Parakeet Quotes

“There are intimacies that don't involve marriage just as there are marriages that don't involve intimacy. The mind provides the only possible privacy so what is more intimate than thought? If intimacy is marriage, I'm married to anyone I've carried in my mind.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“Life has no past tense: To remember something is to relive it.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“A schedule is a gift we give children so when they are adults they can deal with the anxiety of loss.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“I will have thousands upon thousands of days and this is merely one of them. This thought brings relief.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“In reality, happiness is so elusive it may as well be supernatural.”
― marie-helene bertino, Parakeet

“happiness is so elusive it may as well be supernatural.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“Danny fills a pitcher with water as R2-D2 gallops into the room to nuzzle my thigh. He is a two-year-old unexercised and panicky Labrador who looks as if he will at any moment speak. Everything in him wants to run. R2-D2 hunts scraps on the floor underneath Danny, who holds the pitcher brimming with water. I worry about his grip, but he wants to tell a story like an intact man about a fair he went to where a man balanced on top of a Ferris wheel. A tremor grows in his forearm. I say, “Why don’t you let me hold that?” “Are you listening? I’m talking to you.” He sways as if regaining his balance. The pitcher slips silently out of his grip, barely missing the dog as it shatters against the floor. R2-D2 yelps, scrabbles out of the room. I collect the chunks of glass. “Was I holding that?” he says. “Don’t move,” I say. He says he won’t but forgets. “Don’t.” He roots in place. I’ve never raised my voice to him. “Did you drop the pitcher?” he says, when I am transferring the large chunks to the trash can. “Yes.” I guide him over the mess and into the family room. I motion for him to sit and hand him the remote. I wipe the kitchen floor and take the garbage to the outside patio where several other bags are stacked. The dog jogs beside me, sniffs a tree trunk.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“A marriage that furnished love and was relieved of its misery at the appropriate time so its participants could go on to love again, isn’t that more of a success?”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“You’re a gamb—” “I’m not a gambler.” He caught her comment on its rise. “People who think of the market as a gamble don’t understand it.” “I don’t understand the market,” she said. “I can’t even explain the Internet.” He shrugs. “The Internet is a tapestry that covers the entire world. Billions of people hold its edges. It’s similar to the market.” He pretended to hold a cloth in his hand. “When one person in Australia goes like this”—he “lifted” the fabric then “lowered” it to its original height—“the people in Sweden feel the ripple effect in the market. When someone goes like this over here”—he “yanked” the fabric back—“the people over here feel it. With everyone lifting and yanking, the area in the middle is a sea of waves and flat places and movements and is constantly shifting. And then there are rumors. You hear that people holding the fabric over there are about to drop it. So you want to drop your side. But then they don’t drop it, and then other people you hadn’t anticipated drop theirs. Others pick it up. It is ever changing and impossible to predict. Gambling implies that there is rhyme or reason and those who are able to count fast enough can figure it out. The truth is, the market is influenced by forces impossible to chart. It’s like fashion. It never ends.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“Sometimes I mistake presence for fondness. Even though those who are absent are normally the ones I love most. Perhaps because so many in my life have said, “I’m here, aren’t I?” when I’ve asked to feel their love.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“She speaks with the wandering expansiveness of a woman who doesn’t know we die.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“There are intimacies that don't involve marriage just as there are marriages that don't involve intimacy. The mind provides the only possible privacy so what is more intimate than thought? If intimacy is marriage, I'm married to anyone I've carried in my mind. If intimacy is marriage, I've felt more married to the EMT who could have left but instead pressed her palm against my heart for the length of several breaths to make sure I was still tethered to the world. That EMT married me, if you will. Will you? If you say I do, these are vows.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“One shift leads to another as you make room for yourself again and again. I readjusted several times over the course of years to allow myself to arrive.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“She speaks like she always does, in fits and starts, as if whatever she says has only recently replaced a thought she liked more.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“My subconscious has at least ten working, active planes.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“After she was gone, every room was a nothing room.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“There've been several times in our friendship when Rose and I reached what I feared was its conclusion, when an important update to our subscription to each other had lapsed, and we either had to renew or face the tenuousness of our connection.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“There've bene several times in our friendship when Rose and I reached what I feared was its conclusion, when an important update to our subscription to each other had lapsed, and we either had to renew or face the tenuousness of our connection.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“There've bene several times in our friendship when Rose and I reached what I. feared was its conclusion, when an important update to our subscription to each other had lapsed, and we either had to renew or face the tenuousness of our connection.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“One week before my wedding day, upon returning to my hotel room with a tube of borrowed toothpaste, I find a small bird waiting inside the area called the antechamber and I know within moments it is my grandmother.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“When you can see anyone at any hour, it collapses perspective and time. Add to that the isolation and distance from which most people observe, and the Internet gives the impression that one person is simultaneously having a party, turning fifty, scuba diving, baking with a great aunt.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“It's true what Rose said about happiness. But it wasn't that I thought I didn't deserve it, it's that I don't consider her idea happiness.”
― marie-helene bertino, Parakeet

