What Big Teeth Quotes

“My love is a haunted house, a ghost possessing his own body, a fire that burns itself alive. A light almost too bright to look at, but I forced myself to look as long as I could.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“I sat with that for a long time. I thought of every person I had met, wondering how many of them had wolves inside them and just had never pulled them out. Or perhaps more horrible: how many of them, in a moment of fear, reached inside themselves for something to save them, and came up empty.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“I don't love her, if that's what you mean," he says. "I just want her love to save me."
I don't tell him that that's how it always begins: in selfishness, in ambition, in lust or desperation. That love starts out as something you want to bite into and ends as something that swallows you up.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“It is madness to love someone: there is no greater feeling of estrangement that the ways in which they are different from you.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“I don’t tell him that’s how it always begins: in selfishness, in ambition, in lust or desperation. That love starts out as something you want to bite into and ends as something that swallows you up.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“I’ve been alone for so long that I can’t remember what it feels like to belong.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“A wall fell down and suddenly I could see in, as though it were a dollhouse. A family of flames seated at the dining room table, flickering children racing up and down the stairs.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“This is the moment, I realize, when I loved my husband for the first time. When I forgave him for having parts of himself that did not belong to me, as I had parts of myself that he would never know.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“And I realized suddenly that my father didn’t like me. Not even a little bit.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“I understood something about Mother then that I hadn’t before: that she was willing to give up just about anything about herself to make someone else happy.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“I was alone again. The house, which often seemed too full when even a few of the family were around, suddenly felt vast and empty. Something about the sudden stillness made me freeze like a rabbit, conscious of the passage of time, but with no sense of what I was supposed to do next. It was like panic, but slower.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“I watched him and wondered if I was ever going to feel like I knew what I was doing.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“It is madness to love someone: there is no greater feeling of estrangement than the ways in which they are different from you.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“My younger self can't see it from here, but I can; how charity can be just another form of spite.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“I see all of us, the past and the present and the future, unspooled inside his guts. And I see Arthur too. That he loved us. That before we shut him out, he would have done anything for us. That if we had found a way to welcome him in, we would have become a three-bodied creature of impossible size and power. An invincible ball of rolling monsters we would have become, if only we'd had the truths Arthur has inside of him.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“The old have less to gain from denying themselves. I've often noticed that the older you are, the more you become yourself”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“The back of my neck went cold. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping I was still dreaming, that if I shut my eyes I’d wake up back in bed, and if I shut my eyes again I’d wake up in my room at Saint Brigid’s, and from there I could shut my eyes and wake up a child again, somewhere in some house just like this one, but where I’d be happy.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“Somewhere, two stories up, was my childhood bedroom, and maybe if I could make it in there, I would be transformed back into someone who belonged here.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“Do you understand?" I asked. He nodded, his eyes filling with tears. Sentimental creature. Good thing he had me to look after him. I threw my arms around his neck then. I kissed him on the cheek. And then I melted back into the crowd,”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“Do you understand?" I asked. He nodded, his eyes filling with tears. Sentimental creature. Good thing
he had me to look after him. I threw my arms around his neckthen. I kissed him on the cheek. And
then I melted back into the crowd,”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth

“Did you miss me?" she asks. "While I was away?"
There isn't enough light in the whole house to answer.”
― Rose Szabo, What Big Teeth