Цитаты из книги Розы и тлен

"Most likely explanation." I nodded, and we left it at that, neither of us making the point that the most likely explanation wasn`t always the true one. It was just the thing that was most comfortable to believe.

"I`m surprised you`re here," Gavin said. Except that when he said "surprised" it sounded like he meant "pissed off".

I like getting mail. It happens so rarely anymore, it`s almost like getting a present along with the words.

I had forgotten that was what Marin did when she was stressed. She cleaned, straightened. Did something to impose order on the chaos.

It was a catch and lift they were working on. Marin flung herself into the air toward Gavin, and his hands pushed her higher still, until she was poised just on the edge of his grasp. Then a toss and she flew again, spun, and dropped back to his hold, but only after almost, almost falling. Beautiful in its peril, trust enfleshed.

I learned to love the motion of running, the action itself. The fact that I could trust the muscles in my legs to carry me, if I needed to go. Running made me feel strong and capable. Like, if I ran far enough, I could outrun everything - that my thoughts would just go white, and there would be nothing in the world but movement.

It`s easier to see the places where things end. Endings are clear, endings are dramatic, endings are obvious events. A pair of panties, not yours, found, the slap of a hand across a face, a ring returned. Something that was, and isn`t, now. Beginnings are hidden in the shadows of time, are gradual, are two half-glances in a dark bar. Tiny things that no one ever notices, but that hold everything.

We were all doing very well at this particular round of small talk.

For a second, as he watched her walk back with our plates, his poise slipped away, and he was real, like he was breath and blood, instead of a magazine page. Then the second passed, and that unreal perfection fell on him like a shadow again.

Having a daughter who was a dancer was a reflected spotlight for the mother backstage, and our mother hoarded that reflection, clutching it to her heart. She basked in Marin`s applause, and told herself that she had earned it, too. Having a daughter who was a writer was a flashlight shone into the corners that ought to be kept dark so that no one saw the monsters tucked away in them. She wanted that light turned off.

"Now, what do you want out of the time you and I will spend together while you`re here? Be honest." I sipped my coffee. "I want to know where I`m failing, so I can get better. I want to be able to talk to you and get advice about my setbacks, and frustrations, and how to work around those." "Not my agent`s number, or a blurb for your book?" She raised a brow. "No, because if I`m good enough, you`ll give me those without me having to ask for them."

I like to eat, so I learned to cook, and I learned to do it well, because I can`t stand half-assing things.

The truth, the night-dark truth of it, was that I was afraid of what it meant to write this book, of how close to the bone I would have to cut myself to do it. I was afraid if I thought about it too deeply, talked about it too much, I would talk myself out of writing it. I had done that before.

Once I got upstairs, I opened the windows to let the night in. The dark blanket of the night was my favorite time to write. It was easier to think about impossible things then, when there was no one else around to see or judge. It was the time of day most conducive to naked honesty, the time that made me feel like it was safe to tell secrets, to reveal desires.

I wondered what had happened, to make a risk that big seem safe, or whether safety had stopped mattering to her.

"I`m writing a rock opera about Joan of Arc. When it`s staged, I`ll be Joan." I turned the idea over in my brain. "That really works. She is one of the few people I can think of where the idea of a rock opera sounds fitting, not weird." "Working on it seems just scary enough," Ariel said. "Which is the way I like to pick what I`m going to do next. You know, how much does the idea make my stomach hurt? Oh, all the way to nausea? Why yes, that`s exactly what I`ll do."

Mom`s always going to be Mom, which means she`s never going to be happy, and will do her best to make sure that we aren`t, either.