Status Updates From Denizyolu

We were uneasy people. I was self-conscious about having lunch with him and about my unkempt hair, and afraid of boring him. I could tell he was self-conscious, too, whatever his reasons were, by the set of his body and the way his eyes flicked. I don’t think there was much sexual tension, certainly not on my part, since I go through the same strain with anybody I don’t know well, including infants and toddlers.

A woman unmated but contented generally learns to hide her contentment so as not to shock her friends. There’s no use defying whatever orthodoxy your culture has adopted. You just end up as a witch. I realize now that that is really why I got married: better to marry than to burn...but the fact is that sexual practice merely diverts my erotic energies into an artificial form provided for them by my civilization.

Jilly knew what she had asked and answered. Why had her daughter not come at her invitation, when she said it was warm and lovely here? Because she could no longer invite. She couldn’t say, “Come in.“ She could only demand, “come here!“ Or beg, “Come to me!“ And her daughter did not want to come. All right.

“Phil is a saint, Mag,” his mother had said to her shortly before they were married, and she had agreed, laughing, thinking the exaggeration quite forgivable; but it had not been a burble of mother love. It had been a warning.

I thought I was diving into science fiction. Turns out this is one of her only books that isn't scifi, plus it's short stories.

With that being said, it's pretty interesting, and I'll look for her scifi after this.

"What can you do to evil but refuse it? Not pretend it isn't there, but look at it, and know it, and refuse it."

"Indignation, the great middle-class luxury."

"Doing something wasn't just a kind of practice for something that would keep happening, but was what would happen, was what happened. You didn't get to practice."