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He cannot ward off the thought that in the movies it always looks different, and that after the opening credits they should give a warning: “Ladies and gentlemen, be advised that in reality, committing murder demands bestial strength, physical coordination, and above all, perfect fitness. Don’t try this at home.”
He did worry about putting on weight, but every time he found himself standing at the checkout he swore to take up running again, and that was how he satisfied his conscience.
Behind her warm facade radiating empathy and understanding, there was an aggressive, bad-tempered bitch, putting up endless walls of goodness to conceal her rage and resentment toward the entire world.
The coffee smelled of rubber—there are few things as revolting as instant black coffee.
He had the sad look of a man who devotes himself to his family, and she thought that if he had to do real work as she did, in a few weeks they’d be looking for a sanitarium where he could recover.
‘Mistrust all who talk much of their justice.’”
Rage. She’s decided to hold on to this emotion because so far it’s the one that has had the most to offer her.
I wonder if every man displays his physical advantage, his readiness to be violent, a sort of unexpressed threat, as if to say everything’s just dandy, but don’t you forget who weighs sixty-five pounds more than you do, and who was made to have the more physically powerful muscles by nature.
not everyone can forge their own destiny. And even if you can, a lot depends on whether you’ve got a good set of tools from the start or have to steal your first hammer.
Perpetrators of domestic violence have also been taught that women aren’t human, but a subspecies whose representatives are their property.
The echo of the event kept coming back to the victim, not just once in a while, not now and then, but nonstop. Someone was always holding a red-hot piece of metal to the woman’s soul. Perhaps you could get used to it, but there’s no way you could cease to feel it.
She was so scared of being raped that she couldn’t even think about it—all such thoughts simply fell apart without leading to any mental images or sounds. Instead they just flew around her brain, crashing against her skull; whenever one of them did manage to latch on to her neurons she felt paralyzed, incapable of any action or other thought.
Death was like a passage into the unknown—it undoubtedly meant the end, but it could also be a surprise. Where rape was concerned, there was no surprise. She would simply have to carry on living, maybe not for long, maybe for ages and ages, and she’d go through the rest of her life as a woman who had started her adulthood as a piece of meat.
The tie between siblings never has to be broken. Of course it may be stronger, or weaker. But being in such close contact at the time in life when the world is new means no people on earth can be closer than siblings.
He was amazed to perceive in himself the typical behavior of criminals. He’d always thought they were weak, not very intelligent, slow-witted. Hence all the hysterical, illogical moves that pushed them straight into prison cells, contributing just as much to an indictment as a confession. And wouldn’t you know, in the end he turned out to be no different.
Motherhood is forged from day zero, when a couple falls back on the pillows, weary from making love. And it’s a very biological relationship, as old as time, a little parasitic, written in blood, inaccessible to men, and as a result, unique and mysterious. But for the father every child is, in a way, adopted, alien to him; whether he watched his wife give birth to the creature that she promises contains some of his genes, too, or left a children’s home holding a girl by the hand, he has to make the effort to fall in love with this little stranger.
“Honesty and justice are two different things. We don’t expect a sheriff to be admitting his mistakes. What we expect is security.
