Inside Madeleine Quotes

“This was before I knew that we all live on this planet, driving in the cars of our own little minds, our own self-contained worlds. Yes, this was before I knew that, when I thought that I mattered, when I thought that people saw me, deep into me, saw all my love and excitement at being alive, saw the very glistening, running-overness of my aliveness. But we only matter when we do something awful. Then, someone sees us and only then.”
― Paula Bomer, Inside Madeleine

“I was thinking how hard it is to be ugly, how hard it is to be an outsider, how it turns people cruel and bitter and mean. Richard is sort of super ugly, but even if you’re just not what everyone else is, it makes you act in ways that you wouldn’t if you were like everyone else.”
― Paula Bomer, Inside Madeleine

“She wanted Mark to come back and to smell him and feel him and she wanted to tell him that they still beg for it from her, they still want her and what do you think about that Mark? I’m yours and I’m the slut of all sluts. She wanted to say, Markie you haven’t taken it away from me I still have it. I still have what it takes. She thought, I could show you my insides, I could turn myself inside out for you, me, me, who everybody wants, me, who can swallow the whole world.”
― Paula Bomer, Inside Madeleine

“The fresh, pointed stab of living in the moment that shame can bring. Everything else fades away, no more boredom, no more doubt, no more worrying about the future, the past...just a drenching in self pity and the now. In that moment, everything was about me and my wrongness. It’s sort of a baptism, when the floodgates of regret let loose.”
― Paula Bomer, Inside Madeleine

“Although we usually fail to think of it in this way, the world around us today is just one of countless possible worlds. The millions of species of plants, animals, and insects we see around us are the expression of myriad interacting processes, including chance -- perhaps especially chance. At any point in its prehistory, a species might just easily have taken a different direction, given a slightly altered confluence of events, thus leaving today’s world a slightly different place.”
― Paula Bomer, Inside Madeleine