“I know girls who pine for it. They like to play dress-up and pretend being Vor ladies of old, rescued from menace by romantic Vor youths. For some reason they never play 'dying in childbirth', or 'vomiting your guts out from the red dysentery', or 'weaving till you go blind and crippled from arthritis and dye poisoning', or 'infanticide'. Well, they do die romantically of disease sometimes, but somehow it's always an illness that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control.”

“In your country, if you are not scared enough already, you can go to watch a horror film... For me and the girls from my village, horror is a disease and we are sick with it. it is not an illness you can cure yourself of my standing up and letting the big red cinema seat fold itself up behind you. That would be a good trick... But the film in your memory, you cannot walk out of it so easily. Wherever you go it is always playing. So when I say that I am a refugee, you must understand that there is no refuge.”

“Excuse me? Did I miss something? What has ever been romantic about vomit?“A man standing by your side when you’re sick. Holding your hair back from your face… that’s romantic.”“In what alternate universe do you live? Here in a place I like to call reality, that’s disgusting. Who in their right mind would find that romantic?”

“He's rude, controlling, abusive, misogynistic, disparaging and dismissive.... In all seriousness though, what a hideous lust object to mythologize. It'll be teaching all sorts of young girls that it's ROMANTIC to accept any sort of appalling treatment from some brooding loser who treats you like dirt. (describing the romantic lead in "Twilight")”

“If you’re the kind of person who has no guts, you just give up every time life pushes you. If you’re that kind of person, you’ll live all your life playing it safe, doing the right things, saving yourself for something that never happens. Then, you die a boring old man.”

“Fredrika Bimm, what do you think you're doing?""Freaking out. Losing my mind. Thinking about snapping your husband's spine. Squashing the urge to vomit. Wishing I had died at childbirth.""Oh, you say that when you don't get a prize in your Lucky Charms.”