Bonnie Shimko

“You have an amazing imagination!" "I Know," I say, smiling back at her. "my head is chock-full of gruesome ideas”

“My insides contract- bad. "who are you?" I ask right out loud. And he says what I've been afraid of since I killed Lester's father. Haven't you guessed? I'm you. The real you.”

“The Thing Isto love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the slit of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think , how can a body withstand this? Then you hold like life a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, againEllen Bass”

“She has all the right equipment to look sexy, pretty even. She just overdoes everything-like she's a coloring-book women who got scribbled on by a toddler,”