Beautyland Quotes

“The ego of the human male is by far the most dangerous aspect of human society.

THIS HAS BEEN WELL-DOCUMENTED.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Anyone questioning whether god exists need only consider the brevity of a dog’s life span. If there was a god, let alone a benevolent one, dogs would have life spans similar to parrots.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Even the word itself, human, means flawed. It means everything is technically correct but some unanticipated trouble has fouled it up. If the assignment had been to be human, to fail, then I succeeded. But if it was to create a comprehensive document of life on Earth, I was always doomed. Language is pitiable when weighed against experience.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Grief is a bad mirror. It shows you manipulated images of yourself, your will, and the future. It cannot show you how the small work you do will add up to yourself. Inch by inch.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“To reach the end of your life and wish you had time for a few other roads — what could be more human?”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Human beings, Adina faxes, did not think their lives were challenging enough so they invented roller coasters. A roller coaster is a series of problems on a steel track. Upon encountering real problems, human beings compare their lives to riding a roller coaster, even though they invented roller coasters to be fun things to do on their days off.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Some years age you and some make you young.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Human life is quick. I do not mean: Life is short. I mean: The reason we feel like certain significant days happened only yesterday is because they did. Many of us have bodies that age preposterously out of proportion with how young we are. It’s like aging in theater time. We’re all seven-year-olds hired to play the parts of adults. A decade is not long. Two decades is not long. We say it is because we weigh it against the end of our life span. Our life spans are short and do not give us time to feel temporally in proportion.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Being physically present in one place while your mind is in another is loneliness.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“When you're little, she faxes, sadness is a kid you can kick out of your game. A simple, fast-food feeling that leaves as soon as the bully is gone. Deeper sadness gets buried into one's coastal shelf, accessible only by your adult version.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“The human life span was perfectly designed to be brief but to at times feel endless. A set of years that pass in a minute, eternity in an afternoon. Yet in the same way competing weather fronts produce a climate that’s right for a tornado, brevity versus eternity (the push-pull that contains everything) is the condition for romantic love, sorrow, betrayal, joy. Countless meaningless profound transactions.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“People with money list what they did without. Poor people list what they had.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Red wine tastes like a dark-walled library and white wine smells like a woman looking away.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Mother shelving important parts of herself into places even she'll forget.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“If she believed the boardwalk T-shirts, a woman was a ball or chain, someone stupid you’re with, someone to lie to so a man can drink beer. If she believed television fathers, women were a constant pain, wanting red roses or a nice dinner out. If she learned how to be a girl from songs, it was worse. If she learned from other girls, worse still.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“When you’re alone, you are in the right place to watch sadness approach like storm clouds over an open field. You can sit in a chair and get ready for it.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Adina hasn’t experienced romantic love like the ones portrayed in movies, or a more realistic love like the ones portrayed in more realistic movies. But to love a mother who grew alongside her. A friend when she left the Earth. To love a dog. To love vocation.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Dogs, she faxes, are the best we can do.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Human beings who are squeaky wheels get everything they want. Quiet humans who don't complain get nothing.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“She doesn't realize how anxiety influences her posture, voice, the heaviness of her footsteps, the length of time it takes her to leave the car in the driveway at the end of the workday, so that even before she enters the apartment Adina knows her mother's mood.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“If when I explain human behavior you insist on logic, we won’t get far.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Language is pitiable when weighed against experience.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“They cannot afford to be smart with money.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Though relying on rides is a hassle, Adina likes the moment before getting dropped off. The reserved people she grew up with only seemed comfortable sharing after they pulled to a halt and before she got out. The space’s brevity allowed candor, the rare remark that contradicted the phoniness that comprised the everyday behavior of whoever was driving—the friend’s parent, older brother, or sister, the teacher—could even contradict whole ways of living. Maybe the certain end point furnished a deniability both parties could use if anyone dared call the other out in other, more visible places like family rooms and kitchen tables. The confiding party could say that Adina hadn’t heard correctly or that they never said it”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“The light does not dim and continues to travel.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“When someone dies, where does the way they eat egg rolls go?”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“What a human in a dark room who has lost the ability to see themselves or others does not need is a metaphor. More effective would be to say, If you feel alone, you are. I’m sorry I cannot join you in that dark space but I won’t offend you with a metaphor. Yet. Grief is a bad mirror. It shows you manipulated images of yourself, your will, and the future. It cannot show you how the small work you do will add up to yourself. Inch by inch.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Adina is surprised and pleased to receive this word. A human explanation for it all along! She wonders what other rational human qualities she wrote off as extraterrestrial because of a human's tendency to other what they don't understand.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“When humans enjoy themselves they no longer feel the passage of time. They forget the constraints or failures of their physical bodies.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“Misogyny, like Roman Catholicism, is an institution built on faith. It has hierarchy, jokes, language, periodicals. Its believers insist on a theory with no proof. With proof to the contrary, even. Built into the system of maintaining the status quo is an ingenious method of casting aspersions on nonbelievers, and reasons why the “proof” must remain unseen.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland