Woman No. 17 Quotes

“You think you know how a story begins, or how it's going to turn out, especially when it's your own. You don't.”
― Edan Lepucki, Woman No. 17

“The imagined Internet is so much better than the real one.”
― Edan Lepucki, Woman No. 17

“I wanted to describe to her my dreams: Seth and me out to breakfast, Seth and me swimming in the pool. Once, we were at Office Depot, buying highlighters. Everything in them could have happened, but hadn’t. That’s what made them cruel. S would get it.”
― Edan Lepucki, Woman No. 17

“I’d been stupid enough to believe that because I hated her I didn’t also love her.”
― Edan Lepucki, Woman No. 17

“I imagined pouring the gin straight into my eyeballs, lubricating them and letting the poison drip to my brain, into every little gray, wormy crevice.”
― Edan Lepucki, Woman No. 17

“Language has two functions: to harm and to repair harm.”
― Edan Lepucki, Woman No. 17

“I’d been beautiful. The past tense was like a shove to the chest.”
― Edan Lepucki, Woman No. 17

“The thing Lady didn't get, or the thing she'd forgotten, was that being a child was painful too. She was so wrapped up in losing Seth, the treacheries of him growing up, that she couldn't remember what it felt like to be on the other side. The burden of that. Sure, Seth had left her womb and never returned, but he was the one who had to do the leaving.”
― Edan Lepucki, Woman No. 17