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Marie-Helene Bertino QUOTES

Marie-Helene Bertino QUOTES

1 " Seeing his face after months was as immediate as a pointed gun. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , Safe as Houses

2 " Once in a while, I smell Clive on my skin and it stops my day. It's a train crossing; I wait to pass. Eventually the lights stop flashing, the barriers lift. I keep moving. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , Safe as Houses

3 " If you are anything other than humbled in the presence of love, you are not in the presence of love. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

4 " They're humble because they're in service. They know they have to practice when they are filled with love. When they are filled with bile. When the sun is out and everyone with a palpably alive soul is on the beach, they are in wood-paneled dumps, practicing. Until they ruin any chance at being substantial and there is no soul on earth who will have them. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

5 " We carry our ancestors in our names and sometimes we carry our ancestors through the sliding doors of emergency rooms and either way they are heavy, man, either way we can't escape. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

6 " What we love, we mention."
"Then I must love you because I mention you all the time. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino

7 " You can’t say you know a city unless you know three ways to everywhere. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

8 " Good morning, the city says. Fuck you. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

9 " In the jaundiced light of a streetlamp, Sarina realizes why people have children: to see the face of the one they love at the ages they’ve missed... "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

10 " That’s a drummer’s love story. If you want a prettier one, you’ll be waiting forever. If you could separate your body into four distinct rhythms, you’d be cracked too "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

11 " I'm a minor character in my own life. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

12 " What am I supposed to do," she says. "Wait?" She wants him to say, Yes, wait. I will be home as soon as I run this one errand. Ben perceives disgust in her tone. Why would anyone wait for him? A boy who didn't know how to be a prom date, a man who knows what he needs, but too late.
He releases her arm. His voice is professional with sorrow. "You certainly couldn't do that." He means because she is precious. Sarina hears that she is snotty and unkind. He means because he is not that lucky; she hears: he is bored.
No one says "I want you to wait," and no one says "I'll wait. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

13 " When you're alone, you are in the right place to watch sadness approach like storm clouds over an open field. You can sit in a chair and get ready for it. As it moves through you, you can reach out your hands and feel all the edges. When it passes and you can drink coffee again you even miss it because it has been loyal to you like a boyfriend. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , Safe as Houses

14 " They hurt me, these small, brutal kindnesses. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , Safe as Houses

15 " Life has no past tense: To remember something is to relive it. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , Parakeet

16 " If there were a race among all artists to the human heart, my money would be on music to win. It knows a shortcut. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

17 " Saying good-bye to Ben is Sarina's least favorite activity. So sad the number of times she's had to do it. Ball games, recitals, the homes of friends, rented shore houses, through car windows after dropping off some forgotten camera to Annie. Goodbye. See you later. Nice seeing you. She has mastered it: A dismissive peck on the cheek. A hug like an afterthought. Telling herself, Do not watch him walk away. Watching him walk away. Watching him drive away. Watching him descend the stairs to the subway. How many times have they said goodbye to each other? Already tonight, twice.
He interrupts her before she can get the second goodbye out.
"How would you feel," he says, "about missing your train?"
Once at the beach, Sarina watched a crane bathing in a gully at dusk. It used its wings to funnel the water over its back, then shook out the excess in a firework of droplets. After several minutes it took off, arcing out over the fretless sea. That felt like this. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

18 " There are intimacies that don't involve marriage just as there are marriages that don't involve intimacy. The mind provides the only possible privacy so what is more intimate than thought? If intimacy is marriage, I'm married to anyone I've carried in my mind. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , Parakeet

19 " A monkey could do my job better and with more hilarious results. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , Safe as Houses

20 " Marcel was from Louisiana, so for four years Emily had been southern by association. She insisted on Lynchburg Lemonades. She scheduled interviews around the Gators. She championed gentility. Anyone at a dinner party who thought they could tell a joke making fun of the region encountered a faceful of Emily, quick and ferocious as a convert, as a woman who loved a man.
Emily now had no claim to the South. The region and its interests would proceed without her. "

― Marie-Helene Bertino , Safe as Houses