Fight Night Quotes

“[W]hat makes a tragedy bearable and unbearable is the same thing—which is that life goes on.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“He looked sad and happy at the same time. That's a popular adult look. Because adults are busy and have to do everything at once, even feel things.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“She says Mom does the emotional work for the whole family, feeling everything ten times harder than is necessary so the rest of us can act normal.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“I have videos of Grandma on my cellphone. In one I asked her what will happen to her body after she dies. She says ahhhhh, my body! My body will become energy that will light your path.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“You’ll know for yourself what to fight. Grandma told me fighting can be making peace. She said sometimes we move forward by looking back and sometimes the onward can be knowing when to stop.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“If you lose your mind can you find your mind again? Of course you can. That's life!”
― Miriam Toews , Fight Night

“They stole it from us. It was. . .our tragedy! Which is our humanity. We need those things. We need tragedy, which is the need to love and the need. . .not just the need, the imperative, the human imperative. . .to experience joy. To find joy and to create joy. All through the night. The fight night.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“You're a small thing and you must learn to fight.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“Lonely fights are the worst, she said. She’d rather lose a lonely fight. She’d rather join a losing team than win a lonely fight.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“To be alive means full body contact with the absurd. Still, we can be happy. Even poor old Sisyphus could figure that much out. And that’s saying something. You might say that God is an absurd concept but faith in God’s goodness. . .I find joy in that. I find it inspiring.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“She said what makes a tragedy bearable and unbearable is the same thing- which is that life goes on.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“On the days she gets the death calls she grabs at me when I walk past her and I know she wants affection, but I hate always having to be the embodiment of life.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“Grandma asked me if I wanted to continue our Editorial Meeting but I didn’t answer. Then she asked me if I knew what bioluminescence was. I smashed breadcrumbs with my thumb and kept my piehole shut. It’s one’s ability to create light from within, said Grandma. Like a firefly. I think you have that, Swivchen. You have a fire inside you and your job is to not let it go out. I’m too young to have a job, I said.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“Even when Grandma is fast asleep and snoring, if I put one finger gently on her shoulder she’ll burst to life and stretch her arms out to me and smile and say, Sweetheartchen! I ask her every time, Did you detect my presence? But she never hears me because she takes her hearing aids out to sleep and she just laughs and holds on to my wrists like they’re reins on a horse. She can’t believe she keeps waking up alive and is really amazed and grateful about it which is what all the pamphlets at therapy say we’re supposed to be feeling about every new day.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“She sprays cops when they have their windows down and are cruising slowly past our house because she hates them after what they did when Grandpa died, and just period. When they get out of the car and walk up to her she says things like, Here comes Rocket Man! Send in the clowns! The cops smile because they think she’s just a crazy old lady. But she really means business. She hates them. She doesn’t want to hate anybody but she can’t help it and she isn’t even going to pray about it because she thinks God secretly hates them too.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“I’d made “Fever” Mom’s ring tone because the song was about getting the flu from being too close to someone. I thought it was a good choice because she holds me tight and kisses me all the time and she’s always blowing her nose on me and it makes me sick and gives me fever—but now I wasn’t sure it was the right ring tone after all. I didn’t want to have a sexy ring tone for Mom on my cellphone!”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“It is not those who can inflict the most but those who can suffer the most who will conquer, she said.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“She (mom) yelled from upstairs, Those are books that help me to live! Those books are my life!
Get down here! I yelled back. I'm your goddamn life!”
― Miriam Toews , Fight Night

“Grandma likes to sit on the top step of our front porch and water the flowers and fall asleep in the sun. She tilts her head way back to feel the warm sun on her face. The instant she falls asleep she loses her grip on the hose and it flips all over the place and then she knows she's had a nap and also completed a household task.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“After that we had Math Class. Pencils ready! she yelled. If you’ve got a two thousand-piece puzzle of an Amish farm and you manage to add three pieces to the puzzle per day, how many more days will you need to stay alive to get it done? Math Class was interrupted by the doorbell. Ball Game! yelled Grandma. Who could it be? The doorbell ringer is set to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” which Grandma forces me to sing with her during the seventh-inning stretch even if we’re just watching the game in our living room. She makes me stand up for the anthem at the beginning, too. Mom doesn’t stand up for the anthem because Canada is a lie and a crime scene.
It was Jay Gatsby. He wants to tear our house down. I went to the door and opened it and told him, It’s yours for twenty million dollars.
He said, Listen, can I speak with your mother. You said the last time—
Twenty-five million dollars, I said.
Sorry, said Jay Gatsby, I’d like to speak with—
Thirty million dollars, capitalist, do you understand English? I slammed the door shut. Grandma said that was a bit overkill. He’s afraid of death, said Grandma. She said it like an insult. He’s lost his way! Jay Gatsby wants to tear down our house and build an underground doomsday-proof luxury vault. Jay Gatsby bought a house on a tropical island once and then forced every other person living on the island to sell their house to him so that he had the whole island to himself to do ecstasy and yoga with ex-models. He forced all the models to take pills that made their shit gold and sparkly. Mom said he’s had fake muscles put into his calves. She knows this because one day she saw him on the sidewalk outside the bookstore and his calves were super skinny and three days later they were bulging and had seams on them. Mom said he went to a place in Cleveland, Ohio to get it done where you can also have your vag tightened up if you feel like it. Then you can just sit around with your S.O. vaping all day with your giant fake calves and stitched-up wazoo and be spied on by your modern thermostat which is a weapon of the state they just call “green” because of sales and Alexa and shit and practicing mindfulness hahahaha and just be really, really, really happy that you don’t have half a fucking brain between the two of you.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“Naturally there’s a fucking conchigliette in my shoe!”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“You are ten weeks inside, the size of a kumquat, a nice dirty-sounding word, your head half the size of your body, your hands covering your heart. Protecting your heart, as though we are able to do that.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“I don’t know why saying bowel movement and stool is better than vag and piehole. It doesn’t matter what words you use in life, it’s not gonna prevent you from suffering.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night

“I wanted to walk with Lou and not be tortured watching Grandma trying to breathe, but Ken said, Okay man, catch you later bro! Lou put his hair in a ponytail he tied up with his wet shirt. He was wearing flip-flops. Yo Louie, your rosy parker is visible for all the world to see! said Ken. Lou said eat your heart out, cat. Grandma said she wanted to visit Lou later in the evening. He put his head in the car window where Grandma was sitting and said he’d really love that, man. He put his fist in the car to bump but Grandma grabbed it and kissed it. He laughed. He told Grandma he loved her. She loved him too. She said I love you too, Louie, so much, sooooooo much. Oh boy, do I love you boys! Judith, I love you, too! Grandma had taken care of Lou when he was a baby and she was thirteen years old. He was as smart as a whip. She had carried him and carried him when he cried. Why was Lou suffering? He looked naked when he walked away. His hair was piled on top of his head. He only had his shorts and flip-flops on. He had a cool way of walking down the road and nodding at people in their cars. Lou does his thing! said Grandma. Lou does his thing, said Ken. I wondered, What is Lou’s thing? I wanted it to be my thing too.”
― Miriam Toews, Fight Night