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Nightbitch QUOTES

Nightbitch QUOTES

41 " One night to not care what anyone thought, to shit where she pleased, to not be needed by any living thing, and to be only a body in motion in the dark, a shadow, a ghost of herself, who listened only to the mandates of her body. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

42 " The boy liked to look at the lobsters in the tank, claws banded, wallowing in a pile in the murky water. They stopped to watch the animals tumbling over each other and knocking against the glass.
The grocery store is a locus of oppression, she thought, as she wheeled onward, past an old lady who worked at the store and cooked fish-fillet samples in an electric skillet at a small lecturn. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

43 " Because her husband paid for their lives, paid for the privilege she had of staying home each and every day and devoting herself completely to motherhood and nothing else, she had felt, ever since she stepped down from her position at the gallery, that she was in no place to demand anything. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

44 " Take care of your child, she wanted to scream. Just take care of it! "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

45 " Perhaps—ironically—my womanhood was what saved me that day, rather than dooming me. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

46 " Sure, her mother was saying, it’s bad, but since you are a woman, this is your lot in life, your work, to do what’s hard, what’s unspeakably painful, and then to keep this covenant of silence. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

47 " And once she was stripped of all she had been, of her career, her comely figure, her ambition, her familiar hormones, an anti-feminist conspiracy seemed not only plausible but nearly inevitable. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

48 " Her secrets were the only things these days that were purely hers, things apart from mother and wife and middle-aged woman. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

49 " … at its core was something very private and sad, those deeply held dreams that a mother had tucked into a cold, dark corner of herself. It was no good to go in and start checking on them, turning on the lights, and throwing back the sheets, because then you didn’t have sleep-dead dreams anymore. You had a raving, roaming bitch who wanted to kill animals with its mouth. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

50 " She ran hot. She buzzed. Either she needed to keep busy or else she needed to lie down and sleep. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

51 " She wanted to think she had become another person altogether that night before, but she knew the horrible truth, that Nightbitch had always been there, not even that far below the surface. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

52 " It actually, instead, marked an immersion in work, an unimaginable weight of work, a multiplication of work exponential in it's scope, staggering, so staggering, both physically and psychically (especially psychically), that even the most mentally well person might be brought to her knees beneath such a load, a load that pitted ambition against biology, careers against instinct, that bade the modern mother be less of an animal in order to be happy, because-come on, now-we're evolved and civilized, and, really, what is your problem? Pull it together. This is embarrassing. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

53 " Imagine trying to shop for crunchy snacks with a toddler and heightened near-animal sense of smell while the enormity of patriarchal society loomed behind every box of farm-themed crackers, in the crackle of every pretzel bag you picked up. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

54 " You could always tell a mother by that look, she had come to find, one that encompassed not only exhaustion and boredom, but something more. It was as though the mothers were starting toward something they had lost, something they couldn't even remember. What was it? . . ? "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

55 " I think working mother is perhaps the most nonsensical concept ever concocted. I mean, who isn’t a working mother? And then add a paid job to it, so what are you then? A working working mother? Imagine saying working father. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

56 " You light a fire early in your girlhood. You stoke it and tend it. You protect it at all costs. You don’t let it rage into a mountain of light, because that’s not becoming of a girl. You keep it secret. You let it burn. You look into the eyes of other girls and see their fires flickering there, offer conspiratorial nods, never speak aloud of a near-unbearable heat, a growing conflagration. You tend the flame because if you don’t you’re stuck, in the cold, on your own, doomed to seasonal layers, doomed to practicality, doomed to this is just the way things are, doomed to settling and understanding and reasoning and agreeing and seeing it another way and seeing it his way and seeing it from all the other ways but your own. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

57 " She understood that she was just a privileged, overeducated lady in the middle of America living the dream of holding her baby twenty-four hours a day. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

58 " Hello, she wanted to say to him. I am your wife. I am a woman. I am this animal. I have become everything. I am new and also ancient. I have been ashamed but will be no more. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

59 " I am angry all the time. I would one day like to direct my own artwork toward a critique of these modern-day systems that articulates all this, but my brain no longer functions as it did before the baby, and I am really dumb now. I am afraid I will never be smart or happy or thin again. I am afraid I might be turning into a dog. Instead, she said, smiling, I love it. I love being a mom. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch

60 " ...she did not have ajob that paid any money whatsoever; in fact, it was a drain on money, represented negative money, this mothering job. Because her husband paid for their lives, paid for the privilege she had of staying hom each and every day and devoting herself to motherhoos and nothing else, she had felt... that she had no place to demand anything. He worked all week, and she felt it was too much to ask him to lift a finger on the weekend, because she had automatically devalued her work from the start. She had been, she saw now, inculcated by a culture that told her, Look, it's cute your a mom, and go do your thing, but honestly, it's not that hard; you're probably not all that smart of interesting, but good for you for feeling fulfilled by mothering. "

― Rachel Yoder , Nightbitch