“We cannot carve or forcibly preserveor cultivate belief. If it will grow, it growsas we do - mostly after we have fallen”

“Do you know how,sometimes, when you first wake up,your pulse is so thorough, so slow,that you, and the one who is with you, and the room, and the opening light all seem to swelland subside and swel...”

“One probably hears about it.One, wire, recognizes.One holds her bones up next to each other.One insists, grinding the clutch.One would powder and powder.One would ask out of the back of the throat....”

“Certainly not the way someone will have told you the same thing yesterday, made you feel alternately - simultaneously - angry and guilty, guilty because complicit because flattered, therefore unfai...”

“She isn't here, but aroundhere, in a deep raindisappearing.”

“As long as there have been women." Mom told me, "there have been ways to punish them for being women.”

“In their silence they continued both to protect me and to punish me. The memory of that night was now the only tie between us, eclipsing everything else.”

“I'm more haunted by how what I've said and the things I've done have caused harm to myself and others than I am worried that God will punish me for being bad. Because in the end, we aren't punished...”

“...and I confess that, like a child, I cry. Ah, self-pity; I think we are at our most honest and sincere when we feel sorry for ourselves.”

“...and I confess that, like a child, I cry. Ah, self-pity; I think we are at our most honest and sincere when we feel sorry for ourselves.”

“The sins of women and children, domestic servants and the weak, the poor and the ignorant, are the sins of the husbands and fathers, the masters, the strong and the rich and the educated.”

“I have always derived indescribable pleasure from leading a decent woman to the edge of sin and leaving her there to live between the temptation and the fear of that sin.”

“Told often enough that they are the source of sin, women may well begin feeling guilty as they accept the necessity for penance. Taught effectively enough that they are irrelevant to the important ...”