Amelia Gray

“He thought of the feeling of receiving oxygen from a mask and the calming sensation it brought, partly because of the concentrated gas but partly too because he could hear his muffled lungs expelling their product within the mask, and it reminded him that he was breathing, that the gas was flowing at all times but most importantly at that moment, a constant and essential truth. His lips and lungs and teeth were witness to the passage of breath.”

“It was clear that in a past life the detective had been a phone booth beside an empty highway.”

“[Olive’s] left foot was bleeding through a wide swath of bandages onto the tarp it was resting on. The bowl next to her was full of blood.Olive looked a little pale. “I don’t think I should move,” she said.“What are you doing?” Roger shut the door behind him and stood with his back to it.“I decided I might try to eat my toes,” Olive said, closing her eyes. “But now that I’ve started, I don’t think I should move.”Roger pushed himself off the wall and knelt down next to her. He unbuckled her silver belt and reached with it under her dress. He looped the belt around the top of her leg and tightened it. His hands were not shaking. “Sit on the loose end,” he said, pushing it under her. “I hope that works.”“You brought flowers,” she said, blinking.“Olive,” he said. “You cut off your toes.”She looked down at the bowl. “Are they still toes?” she asked.”

“Today, it's possible to read both erotica and books written for children without fear of social castigation.”

“Emily felt the sweet strains of paranoia drifting back. They told her to look over her shoulder, and when she did, they told her to check the lock on the door, and when she did that, they told her that her fears had meaning and depth, and that she was right to feel them. Each shadow meant something different and strange, an unfamiliar animal or a line of weapons. These visions were terrifying, but after they went away, she felt a strange kind of peace that those things existed in the world, that her world was powerful enough to conjure them. My world, she thought.”

“You lose everything you love in the order in which you love it.”

“They don't understand it. They're not old enough to know the first instinct of irritation should be avoided in order to keep an open mind.”

“They were in love! Carla wore her hair up and Andrew saw everything as a sign. They spent an entire afternoon sitting side by side in a coffee shop, taking more meaning than necessary from the world around them. A man wearing boxing gloves walked down the sidewalk in front of them and they took that to mean they would be together forever.”

“The more bleach in the bedsheets, the greater Chastity's impulse to roll around in them. A party would be thrown, she decided, the kind that would tell a small story in the contents of the dustpan the next morning. Detached sequins and mint leaves muddled by high heels, shrimp tales mixed in with a few shards of broken glass, a crust of bread. She rolled in her bleached sheets until they wrapped around her like a storm, and she fell asleep in the eye of it.”

“I feel like a brand new bitch.”

“Tess realized one of the great modern dating sadnesses: everyone is so used to the comforting glow of the computer screen that no one can go so far as to say "good morning" in public without being liquored up.”

“No domestic dispute between Franny and David had inspired the removal of their wedding rings. She would take hers off at work when she was giving scalp massages. Once she thought she had lost the ring, but she found it in the treatment room on a candleholder David had made for her during a personal failure of a pottery class he had taken the year he lost his job. After she found her ring, she started leaving it at home.”

“Why does the rain make us feel so romantic and strange? Maybe it's the fact that we are unnatural spectators of it, from inside our homes, and it is a reminder that we have the power to live our whole lives like this, if we choose. It's not the smell of fertile ground kicked up by raindrops, or the slick leaves, or the way we must amplify our voices to be heard over this larger presence. It's the power of the rooftop that makes us want to fuck under it.”

“She was the kind of girl who climbed the tallest tree and cried to be let down, but she was also the kind of girl who would scramble and jump down on her own as soon as someone went in for the ladder.”

“Just because you made it warm doesn't make it yours”

“It was hard to admit that those days were over, but it was hard to admit that any days were over, that the days themselves didn't stretch like pulled taffy and sag to the floor.”