The Last House on Needless Street

by Catriona Ward

If there’s anything better than a cat on the bed, I don’t know about

Care pressed down on her, like an anvil on her back.

Birds aren’t like people. Pain makes them quiet.

because death deserves a witness.

Pets are better than their owners in general. I feel bad for all those dogs and cats and rabbits and mice. They have to live with people but, worse, they have to love them.

I judge people two ways—on how they treat animals, and on what they like to eat. If their favorite food is some kind of salad, they are definitely a bad person. Anything with cheese, they are probably OK.

Killing things is hard, sure, but keeping them safe and alive is much more difficult.

But that’s what love does, it reaches right into you like a hand.

I think it’s OK for me to say that I am beautiful.

Anyway the trick to life is, if you don’t like what is happening, go back to sleep until it stops.

Her body seemed like enough company.

I’m not used to how much space I take up in the world.

Getting hurt makes the body and brain weird, even if you don’t feel the pain.

The young feel pain intensely, I think, because they don’t know yet how deep it can go.

women look and listen more carefully than men.

She can’t care about food, but she takes care of herself. She learned the importance of that the hard way.

And because hope is always the last thing to die.

People who have lived together for many generations share a special kind of madness.

I am made with pain, for it, of it.

Her voice is like a scream, if a scream could also be a whisper.

But you weren’t born in the forest. You were born inside me.”

How many times can someone bend before they break forever? You have to take care, dealing with broken things; sometimes they give way, and break others in their turn.

Some things survive death.

Life is a long tunnel, Olivia. The light only comes at the end.”

had not known the body was capable of standing so much.

I understand something about life that Ted never has: it is too painful.

That’s how gods travel, through minds.

You can really damage yourself, if you can’t feel pain.

We feel her as she passes. She is in the air like the scent of rain.

is not easy to hold everyone in your heart at once.