Notable American Women Quotes

“Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“People are considered as areas that resist light, mistakes in the air, collision sweet spots. At the time of this writing, the whole world is a crime scene: People eat space with their bodies; they are rain decayers; the wind is slaughtered when they move. A retaliation is probably coming. Should a person cease to move, she would cease to kill the sky, and the world might begin to recover.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“Together we were something less, which felt like such a relief, to not be ourselves for a while.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“The task of being right is a task the father perfects over time.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“If the words of this book are misspelled, but accidentally spell other words correctly, and also accidentally fall into a grammatically coherent arrangement, where coherency is defined as whatever doesn't upset people, it means this book is legally another book, and not this book.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“Being with him was like being alone underwater -- everything was slow; nothing counted; I could not be harmed; I would feel dry and cold when I resurfaced.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“When a man modifies or adorns a woman's name, or dispatches an endearment into her vicinity, he is attempting at once to alter and deny her, to dilute the privacy of the category she has inherited and to require that she respond as someone quite less than herself.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“Rain is used as white noise when God is disgusted by too much prayer, when the sky is stuffed to bursting with the noise of what people need.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“Spelling a person's name is the first step toward killing him. It takes him apart and empties him of meaning. This is why God is afraid to have his name spelled.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“There would be people answering to names they did not deserve. It would hurt to say their names. I would head upstairs and crack the seal on a jar of tomorrow's water, next week's water, next year's thin, sweet water--going as far ahead into the future as I could, until the water was barely there, clear and weak and airy-- and I would commence a fine, hard drinking spell, until this whole day, and the days before it, and then the people in those days and myself entirely, and my hard, dead name turned into a slick wire that pulled farther and farther away from me, slipping finally from view as I filled myself, as I took in enough water to make myself forever new to the small world that held me.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“I prefer men who don't fall down and weep, who absorb a blow, who do not scamper and yell when chased, but stand firm, crouch, square off, meet an attack with something like resistance, even if it kills them.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“I would like to outsmart the role that is destined for me. But I can't. I have failed to destroy my category.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“The American Naming Authority, a collective of women studying the effects of names on behavior, decrees that a name should only have one user. The nearly 1 million American users of the name Mary, for example, do not constitute a unified army who might slaughter all users of the name Nancy, as was earlier supposed, but rather a saturation of the Mary Potential Quotient. Simply stated: Too many women with the same name produces widespread mediocrity and fatigue.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“In the evening I spray my eyes with plant milk before retiring; this lubricates my blinking apparatus during sleep, throwing more light into my dreams, though I'm not much of a believer in the imagination.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“Breathing itself was considered the first language.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“Before, during, or after intercourse (the only three possible descriptions of time).”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“The word 'camouflage' simply means 'to have a family'.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“Until the notion of Helmet-Assisted Life catches on with more people, you may be seen as a threat if you wear a helmet during moments of intimacy. Yet it might also be true that relaxed intimacy cannot occur unless the head is fully protected.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“...identity compromises (relationships) may result...”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“You killed my man, I thought. He died alone. You should die by thunder. You should be killed in a loud sky. Let your house break in half and the people inside it be pulled into the sky. Let you faint at night.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“There would not be an empty room without windows in a perfect world. In a perfect world, nothing would have happened yet. Everything would go without saying. All of the sayings would be given.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“Slamming the book shut produces a wind on the face, a weather that is copyrighted by the author, and this wind may not be deployed without permission, nor may the pages be turned without express written permission.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“If only my head were finally not my responsibility, could be put into someone else's care, could be made to merge with other persons and the world so that it would no longer suffer such distance and touchlessness, would no longer even be a head, because even when touched, there are parts of my head not being touched. Even underwater parts of my head feel dry.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“..., and he told a story once after intercourse, to the person who had just politely hoisted him while he hyperventilated in their space until his error had been registered as a small dollop of fluid he extruded from his mistake zone, ...”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“In a perfect world the current laws would not apply.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women

“People are considered as areas that resist light, mistakes in the air, collision sweet spots.”
― Ben Marcus, Notable American Women