Waif Quotes

“The older I became, the more convinced I was that no one escaped this earth unscathed by human suffering.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“I’d always liked many parts of my body but never the whole. I loved the way my waist curved in, and I loved the bulge of my hips. I loved my navel and my collarbone. I loved my thin wrists. It was strange how I loved parts of other people, too, but never the whole.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“I call it “The Time Before Men,” a version of myself I can never get back. I guess, you could say, some might also call it Innocence.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“People didn’t care about truth; they only cared about how the lie appeared.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“I was attractive when I cried and this complicated my pain.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“There’s an interesting thing about life—you can justify anything to yourself if the desire is great enough.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“That was the crux of my oppressive experience with men in the flesh—the ones you wished would touch you never did, and the ones you never wanted to touch you did so without asking.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“I’m not sure how men thought women were supposed to react to pain because our tears seemed to send them into panic or rage. We would have been better as sponges . . . absorbent and full of holes.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“Reena laughed then, and it was beautiful, like a spontaneous burst of original music that would only be heard once, a laugh borne of old pain turned sweet.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“And on any given day, I reflected, as the rain poured down on us, there was another person Lost, and on any given day, there were those of us on the fringe out desperately looking for them, welcoming them Home.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“What would you do if you ever saw the subject of your formative sexual fantasies in the flesh, as if made real from your erotic imagination’s pen?”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“never got to mourn Brittany in the way I got to mourn other people I’d lost from my life. She was a secret confined to my memories, tied forever to the scent of clove smoke and autumn.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“control it or if it controls me. Its humanlike form embraces and shields me from night’s cold loneliness. When I’m especially heartbroken, it says in a soothing feminine whisper that everything will be okay. In all kinds of emotional weather, it holds me close and comforts me in the surety of my longings. It knows my name and my every thought. It doesn’t judge inasmuch as it loves. For many years, it speaks mellifluously and touches me with tender, healing hands. Its laughter and joy are limitless.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“Excuses came easily at first and then I realized no matter how much I changed or how many imaginary eggshells I avoided stepping on, Matt only grew worse. I felt like I was falling in a dark bottomless pit. Mom had been right.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“It’s hard to remember a time when I didn’t know guilt or shame, but if it represents anything, it represents that. I call it “The Time Before Men,” a version of myself I can never get back. I guess, you could say, some might also call it Innocence.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“The world assaults it with a chisel, chip by chip and crack by crack, until it must retreat or be lost to all the universe forever. It tells me it must go now, and safeguard another who is far younger than I, and it retreats into the blinding bright halls I cannot enter. In its place, something new emerges. Something rough and punishing.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“But the dead neither laughed nor wept, I thought, as I drifted in and out of sleep. The dead only existed in the minds of the living, and what parts of my mother my mind remembered were all the parts of her left.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“Men fought to keep even their most hated possessions from other men.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“While the do-gooders patted themselves on the back, someone else got the lash. That’s the way it always was with righteous folk, though—far more acceptable to seem virtuous than to be it.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“I decided that day I wasn’t good enough for women, and I went out to the bars that night looking to hurt myself with the nearest man, which ended up being Matt. I know it’s not rational. Does grief have to be?”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“Just understand that everyone starts as a child. A mother’s beautiful child. A man—a man will never understand that. But you can.” She then leaned toward me and gave me a kiss on my forehead. Though it hadn’t been goodbye, it felt like it then. It was, perhaps, my mother’s manner of acknowledging I was no longer under her care, and that as an adult woman, I would have to navigate the world of men alone.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“Excuses came easily at first and then I realized no matter how much I changed or how many imaginary eggshells I avoided stepping on, Matt only grew worse. I felt like I was falling in a dark bottomless pit.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“I was a flesh case full of secrets and other sad things. If our marriage did get worse—if he ever did decide to graduate from fist to knife and cut me open—all his secrets would come tumbling out. I would stain the carpet with our failed marriage. What would I be then, I wondered?”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“The Time Before Men,” a version of myself I can never get back. I guess, you could say, some might also call it Innocence.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“I always thought of my body as separate. It was an object my mind was beholden to, and sometimes, yes, they interacted with each other out of necessity. But largely, my mind hated my body and wished it could be free of it and still exist. Unfortunately, the only freedom my mind would be able to obtain from my body would be death and death seemed unpleasurable in all regards.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“. . the world needs its villains. It manufactures them and it grows more efficient at it with every passing year.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“I call it "The Time Before Men," a version of myself I can never get back. I guess, you could say, some might also call it Innocence.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif

“If we lived in a lawless world, Matt would have already murdered me. That was the scary part about men like Matt. They let their rages go so far before teetering over the edge of a cliff, looking at the consequences, and deciding to step back.”
― Samantha Kolesnik, Waif