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21 " Relax," she said. "You will be wise. You're young. You can't have everything right away." When something simple and true takes you by surprise, it hits you in the stomach. "
― Daniel Handler , The Basic Eight
22 " If there were any seeds of doubt in my mind as to whether I really loved Adam or just some image of Adam, they were all killed by the frost that was tonight's dinner party. No, wait, that sounds like it was some cold, deadly evening. I mean the opposite. I guess I mean that if the flower of my love for Adam wass being stunted by any feelings of doubt, then tonight fully fertilized my seed and allowed it to grow. That works if you don't think about the face that fertilizer is made if shit. "
23 " I reached out for something else and found it: the red croquet mallet, just occurring there on the ground like some easy device, some plot element stashed there for the big finale. "
24 " I'm very happy for you guys." I heard my voice, so false it was all the statues could do to keep themselves from rolling their eyes. "
25 " I'm alone. There's a poem in that, but I don't want to write it. I don't want to be someone who spends Saturday night alone at home, writing poems about being alone. "
26 " Dammit, Flora, why do you always ruin everything? A prophetic remark. I hope you picked up on that. "
27 " You fat bitch!" he said, and the party gasped like a Greek chorus. "
28 " The flames rose bright on everyone's screens, flickering lipstick red and traffic-cone orange and Lord knows what else, depending on how your television's colour was. "
29 " I walked around and around it, not because I felt I had to, but because I felt like it deserved that much attention from me. I found myself looking at each individual part closely, rather than the entire thing, because if I looked at the entire thing it would be like staring at the sun. It was such an unblinking portrayal of a person that it rose above any hack-neyed hype about it. It flicked away all my cynicism about Seeing Art without flinching and just made me look. I walked out of there thinking, Now I am older. "
30 " Right now I have the suspicion that the ace of diamonds is trapped forever, face down, beneath the king of diamonds, which is sneering at me like Juror Number Five, and my whole life feels like a similar misshuffle. "
31 " Most of those people won't meet my eyes, now, but I'm not one of them. Every morning I get up, and while brushing my teeth, look at my showered self, calmly foaming at the mouth. "