“Life has no past tense: To remember something is to relive it...I'd need dioramas for these watershed moments, too, and when presenting my life to the governing body, I'd say: To understand this woman you must know that each is happening simultaneously.”
― marie-helene bertino, Parakeet

“My mother dons her public voice. “Hello, Rose.” She reminds me only a few minutes remain before everyone is due to meet in the lobby then hangs up.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“I watch myself in the mirrored walls, veiled, slide down to sit on the floor and dial the reception planner. “Checking to make sure you’ve arranged a place card and seat for Simone.” “Yes,” she says. “I’ve put her with the table you’ve labeled ‘one-offs.’” “Perfect.” I hang up. The doors slide open. The concierge’s voice trails me out of the elevator. “I’ve heard it’s good luck to say a rosary on the morning of your wedding. I have one at my desk if you…” Minutes down the tree-lined road, the groom is being mimosa-toasted in his aunt Henshaw’s home. The cake is in the shape of the lake. In the morning we’ll return to the city. Alone in the room, I switch the channel to a newscast and slide under the folded coverlet. From the shelf of sleep, I hear local news stories. Henrietta has opened a store during an unfriendly economic climate. Despite everyone’s predictions, she is doing well. In global news, in towns around the world, people prepare for different holidays amid varied architecture.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“I hope I get to do that one day.” “Get your flowers at Shop and Save?” “No, silly.” He wraps the peonies in brown paper. “Get married.” “Marriage is not an achievement,” I say for what feels like the tenth time. No one can imagine an ambivalent bride.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“I pull my dress on and fasten the important buttons, leaving the subsidiary ones for the elevator. “I’m going.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“The groom curses in the bathroom, a dropped metal thing. I have a sister now, too, I think. To Clover, I say, “When he what?” “He waited until I was on the phone,” she says. “I guess he thought that’d be a good way for him to.” “For him to what?” “For him to. He shot himself.” She describes the smell of burning, the smear of blood still on her. The groom draws the curtains, revealing the lake and sky. I clamber under the sheets, still naked. Thousands of miles above, a plane glides out from a bank of navy clouds. Clover says, the nurses. The name of the hospital. The plane reveals itself again. I think of the passengers, feet swinging over plastic seats, watching movie screens above the city’s grid. The conflation of tin and sky. For a moment, Danny is a small thing seen from thousands of miles above. I’m not certain I know him or the woman on the phone who is overcome with tears. I tell her I’ll come to the hospital and hang up. “One of my clients shot himself,” I say. “He’s at the hospital.” “He’s alive?” the groom says. “No,” I say. He frowns. “If he’s dead, he wouldn’t be at the hospital.” “He was still alive when they … Is this the fucking point?” “I don’t know why I’m arguing. I’m sorry.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“He appreciates everything as he climbs me: thighs, stomach, breasts. There is nothing technically wrong with how he touches me. He’s not strong enough to plank above me so he props himself on one elbow. From that fortified position, he enters me.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet

“The groom’s aunt Henshaw bursts from the dining room in mid-conversation with a person who does not appear. She says she’s not doing well, sciatica, bad neighbors, joint pain, you name it. She says, “Sometimes I feel like I get older every day.” I instantly hear how Simone would answer, That’s the way it works, old lady, but I say, “I know what you mean. Some mornings I wake up and I’m a hundred years old.”
― Marie-Helene Bertino, Parakeet