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Book: All My Puny Sorrows
Quotes of Book: All My Puny Sorrows

Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
I googled 'suicide gene' but cancelled the search at the last second. I didn't want to know. Plus, I already knew. People ask: but how does this happen? To think that even with all the security measures we employ these days to keep things out - fences and motion detectors and cameras and sunscreen and vitamins and deadbolts and chains and bike helmets and spinning classes and guards and gates - we can have secret killers lurking inside us? That we can turn on our happy selves the way tumours invade healthy, wholesome organs, the way 'normal' moms suddenly throw their infants off the balcony is...who wants to think about that shit?
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Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
Listen, I said, I don't think you understand. I don't want to be presumptuous, but really how could you understand what another person's suicide means? My friend asked the waitress for more coffee. I said that actually, now, I'd begun to measure a person's character and integrity by their ability to kill themselves.
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Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
But what is the bedrock of civilized society? Libraries, said Elf.
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Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
the idea of "working well" was a relative one for us and that in the context of our present lives my mother was right, it was absolutely fine, no problem.
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Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
I could see my mother's beater Chevy way down below in the parking lot and I pushed the green button on her automatic starter to see how far away I could be from something to make it come to life. Nothing happened, no lights came on.
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Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
The city was spread out in the soft darkness, calm after the big thunder and hail storm, still moist and warm like a woman very satisfied in love.
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Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
I feel safe in the car, alone and protected. I can see people milling about in the parking lot but they can't see me. Well, they can but they think I'm insane so they look away which is the same as being invisible.
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Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
She went sideways through the doorway and her stomach grazed the man's penis. Then she stopped in the middle, right there between the man and the woman, she didn't hurry through at all, she was savouring it. She looked up at the naked man's face, into his eyes, he was expressionless, and she smiled at him and nodded. She was greeting him, politely. Then she somehow turned around in that tight space to face the woman and she looked into her eyes too and smiled and nodded and then she smiled back at all of us huddled in the first room as if to say all right, people, let's go, follow me, and she stepped through and one by one the rest of us followed her. On
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Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquility; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea: Listen! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder-everlastingly. Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, Thy nature is not therefore less divine: Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year; And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, God being with thee when we know it not.
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Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
you still have to eat."
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Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
He got up to put on a record, vinyl was his thing now. He liked the step-by-stepness of it, the process. He held the record the way people hold records, not with his fingers but with his palms. He blew on it. The music was a soft whisper, one acoustic guitar, no voices. When he came back to the table he asked me to look at his eyes. They're seeping, he said. Like I have an infection or something. Pink eye? I asked. I don't know, he said. They always seem to be running, just clear liquid, not pus. I lie in bed and all this liquid dribbles out the sides. Maybe I should see a doctor, or optometrist or something. You're crying Nic. No… Yes. That's what they call crying. But all of the time? he asked. I'm not even conscious of it then. It's a new kind of crying, I said. For the new times. I leaned over and put my hands on his shoulders and then on the sides of his face in the same way that he'd held his record.
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Miriam Toews _ All My Puny Sorrows
and I finally understand what she needs to hear and that she's talking about not just me but Elf too and I tell her that my sorrow was not created by her, that my childhood was a joyful thing, an island in the sun, that her mothering is impeccable, that she is not to blame.
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