Quotes from Lily King

Funny how irony is never tragic to them, only comic.' 'Because death is not tragic to them, not in the way it is to us,' I said. 'They mourn.' 'They feel sorrow, great sorrow. But it isn't tragic.' 'No, it isn't. They know their ancestors have a plan for them. There's no sense that it was wrong. Tragedy is based on this sense that there's been a terrible mistake, isn't it?

I forget to mention the heavy menstrual bleeding and the pain.

The key is, she said, to disengage yourself from all your ideas about what is "natural.

what I'd become more interested in is how we believed we could be objective in any way at all, we who each came in with our own personal definitions of kindness, strength, masculinity, femininity, God, civilization, right and wrong.

The thoughts came fast, and I caught them, stopping only once to sharpen my pencil with a penknife. I thought of Nell's euphoria and nearly laughed out loud. This little rush of words was the closest

He said surely it is more civilized to kill one man every few months, hold up his head for all to behold, say his name, and return home for a feast than to slaughter nameless millions.

I'd come to any sort of elation in the field.

The gynecologist has ordered a mammogram. He said my breasts were difficult to examine manually because they were fibrous. It makes me feel like a cereal.

I felt the baby roll beneath her taut skin. I had never felt that before, never known, honestly, that such a thing happened. It echoed against my palm for a long time after. It was like putting my hand to the surface of the ocean and being able to feel a fish beneath.

At night you cried, because everyone around you was crying, halls and halls of boys crying in the dark for their brothers. 'Tears are not endless and we have no more.' That is the line I like best of all those war poets.

My parents were married twenty-three years and never made it look appealing.

The sauce was so spicy it made her cheeks glisten, and I had to clasp my hands together so that I did not reach out and touch her skin.

Even still, it took a long time to feel much of anything again.

I want too much. I always have.

My old friends are getting married, too. The invitations catch up with me eventually, forwarded from Oregon or Spain or Albuquerque. Unfortunately, sometimes these invitations arrive before the wedding has taken place.

Polky Polky I used to call it." "Dot Dot, actually." Hanne smiled. "Dot Dot. I thought you were the most beautiful singer in the whole world." Oda felt pitched up onto the crest of a wave, like one of those boats far out at sea.

Everyone becomes a genius when they die young.

WordsWorth. Darkness Visible

Everything we ever said to each other was in languages I'm starting to forget.

nothing. Some of the women are still wading

For me, other people are the point, but other people can disappear.

They'd come in '31 to study two New Guinea tribes. But because Bankson was on the Sepik River, they'd gone north, up the mountains to the Anapa, with the hope that when they came back down in a year he'd be gone and they'd have their pick of the river tribes, whose less isolated cultures were rich with artistic, economic, and spiritual traditions.

And all the while I am aware of a larger despair, as if Helen & I are vessels for the despair of all women and many men too. Who are we and where are we going? Why are we, with all our 'progress,' so limited in understanding & sympathy & the ability to give each other real freedom? Why with our emphasis on the individual are we still so blinded by the urge to conform?

Anthropological contribution, they called it in the OSS. A generous epithet for scientific prostitution.