Karen Memory Quotes

“Some would say a whore don't have no expectation of Heaven. I'd say, if she gives value for cash, she's got a better shot at God's blessing than your average banker. Jesus loved Mary Magdalene. He kicked over tables when He met a moneylender.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“The Devil can quote scripture, after all. And monsters can say "please" and "thank you" same as any mother's son.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Eavesdropping's a sin, but ignorance is fatal. Take your pick.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“It’s comforting when God lets you get away with something once in a while.

And a little unnerving. You start to wonder what he’s got set up for you next and why he’s softening you up, like.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“But wasn’t that part of a whore’s job? Being the sort of ear that lonely men could turn to?

I wondered who lonely women paid to listen. As with so much, it seemed as if the world had a solution for the one but not the other.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“I liked her scowl and I liked her freedom to wear it.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Them as work hardest get no respect for it – women, ranch hands, sharecroppers, factory help, domestics – and them as spend all their time talking about how hard they work have no idea what an honest day’s labor for nary enough pay to put beans in your family’s bellies is all about.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Some things are just universal.
Like the known scientific fact that the colder and wetter you are, the better bacon smells frying.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Girls in my profession know a little too much about men. The ones who want to know a woman as a person are fewer than you’d hope, and most of those don’t even realize it about themselves. They don’t care who a woman is, or what she’s scared of, or who she wants to become. They think they want a woman, but what they really want is a flattering looking glass wearing lipstick and telling them what they want to hear.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Being a growed woman, it turned out, was harder work than it looked. But that’s a thing, too, ain’t it? Them as work hardest get no respect for it—women, ranch hands, sharecroppers, factory help, domestics—and them as spend all their time talking about how hard they work have no idea what an honest day’s labor for nary enough pay to put beans in your family’s bellies is all about.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“You’d never break this one. You’d never even bend her. She’d die like Joan of Arc first, and spit blood on you through a smile.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“A woman in the West? You show me one who doesn’t drink, and I’ll show you one that wants to.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“The way I saw it, nobody thought the worse of a man who followed his pecker anywhere it sniffed, like a droopy-faced hound dog led on by his nose. So why a woman did the same should be judged different… well, women always is.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Women have more of that patience, as a class. That ain’t because we’re born with it, though. It’s because we’re schooled to it and taught early that if we don’t have it we won’t never win.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“You ain't gonna like what I have to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“And then I had my greatest stroke of genius since that ham sandwich with pickles that time.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“I don't know if it was the excitement that did it, but by the time we started our tiptoe across the icy, rutted skid yard to that shed Priya had quit shivering, but I was trembling like a marriage license in a young man's hand.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“So why a woman did the same should be judged different … well, women always is. Judged different, I mean.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“I should of been chewing on my words some, so everybody else would have had a better chance of swallowing them.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“You ever hear somebody blithely say something so amazingly plastered over with bullshit it just makes your eyes bug?”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“So it’s a good thing Connie sent me with a list, because otherwise I might wind up bewildered and wandering the aisles until I wasted away to a haint.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Anchorage, which is about the stupidest thing you ever could get to naming a harbor. I mean, why not just call it Harbor, like it was the only one ever?”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“I wished I could offer her tea. You don’t think about it, but all those little fusses we make over company have their purposes. They give us something to do with our hands and our anxiousness until everybody settles in and starts having fun.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“I wondered who lonely women paid to listen. As with so much, it seemed as if the world had a solution for the one but not the other.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Amazing what people can fail to see when it’s a man doing it to a woman, even a respectable-looking woman.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Friends don’t keep score.” Because friends don’t have to keep score, my da would of said. Friends just pitch in as needed, as they can.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Some call it the Cherry Hotel. But most just say it’s Madame Damnable’s Sewing Circle and have done. So I guess that makes me a seamstress, just like Beatrice and Miss Francina and Pollywog and Effie and all the other girls. I”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“On récolte ce que l’on sème. That”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Bill blinked tears from his eyes, then fastened his gaze on me. “Bitch,” he snarled—why they never think of anything cleverer I’ll never know.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory

“Butter wouldn't have melted my smile, I swear.”
― Elizabeth Bear, Karen Memory