabeth complex - intermixing the lives of Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth Taylor, and Lizzie Borden
--go back - childhood memories of a father's infidelity
--the travails - Gulliver's wife in 1699-1715 writes to her traveling husband telling him about what he's missing at home (how work/fame takes artists away from the family)
--lieserl - story of Einstein's relationship w/ his daughter lieserl and her mother Mileva (how work/fame takes artists away from the family)
--letters from home - a woman writes to a man who has disappeared during the Vietnam war
--(+)duplicity - Alice and Tilly have been kept hostage by aliens in Brazil
--(+)the faithful companion at forty - the story of the aged Tonto and the Lone Ranger
--(+)the brew - two kids break into the cellar of a man hiding whiskey that has been spiked with unicorn horn to aid longevity
--lily red - lily tries to escape her life by going to a bed and breakfast where a god chooses her for sex
--the black fairy's curse -
--the view from venus: a case study - writers from Venus learn to write a romance novel?
--(+)game night at the fox and goose - pregnant Alison slips into a world that is not kind to women

[Reet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Black glass: a DEA agent in Panama pockets an obsidian toad from a collection and changes his world, for the worse. Carry Nation come to life.

Shimabara: Is the Bible the result of the game of telephone? Another version of Christianity (or Kirishitan).

Go back: Fowler was born in Bloomington, Illinois; she often writes stories that start out the same as her life, but differ in some way. In this story, her father goes fishing on the Wabash, with a sad loss instead of a catch.

The Travails: Gulliver's wife complains in letters of his absence, but when their daughter marries a wife-beater, she changes her tune.

Lieserl: Einstein and his girlfriend from the physics academy conceive a daughter but Einstein is not there when she is born in Hungary; he is in Switzerland. The letters come as she grows up, but he never makes it home to see her.

Letters from home: a young woman's boyfriend is drafted for the Vietnam war, and she writes many letters to him, talking about the efforts the undergrads at Berkeley are making to protest. (My own father would quit his job if the electronics company he worked for took a government contract, moving us from place to place, wherever he could get a six-month contract--a family of 9!)

Duplicity: a frustrating story. 👽s keep two women on a cartography expedition in a Brazilian jungle as prisoners. Alice they take out of the tent everyday, and she is slowly dying. We don't get to know what they do to Alice. Tilly is left, meanwhile, in the tent and gets extra food...?!

The Brew: 🦄 horn saves the life of a boy.

Lily Red: a woman drives past her exit for work on the freeway and ends up in a small town, spending a few days where an immortal Indian seduces her in a cave. 🤔

The view from Venus: a Case Study: pretty funny story about Venusians in a Comparative Romance: Female Viewpoint college course where they are studying a woman and a man in Berkeley in 1969. They come to the conclusion that a romance is a triangle: a man, a woman, and the woman's body. Pretty accurate.

Game Night at the Fox and Goose: a man impregnates a woman and leaves her. She is in a bar trying to drown her sorrow when she meets someone from another universe, where men don't get to lie to women or watch football.

[William Leight · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm mostly a fan of Fowler but these early stories, or at least earlier stories -- "Black Glass" was published in 1997 and I had not previously read anything she had published before 2008 -- are definitely a mixed bag. The title story is about an undead Carrie Nation terrorizing the country, which is a potentially interesting idea that doesn't really make sense. The story that was a series of letters to Gulliver from his wife was amusing, the one that was letters to Einstein somewhat less so, and too obviously reliant a hazy idea of time dilation. Most of the stories are somewhat like this, taking a historical figure or fictional character and playing around with them: Fowler is usually trying to bring out a feminist angle in a way that was probably at least somewhat new and intriguing in the late '80s and early '90s when these stories were written but is now well-trodden ground. If you're interested in Fowler's short fiction I would recommend "What I Didn't See, and Other Stories" instead: there are no stories in "Black Glass" with the power of that collection's title story or its first story, the brilliantly depressing "At the Pelican Bar".

[Sue Chant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tiptree shortlist 1998. I enjoyed the first story, but all the others were either just ok or dull and all fizzled out. I didn't bother finishing.

Black glass - a DEA agent accidentally summons the spirit of Carry Nation to help in the "war on drugs". Unfortunately she's a bit too zealous in her work. Enjoyable, but sort of fizzled out at the end.
Contention - well written but dull
Shimabara - well written but dull
The Elizabeth complex - Elizabeths' through the ages - quite good.
Go back - dull
The travails - dull
Lieserl - dull
Letters from home - very dull
Duplicity - ok
The faithful companion at forty - ok
The brew - ok
Lily red - didn't read
The black fairy's curse --
The view from Venus : A case study - didn't read
Game night at the fox and goose.- didn't read

[And]

"I would think well of us as a species, if I'd never read a history book. Or the newspaper. Or the comments sections of the Internet."

