1
I hung a picture of him above my bed and learned by hand the internal workings of the female combustion engine.Shannon Celebi
2
A woman brings so much more to the world than birth, for she can birth discovery, intelligence, invention, art, just as well as any man.Shannon Celebi
3
Using one’s beauty was the only way a smart girl could get by, at least that’s how it was back then, though even for a smart girl there were really only three professions. You could be a nurse or a teacher or a wife.Shannon Celebi
4
Then the weeks rolled by in a sinister psych ward haze filled with white-coated orderlies and rocking whack-job patients torn straight from some old Jack Nicholson film, all anti-psychotic meds and padded lonely cells...Shannon Celebi
5
I think first of the children. What the hell am I supposed to tell them? Then I think about money, the house, all those things no widow will tell you ever crossed her mind.Shannon Celebi
6
Once upon a long ago time I was a girl with hopeful halos in my eyes–not unlike you–not a typical beauty but beautiful nonetheless, as all young girls tend to be in their prime, even if they don’t tend to know it.Shannon Celebi
7
All I cared about that summer were suntans, beaches, boys and booze.Shannon Celebi
8
Don’t worry if you fall, sweet girl. Youth is made for bruises.Shannon Celebi
9
She fantasized sometimes too about killing him a little: a little poison in his pudding, a little flick-flick-flick with a fillet knife at his throat.Shannon Celebi
10
Her mother always told her, “If he hits you, then you leave, ” but Jack had never hit her, not with his fists.Shannon Celebi
11
Let’s call my mood melancholy; let’s call it remembrance. Or maybe let’s call it longing. Yes, let’s call it longing instead.Shannon Celebi
12
It wasn’t as if she’d thought it through or anything, how what a person wanted wasn’t always what they needed, and what a person needed might be the last thing they could ever want.Shannon Celebi