Quotes from Julia Elliott

We didn't speak, and a beautiful, sweet evil grew between us.

Suddenly I'd found myself past thirty, shacked up with a fussy bald man nine years my senior who enjoyed monitoring every facet of our household—finances, thermostat, hot-water heater, water and electricity usage, lawn maintenance, and pest control.

off, and the American Empire declines slowly, we could spend the rest of our thirties parodying our twentysomething personas and retire at age forty after pimping our nubile selves.

Let's draw straws to see who gets eaten.

the way he used to when our love was a living creature, breathing in the room with us.

I kept thinking we were trapped in hell. Infernal, lung-curdling smoke? Check. Eardrum-bursting, satanic thunder? Check. Multitudes of shrieking imps? Check. [...] I had the gut feeling I was trapped there eternally, back behind First Baptist's aluminum-sided temple.

Always expect the worst…and then you might be pleasantly surprised

And so I wrote. With slavering gusts of animal rage, I wrote- howling like a wolf, bellowing like a patchwork creature composed of stinking corpse parts, my monster face distorted with fury, my skin straining against the crude black stitches that affixed it to the pulsing musculature beneath. I was alive! Every nerve within me sparked with rage

So your ex was a biter?" I say, wondering if his ex-wife is attractive, athletic, fleet of foot and long of limb, wondering why dumpy dudes like Jeff feel entitled to such women.

As I ached for this lost part of myself, my missing finger became a synecdoche for all lost things in my life—women and mothers, youth and full-scalp coverage, soberness, and the bliss of solid sleep. Most of all, I ached for the future as a shimmering, distant thing.