"The loa charged, shrieking, from the corner. 'Peace on Earth,' she howled, as her hatchet cleaved the air by Harris's head, shattering the mayonnaise jar in his hand."

"Sometimes we can find a smaller world where we can live, inside the bigger world where we cannot."

"...any romantic entanglement between a male and a female is, in fact, a triangle, and the third party is the female's body. It is the hostage between them, the bridge or the barrier."

[Apocryphal Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good collection of short stories, mostly what I'd call speculative fiction (i.e. not really sci-fi, but not mundane, either). The collection contains a fair diversity, though many of the stories focus on great people, real or imagined, such as Queen Elizabeth or a series of letters written by Lemuel Gulliver's wife to her AWOL husband. Most (if not all) of the stories have a feminist slant, which usually adds to the interest for me, though they can get heavy if reading too many such collections in a row. As people who follow my reviews may know, I'm a huge fan of KJF's novel Sarah Canary. This collection didn't match the power of that book for me, but I liked it well enough.

[Tobeylynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I generally don’t enjoy short stories as much as novels, but with this collection I experienced many of the same feelings I do with Fowler’s longer fiction. But without the continuity of a larger story arc compelling me, it took longer to finish this volume. I would often pick it up at bedtime to read a story before sleep, and although moved by that story would not pick it up again for several months.

[Cindy · Rating 2 out of 5]

15 tales, some of which are clever, most of which are puzzling and many of which are dull, to paraphrase the synopsis offered by Goodreads. As I've noted in many reviews, short stories are not my favorite genre, yet for some damn reason I keep picking them up. At least this fulfills on of my reading challenge requirements and I can get it back to the library!
Fowler appears to be talented and obviously beloved by many so I'm quite the exception.

[Khitkhite Buri]

There is very little wonder and a lot of detective-duking in Black Glass which makes for all the wrong proportions. I've loved Fowler's other work (Sarah Canary was incredible for the anti-psychiatry especially when read alongside Marge Piercy's well known eccentric and that bestseller she wrote really wrung my heart) but this one is smart while being really cold. I'd recommend it very cautiously and only to a few.

[Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Povídkovky se hodnotí těžko, ale skutečně mě chytla a bavila asi jedna (Zpráva z Venuše: Případová studie byla skvělá!), možná dvě.
Teoreticky bych měla být ideální cílový čtenář, příběhy v podobném duchu mám většinou ráda, ale mám pocit, že jsem se u většiny povídek nějak minula buď s hlavní myšlenkou nebo způsobem, jakým byla předána.

A možná mě trochu zdeformovalo pravidelné týdenní pitvání povídek na kurzu tvůrčího psaní. :D

[Nichole Aber · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of these stories were immensely enjoyable, like Lily Red and Duplicity. Others, like the title story, are puzzling, lacking detail, and hard to follow.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eclectic, experimental, and entertaining collection of stories. Karen Joy Fowler just wows me.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wasn’t crazy about the first two stories which made me question the read. But then the speculative bits in subsequent stories were fun to read.

[Margaret Rosen]

Not rating because some of the short stories were great and others only OK, but well worth reading. I love her writing even if the story isn't my favorite.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lieserl

My favorite of the fifteen stories from this reissue of the 1998 collection by Karen Joy Fowler is "Lieserl." It consists of a series of letters to Albert Einstein from Mileva Maric, who would later become his wife. He is in Bern, she in Budapest. She writes to him about the birth of their out-of-wedlock daughter Lieserl. But, as this is Einstein, the letters arrive in accelerated time: at one post, she is lying in her crib; at the next, looking at a book; at the next, a tomboy sliding down banisters. Other than this trick with time, it is a wonderfully natural story. But also terribly sad, for Einstein never sees this child and does not even answer Mileva's letters. Looking her up afterwards, I find that the real Lieserl probably died in infancy, and that Einstein indeed never saw her.

"Lieserl" is the middle story of three that use the letter format. The first, "The Travails," is a series of letters written over a span of 16 years by Mary Gulliver to her husband Lemuel, always away on his Travels. The third, "Letters from Home," is closer to a memoir of the author's years at Berkeley during the height of the Vietnam War protests. It takes the form of letters written to a former boyfriend who enlisted and whom she never hears from again; the theme is the unbridgeable gulf between the activists at home and those who actually serve. The Berkeley years come back in one of the later stories, "The View from Venus: a Case Study." This is essentially a love story, but narrated in segments as study material for a college course many years later, "Comparative Romance 1." Two more quasi-autobiographical stories, "Go Back" and "The Brew," occur elsewhere in the book, relating to the author's childhood in Bloomington, Indiana, and (in the first of them) her complicated feelings about her father.

