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41 " Agnes. Driven to madness, driven to anger, driven to despair, and even now a sliver of that woman remained, and that sliver was still screaming in agony. She was the snake biting its tail. "
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia , Mexican Gothic
42 " there could be no end, only an eternal ruination and endless devouring. "
43 " Vice, Noemí thought and was reminded of the nuns who had overseen her education. She’d learned rebellion while muttering the rosary. "
44 " was pleasurable, but in a terrible way, like when she’d had a cavity and kept pressing her tongue against "
45 " I like photos better. They capture the thing in the moment.” “But painting is the repeated exposure to a thing. It captures the essence of the object. "
46 " She had experience dealing with irritating men. They did not fluster her. She had learned, by navigating cocktail parties and meals at restaurants, that showing any kind of reaction to their crude remarks emboldened them. "
47 " Like the old car that had picked Noemí up, the town clung to the dregs of splendor. "
48 " It was not a haunting. It was possession and not even that, but something she couldn’t even begin to describe. The creation of an afterlife, furnished with the marrow and the bones and the neurons of a woman, made of stems and spores. "
49 " Men were always so afraid of tears, of having a hysterical woman on their hands. "
50 " ....,_,___''-'Like feeding an animal madder plants: it dyes the bones red, it stains everything inside crimson, she thought. "
51 " Yet the thought of anyone more substantial made her nervous, for she was trapped between competing desires, a desire for a more meaningful connection and the desire to never change. She wished for eternal youth and endless merriment. "
52 " She felt awful, and she remembered how Catalina had told her she was capable of leaving deep scars in people if she didn’t watch her scalding tongue. For all your intelligence, you don’t think sometimes, Catalina had said. How true. There she was, making stories up in her head when he had said nothing cruel to her. "
53 " Beauty attracts beauty and begets beauty "
54 " What resentments could sprout in a young heart when all affection and love had been denied? "
55 " Old would have been an inaccurate word to describe him. He was ancient, his face gouged with wrinkles, a few sparse hairs stubbornly attached to his skull. He was very pale too, like an underground creature. A slug, perhaps. His veins contrasted with his pallor, thin, spidery lines of purple and blue. "
56 " Everything in High Place was gnarled and begrimed, but he'd been able to grow bright and mindful, like an odd plant that is carried onto the wrong flower bed. "
57 " But painting is the repeated exposure to a thing. It captures the essence of the object. "
58 " But she liked this man’s quirks and imperfections, the lack of playboy smarts coupled with a quiet intelligence. "
59 " She had a friend who swore by Jung, but Noemí had never understood the whole “the dream is the dreamer” bit, nor had she cared to interpret her dreams. Now she recalled one particular thing Jung wrote: everyone carries a shadow. And like a shadow the woman’s words hung over Noemí "
60 " Perhaps chirping even more loudly, the shadow of death creating a frenzy of need inside their small bodies, urging them on toward their own destruction. "