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21 " Freud wrote about it a century ago. How we rummage through the armory of the past to retrieve the weapons needed to repeat, repeat, repeat past traumas. He said it was primitive, instinctual, destructive. Like a demon inside us all.And now we know it's true. The brain itself is built with the battered beams of our early years. What the conscious mind forgets, the neurons remember. "
― Megan Abbott , Give Me Your Hand
22 " It's that powerful, this thing we share. A murky history, its narrative near impenetrable. We keep telling it to ourselves, noting its twists and turns, trying to make sense of it. And hiding it from everyone else. "
23 " Beautiful, he says, and she could titrate like a motherfucker. "
24 " Because the bad things you do become part of you, literally. This is no metaphor. They become part of you on a cellular level, in the blood. "
25 " The memories come in pieces. Little bits of grit too small to pick up even with a wetted finer, too small even to hold in my gaze. "
26 " Women have to live so much of their life in the in-betweens. "
27 " Because---and this was the first time I understood this--- everyone always like the best, wants the most, admires deeply, the girl who's just out of reach. The girl no one can touch, really. We don't know why we're drawn, but it's unstoppable. "
28 " Women have always been far less violent than men, the author conceded. The facts speak for themselves.But why, then, he asked, are women so much more ferocious in their violence?It has always seemed to me that the answer lies in the question. "
29 " Give me your hand,” she says, offering hers. “Hurry now. "
30 " It's just nature," I point out, wiping my lab bench, the sweet smell of the ethanol solvent. "Put animals in a small, closed space, and the one with the sharpest nails, the pointiest teeth wins." He gins. "Or maybe it's just like musical chairs?" It's a luxury to view it so lightly. But I nod. It's best never to let them see your teeth. "
31 " That’s your shadow, my mom told me once. You need it more than you think. "
32 " I can't deny that I desired her in that moment. Anyone would have. "
33 " What lies behind two such expert poker faces? I wonder. For different reasons, for reasons professional or emotional, they likely have spent most or all of their lives wearing masks, cool and aloof and impenetrable. It serves them in the lab, in the research community, in our profession. It serves them, period. Not me. Not me. "
34 " The way men touch you is so different from how boys do. Like they know all the handles and levers. Which felt so unfair, really. "
35 " You must never be fearful when what you’re doing is right. "
36 " It’s enraging, recalling a dozen, a hundred, a thousand times in my life a man telling me to relax, be a team player, stop worrying so much, take it easy and roll with the punches. We’re all on the same team. "
37 " I always feel lifted the minute I taste real air. The minute I see the sun-scorched signs, the swaying traffic-lights. The lab is gone. But not tonight, it seems. Tonight all I can think of is Diane Fleming rolling into town, starting fires. "
38 " that was when it happened. A click of her jaw, like a pit bull’s or cobra’s unlocking "
39 " My mom always says, you don’t have a self until you have a secret. "
40 " Remember this," she says, glowing, her skin golden and life-marked, "you will have to fight your entire life. And that's why you'll always be better. Because you wanted it so much more. "