Similarly, the Gulliver and Einstein stories are part of a small group dealing with the past. "Shimabara" is about the 1637 rebellion by Christian believers in Japan led by the messianic 15-year-old Amakusa Shiro; the real punch of the story, though, comes at the end, when the author speaks in her own person, and reminds us that she too has a 15-year-old son. "The Elizabeth Complex" appears to be about the future Queen Elizabeth I and her father Henry VIII. But wait a moment—is there not at least one other famous Elizabeth overlaid on this story as well?

Fowler is known as a writer of fantasy and science fiction. There is a little of that here, though the fantasy is mainly shown in the astounding invention that makes the stories so different from one another in approach. You get both science and science fiction in "Duplicity," about a couple of women friends making a field study in the Amazon rain forest held prisoner by tribesmen who may or may not be extraterrestrials, but the main emphasis is on the changing relationship between the two of them, and by implication on women's relationships generally. The rather short closing story, "Game Night at the Fox and Goose," involves the possibility of a parallel universe where women have the power to revenge themselves on men who have betrayed them; it turns out to be a wry comment on feminism and its limitations.

I did not especially like the title story, "Black Glass," which is by far the longest, at 56 pages. Bizarre and complex, as though written in a chemically-induced psychedelic hallucination, it concerns a DEA agent involved in the capture of Manuel Noriega, and the trouble that ensues when he inadvertently summons up a zombie reincarnation of Carry Nation by using voodoo. But I can see others reveling in it for its sheer weirdness.

I'm never quite sure how to rate a collection of stories. Not by averaging them out, certainly. Even a few five-star stories can be enough to raise up a good many more ordinary ones, and nothing in this collection can be called ordinary, although they are not all equally successful. While fantasy is not really my thing, I am drawn to any author who can show me more about my fellow human beings, particularly if she can find fresh ways to do it—and this is Karen Joy Fowler to a T. I was drawn in right from her author's preface, which is one of the best of its kind I have ever read, reminding me that even the most outlandish stories here were written by a living, breathing, hurting, questioning, and always real person.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a general rule, I steer clear of short story collections. I was pleasantly surprised when I read the stories and essays in “Black Glass”, a recent reprint of Fowler's works, first published in 1998. Each story stood apart as an interesting study in relationships, often with an exploration into feminism. (Yet the author asks questions and invites readers to reach their own conclusion, rather than expect them to accept her personal position on this topic.) Elements of the supernatural, surreal and extraterrestrial are interspersed into people and situations that you could face in everyday life.

Fowler's collection of 15 short works is thought-provoking and original, not quite like anything I've read before. Some touched on historical themes, including the life of Einstein and the Vietnam War. There were surprise endings in a few of the tales. The author's writing style transitioned effortlessly from one scene to another. Each of the distinct works involved the reader immediately and made it interesting to see what was going to happen next.

This new 2015 edition of “Black Glass” was published through Putnam Books. ISBN 978-0-399-17579-4. Suggested retail price for the hardcover edition is $27.95 in the US, or $35.95 in Canada. I really enjoyed the stories, but feel they may not be for everyone. The surprise endings reminded me of O. Henry, while the supernatural elements and questioning of human nature were reminiscent of Stephen King's style. The darker and surreal elements reminded me of Ambrose Bierce's works. All in all, it worked for me! If you are looking for something unique and fascinating, give this collection a try. Karen Joy Fowler is also the New York Times bestselling author of “We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves”.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I liked this collection of slipstream, interstitial short stories (certainly much more than The Jane Austen Book Club), though there were enough stories that fell flat and weren't particularly great that I'm giving this 3 stars rather than 4. The ones I did like are a great subtle blend of realism and the fantastic (somewhat similar to Kelly Link, though I enjoy Kelly Link's stories more).

My favorites were the titular story "Black Glass", "the Elizabeth Complex" (which approaches the person Elizabeth as a combination of Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth Taylor, and Lizzie Borden), "the Brew" (Culloden and magical whiskey!), and the last two stories, which both deal with aliens/other worlds in a darkly funny way.

[Solomiya Zakharchuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series of short fictions is entirely mind-stimulating. Each story has an unusual and interesting twist that makes you stop and wonder after you have finished reading it, the point of the story itself and the likeliness and the unlikeliness of such things happening. Throughout the stories, a fantastical theme is present throughout that have been given great thought and imagination to perhaps. Fowler did a phenomenal job with this collection of short stories, blending in the real with the fantastical.

the book was received through a Goodreads giveaway*

[And · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I would think well of us as a species, if I'd never read a history book. Or the newspaper. Or the comments sections of the Internet."

"The loa charged, shrieking, from the corner. 'Peace on Earth,' she howled, as her hatchet cleaved the air by Harris's head, shattering the mayonnaise jar in his hand."

"Sometimes we can find a smaller world where we can live, inside the bigger world where we cannot."

"...any romantic entanglement between a male and a female is, in fact, a triangle, and the third party is the female's body. It is the hostage between them, the bridge or the barrier."