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annunciation.
“I want my novel to be big,”
“I’m talking about the canvas. I want it to be sweeping. Necessary. I want to play a little, experiment with structure.”
How many pages written since then? How many discarded? Too many to think about. Thousands. The novel was big all right. Five hundred and seventy-four pages of big. She never wanted to look at it again.
avarice.
smear of dragon-red lipstick
diaphanous
He was close enough now to lower his face to her neck and breathe in her skin, which smelled as it always had, faintly of chlorine, making him feel as if he could swim into her, assured and buoyant.
it reminded him of Soho back when Soho had energy and grit, a little theatrical menace.
His love for her was quiet and constant, familiar and soothing; it was almost its own thing entirely, like a worn rock or a set of worry beads, something he’d pick up and weigh in his palm occasionally, more comforting than dispiriting.
A first kiss in the book stacks. Now that was romantic.
derelict.
“Appearances count,” she would tell their kids. “If you want people to judge you based on the inside, don’t distract them from the outside.”
delineate
capitulation
bildungsroman.
the sensation he must love when being lifted off the ground, propelled forward by some bigger, outside force, the swinging, the swoop of belly, the weightlessness, the sense of flying,
“Everybody’s kind of weird.” Simone put her hand out for Nora, helping her to her feet. “Your problem is you’re worried about being everyone’s mirror and that’s not your job.”
elucidate,
“Everyone’s always on the hunt for a mirror. It’s basic psychology. You want to see yourself reflected in others. Others—your sister, your parents—they want to look at you and see themselves. They want you to be a flattering reflection of them—and vice-versa. It’s normal. I suppose it’s really normal if you’re a twin. But being somebody else’s mirror? That is not your job.”
I like definitions. I like to be sure of what’s happening.”
Matilda grew up knowing that you didn’t get anything without giving something up.
He’d regarded the whole picture warily, like it was an opalescent shell found on the beach that was concealing something unsavory inside—the stink of seaweed, a putrefying mollusk, or, worse, something still alive, its pincers stirred and groping for a tender bit of flesh.
the beauty of rediscovering the starting line.
every choice was just an educated guess, or a leap into a mysterious abyss. People might not change but their incentives could.
And that was finally what she had to ask herself, Did loving Leo make her a lesser version of herself?
mellifluous.
aplomb),
Beatific.
