The Adult Quotes

“Don’t worry about being good. Worry about saying things precisely. Worry about saying things in a way that makes them more than what they are.”
― Bronwyn Fischer, The Adult

“I was longing for that soft spot-the age where your parents look at you and you look at them back, and you're just their child. And you don't yet feel the strain of being something else. Of being yourself.”
― Bronwyn Fischer, The Adult

“I stared at the goosebumps on my leg, and I imagined a goose. Me, a goose. I breathed out. A goose washing its hair with very dexterous feet. A goose drying itself off with a towel. A goose going to its room.”
― Bronwyn Fischer, The Adult

“Her name. I held it in my mouth. I felt how it might taste, a fork across the table, the crisp, watering fat of meat. And I realized as soon as I started speaking that I wasn’t going to be smart, or calculating. I wasn’t going to ask the right question. I couldn’t be keen or interrogative at the same time that my mouth was so loose with wanting.”
― Bronwyn Fischer, The Adult

“I thought, if Nora decided to never speak to me again, it wouldn’t change anything that had happened between us. I was no longer completely and privately myself. I imagined her eyes gathering and saving an image of my body. Her mind held a sense of who I was. A feeling of me that she might always be able to recall.”
― Bronwyn Fischer, The Adult

“His arms reminded me of a fisherman. I could imagine them wrapped up in a net, his thumb stuck in the mouth of a fish, showing it off to us after he’d caught it. He’d say something disgusting like, What will you do if I eat its head? And even though we wouldn’t answer, he’d bite down on its fish-flesh, and he’d impress himself with his own ability to forget what he was doing while he was doing it.”
― Bronwyn Fischer, The Adult