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Kindle Notes & Highlights
a declaration by a ten-year-old child who is contentious by reflex.
“Someday, you’ll feel thankful to your mother. But I want you to act thankful now.”
she said it every subsequent night the same way, having realized that it was, without being a wrong thing to say, satisfyingly hurtful.
Such naked wanting to be wanted made Louisa’s mother even more repellent.
Sometimes, the unjustly downtrodden took up arms and fierce miens, but equally often they turned the other cheek, studied harder, camouflaged themselves ever more behind obedience and merit and bided their time, believing against all evidence that the future would bring something better, for them if for nobody else. He tried to be the second kind of ruined person.
The world had not been fit for either of them; this suggested they were fit for each other.
He seemed willing to embrace anything. Was this because he was empty, a ravenous void, or because he was full?
Love is, perhaps, the sensation of expertise that erupts out of nowhere, and as time goes on accumulates enough soil at its feet to be standing on something. Louisa’s
Love, for Serk, always flowed first through authority’s channel. As he loved no one more than Louisa, there was no limit to the topics on which he meant to be the authority for her.
Their past selves aren’t better or worse, just completely discredited.
The sum of the things she knows about her father could fit inside the sum of the things she’ll never know about him an infinite number of times.
Some objection wants expression but she can’t find the words, perhaps it’s How can you leave me alone here? Or Why can’t you leave me alone here?
