Tiger, Tiger Quotes

“I also read that spending time with a pedophile can be like a drug high. There was this girl who said it’s as if the pedophile lives in a fantastic kind of reality, and that fantasticness infects everything. Kind of like they’re children themselves, only full of the knowledge that children don’t have. Their imaginations are stronger than kids’ and they can build realities that small kids would never be able to dream up. They can make the child’s world… ecstatic somehow. And when it’s over, for people who’ve been through this, it’s like coming off of heroin and, for years, they can’t stop chasing the ghost of how it felt. One girl said that it’s like the earth is scorched and the grass won’t grow back. And the ground looks black and barren but inside it’s still burning.”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger

“This isn't fair! This is sick! I can't be a little girl again! And now you're telling me I'm not allowed to be a woman!' I knew the most important thing was that I keep moving forward, that I leave the girl I was behind me, but now he wanted to stop me from doing so.”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger

“I was twelve and love burned in me like sap. Peter got down on his knees as though I was his goddess, as though I really was the only sound he could hear and I filled his head with miraculous ringing, as though I made him permanent, and for this he would always be grateful.”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger

“I was afraid that if I did anything at all without bartering for at least some small thing in return, he might think I enjoyed it, and not understand that I paid a huge price to myself.”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger

“You used to say it was just me but now you're saying you did it with other girls before me. I thought I was special. You said you fell in love with me.' Thinking about this, I felt like a power source with too many of its outlets in use, like my whole brain was having a blackout.”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger

“That dark, dingy, cobwebbed basement had taken all my life from me. That place was where I gave myself up, destroyed my own will for him, and now it was gone. My will was dead, so I might as well be dead.”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger

“Life for me had already lost much of its pulp; the edges were collapsing into the center, and in that gap was the sympathy Peter had sought all his life and never got from anyone. Or perhaps "sympathy" was the wrong word; what he was telling me was more confirmation of what I already understood in biblical terms: the bad Peter, under the influence of the Devil, did horrible things. His honesty was evidence that the good Peter was finally triumphing over the bad one, because to me, that was the whole point of confession -- to figure out where you've gone wrong and to stop sinning.”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger

“. To be a sex goddess you had to view the world coldly yet treat it with overabundant affection; you had to be brashly childlike yet clearly womanly; you had to pretend you expected nothing, but in reality accept nothing less than everything; you had to tease and charm and flirt and whimper and coo and goad everyone you met.”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger

“Other people can hate me, I may be hated by co-workers, despised by my boss, disliked by these savages on the street, but I know that I have sat in that tank and that I have made my bed every day to perfection when I was in the army and that my clothes were always correct. I look at myself, and know that I have kept to the contract of life. Life is a contract, Keesy.”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger

“Love is what you call a phantom pain. The poets write of it, our great art represents it, it inspires our musicians, but it does not really exist. Like an ulcer you think you have but the surgeon opens you up and finds nothing there. It is a chemical reaction, Keesy. Hormones. People die for it, but no one has ever proven it exists.

~Poppa”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger

“Aún conservo doce libretas de espiral, donde guardo viejas cartas que Peter me escribía a diario. En todas empezaba con un «Querida Princesa», ponía X para los besos y O para los abrazos. Y al final añadía «PETAMYTAS», abreviación de «Pienso en ti a menudo y te amo siempre».

Tengo siete cintas de vídeo, todas ellas fechadas, con títulos como Margaux en patines; Margaux con Zarpas; Margaux en la moto de paquete, saludando. Cada día, ya hacia el final de su existencia, Peter miraba esas cintas: Margaux rebozándose con Zarpas en la tierra, Margaux jugando a polis y cacos en el sofá, Margaux saludando con la mano desde lo alto de un árbol, Margaux lanzando un beso. Ahora nadie mira a Margaux. Incluso la propia Margaux está aburrida de ver a Margaux con cintas en el pelo, Margaux en vaqueros cortos, Margaux con el pelo mojado, Margaux junto al ailanto del que solía colgar la hamaca blanca.

Yo era la religión de Peter.”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger

“what good did these visits do? My mother wasn’t cured by them but Poppa continued to insist I make appearances because that was the only thing he cared about: appearances. We could both die and his prime concern would probably be burying us with the right makeup. He was burying me right now. And these psychiatrists and nurses were no better than Poppa. They kept up their sick smiles and, instead of looking for a real solution, just kept stuffing her with drugs that never worked.”
― Margaux Fragoso, Tiger, Tiger