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1 " There is an essay on the language of the dying. The dying sometimes speak of themselves in the third person. I was not speaking that way. I said: I am bleeding. I am going to bleed to death. And I will be lucky if I die before he returns.Give me my Scallop shell of quiet.You know, they did not print the whole of the Indian song in the subway. Only a few lines. But I know the poem.'It's off in the distance. It came into the room. It's here in the circle.'I know the poem.She knows the poem. "
― Susanna Moore , In the Cut
2 " The trees in the park swayed and shuddered in anticipation, with delight or dread I do not know. "
3 " I know the sort of man who likes me. So I wondered, not for the first time, what secret I might possess, what magic charm or talisman had allowed me to get Malloy's attention in the first place. To get him to fuck me. I am not the kind of woman he likes. "
4 " These things happened to me, too, I wasn't just the perpetrator. I wasn't only the bad one. I want you to know that. "
5 " And I'd said, wouldn't it be easier if you just hit me once in the face, and got it over with? "
6 " I don't know where I am. My mind races. I feel like if I started to run, I'd never stop. "
7 " I think it may have something to do with something I heard when I was a kid. Something I think I heard. Actually, I know, know for a fact, that I heard something. "
8 " You like it. I probably wouldn't. I'm really only interested in my own behavior. "
9 " There was something different in his voice, as if he were hurrying me along, moving me past something before I saw it. "
10 " I didn't think I seemed like the sort of person who would mind.""What?""I'd have fucked you anyway." . . ."I thought I'd lose you," he said at last."Have you ever told me the truth?""Look—" he paused. "People lie to me all day long. And I lie to them all day long. I've done it all my life. "
11 " He was convincing. Lying as cultural attribute. A hazard of the job. And I fell for it. It did not occur to me that he lies simply because he likes it. Lies to bosses. Lies on the stand. He boasts about it. Lies under oath. It's called testilying, he'd told me. Lies to women, especially to women. Starting with his mother and working his way through all of us. His wife. The doll collection. He couldn't be bothered to tell the truth. "
12 " I was finding it difficult to speak with any vivacity, any pleasure. I wanted to get off the phone. I wanted him to feel bad, too. "
13 " I do not remember too much now. Certain things. Certain images. All sorts of irrational, irrational because nonsensically inappropriate, pieces of information stream through my head, as if my unconscious were bombarding me with words and phrases, an enemy agent subverting a radio broadcast. "
14 " Sometimes when I am not expecting it, when I let down my guard for a moment, allowing the thousands, the millions of little synapses in my head to work their will, conveying to me just what it is that I cannot bear to know, cannot bear to be known, I do remember. "
15 " As always, I was pulled in by the small gesture. It was all that I knew about him, and it was perilous to me. "
16 " Will you tell me?" I asked."Tell you what?" He spoke flatly, as if he dreaded my question and already knew that he would answer it."What you did.""Why do you think that knowing makes a difference?""I've thought that all my life.""Well, you're wrong. Knowing don't mean shit. "
17 " I am so ashamed by the things that used to make me unhappy. "
18 " There's something I know but I don't know it yet. It's driving me nuts. "
19 " It began to rain in that rushed and urgent way that it rains in New York. "
20 " I wanted to talk to him. To hear his dangerous voice, the voice that he used with women ('Hi, baby, how you doin'? Sittin' on the phone?' The 'hi' drawn out in a low, implicating whisper.) I wanted to hear the coldness that was so deep . . . That coldness of spirit that had made it so thrilling to get his attention. "
