By Blood Quotes

“But you can't stop knowing something, can you?”
― Ellen Ullman, By Blood

“Do I have to recite any further risks you have taken? How much you have not conformed? How much internal bravery this implies?”
― Ellen Ullman, By Blood

“But now what? Is this a ticket to a new understanding of my life, or a bomb that's going to blow up everything?

Consider one more possibility: that you remain essentially the same person you were, neither new nor destroyed.”
― Ellen Ullman, By Blood

“I believed my motivations were clear: to help the patient see the pattern that had been imposed upon her, this endless repetition of being selected yet judged to be not exactly what was wanted, a purchase the buyer wished to return.”
― Ellen Ullman, By Blood

“The therapist could not budge the patient from her syllogism. She replayed it throughout the hour, 'stuck in a single organization of events.' Seeing it from the other side (from behind the wall, as an observer), I understood the obsessive quality of such an attachment, something comforting in holding on to a smug, all-seeing knowledge, even a sad or hurtful one; something that let the patient control the precise amount of pain she administered to herself.”
― Ellen Ullman, By Blood