Quotes from Sam Cohen

It was strange, Sari thought, that girls' joy in their own freedom was so often the thing that made men want to turn them into wives.

Being a tree, affirmation would feel different. Love would feel different. We would be happiest if our soil was full of microbes chatting. We would be happiest if the soil was rich enough to contain a complex fungal network that would allow us to sort of blur into it and talk to or just sort of be each other.

That's how it is with nations," we hear Mother Nature croak from her deathbed. "Nations war.

It seemed like everyone was wrapping themselves in chrysali and having late-in-life emergences as different kinds of creatures, and what this made clear was that we weren't becoming anything. We felt like caterpillars who didn't know that being a caterpillar wasn't the endgame. We felt like foamy pond water.

Sarah wasn't even called Sarah yet: she was still going by her birth name Sarai, but that name's warrior vibes didn't suit her and so mostly everyone just called her Sari.

It wasn't a big deal to marry your half-brother in those times; there just weren't enough people on earth for people to start getting picky about incest.

Inside, Katherine opened Sarah's refrigerator and, from between leathery unwrapped burrito halves and Tupperwares holding bluing sludge, took out a wheel of cheap Brie still in its plastic and set it down on the counter. "I like your apartment," she said. "Sorry it's so messy," said Sarah. Katherine shrugged. "Bukowski said that people with clean kitchens have detestable spiritual qualities.