Quotes from Binnie Kirshenbaum

I probably said something about being happy for him, because I was happy for him, although to be happy for someone else doesn't mean that you are happy for yourself.

But there are no happy endings unless we cut the story short, and as far as I know, there are no rules of etiquette to a miracle, either.

Semille wept not because she did something stupid; she wept because she *didn't* do something stupid. Sometimes, to do something stupid--to disobey your parents, to rush into battle, to speak out of turn, to ruin your life--is a far better thing to do than to do nothing at all.

Bunny does not want to kill herself. She does not want to die. It's that she no longer wants to live. To not want to be alive is not the same thing as wanting to be dead.

The transformation from rancid to clean, particularly after a stretch of feculence, is like being born again, minus Jesus. Praise is not for the Lord, but for the Hydroluxe showerhead.

What Albie knows, but will not say, is that, excepting when we are asleep, the lachrymal glands never cease secreting protein-rich and antibacterial fluid, tears, which keep the eyeball lubricated. In other words, with sleep and death as the only respites, we cry forever.

It is counterintuitive to inflict pain, tangible pain, as a way of relieving pain, but pain you can point to, pain that has a place, is pain that can be relieved.

Last year, last New Year's Eve, she'd said to him, "You know, I'd really rather stay at home and drink Clorox." But that was last year. This year, she would say no such thing. This year, to indulge in the kick of a joke or the pleasure of hyperbole is to risk being taken at her word.

It is all too apparent: wounds never heal, but rather, in a torpid state deep inside the medial temporal lobe of the brain, grief waits for fresh release.

A token of love comes in a box because love itself cannot be contained.