Lessons in Chemistry

by Bonnie Garmus

“I’ve never understood why when women marry, they’re expected to trade in their old names like used cars, losing their last and sometimes even their first—Mrs. John Adams! Mrs. Abe Lincoln!—as if their previous identities had just been twenty-odd-year placeholders before they became actual people.

He was dead thirty-seven minutes later.

oh... is the dog okay though?

as if bad weather would have put a damper on the otherwise festive funeral.

not to mention all the little assorted freedoms everyone else who is not pregnant takes for granted—like being able to fit behind a steering wheel.

oh i absolutely do not take it for granted. i'm always grateful to not be pregnant

Then she launched into a dramatic description of the terrible twos, the tiresome threes, the filthy fours, and the fearsome fives, barely taking a breath before piling into the angsty adolescents, the pimply pubescents, and especially, especially, oh lord, the troubled teens, noting always that boys were harder than girls, or girls were harder than boys, and on and on and on until her groceries were bagged and loaded and she was forced to get back into her faux-wood-paneled station wagon and return home to her own personal set of ingrates.

and yet people still say "why don't you want kids?"

“Not every woman wants to be a mother,” he agreed, surprising her. “More to the point, not every woman should be.”

“Still, I’m surprised by how many women sign up for motherhood considering how difficult pregnancy can be—morning sickness, stretch marks, death. Again, you’re fine,” he added quickly, taking in her horrified face. “It’s just that we tend to treat pregnancy as the most common condition in the world—as ordinary as stubbing a toe—when the truth is, it’s like getting hit by a truck. Although obviously a truck causes less damage.”

it was his low-grade stupidity she abhorred—his dull, opinionated, know-nothing charmless complexion; his ignorance, bigotry, vulgarity, insensitivity; and above all, his wholly undeserved faith in himself.

Like most stupid people, Mr. Sloane wasn’t smart enough to know just how stupid he was.

That was the other revolting thing about him. Like so many undesirable men, Mr. Sloane truly believed other women found him attractive.

“Please, please, please.”

don't prove I'm riiight

Madeline had opened her book and was now studying an engraving of one man gnawing on the femur of another. “Do people taste good?” “I don’t know,” Harriet said as she set a few cubes of cheese down in front of her. “I’m sure it’s all in the preparation. Your mother could probably make anyone taste good.”

bruh wtf

“Her height is making the boys feel bad.”

lmao sounds like the boys' problem

“Can I get you something?” “Yes,” he said. “Cyanide.”

He’s already got one foot in the grave. Why not help him with the other?”

The audience was rapt,

i find this doubtful

“Suicide.” “Oh god,” she said. “So you know what it is to feel responsible for someone’s death.”

that's quite an assumption