Quotes from Miriam Toews

None of us have ever asked the men for anything, Agata states. Not a single thing, not even for the salt to be passed, not even for a penny or a moment alone or to take the washing in or to open a curtain or to go easy on the small yearlings or to put your hand on the small of my back as I try, again, for the twelfth or thirteenth time, to push a baby out of my body. Isn't it interesting, she says, that the one and only request the women would make of the men would be to leave?

Ona protests, quietly, that she doesn't believe that at all. She doesn't believe in authority, period, because authority makes people cruel. Salome interrupts: The people with authority or the people without?

That the pain of letting go of grief is just as painful or even more painful than the grief itself. It means goodbye.

When we got back to the house Logan grabbed his basketball, threw it really hard against the hallway wall, knocked the framed family photo to the floor-it didn't break, he didn't pick it up-and left with a couple of his friends. Thebes picked up the photo, hung it back on the wall, sighed heavily like she'd travelled to every corner of the world, on her knees, with a knife in her back and a boa constrictor wrapped around her chest, and then made us a couple of blueberry smoothies.

Later that evening I lay down in Min's empty bed upstairs and pulled her white sheet up over my head. I felt for my kneecaps and hip bones. I lay perfectly still, arms down, palms up. I closed my eyes and pretended I was floating in space, then at sea, then not floating at all.I hummed an old Beach Boys tune. In my room... Min had taught me how to play it on her guitar when we were kids.

La Mariche Loewen alça la mà. […] Diu que opina que el més importat no és preguntar-se si les dones són animals sinó si les dones s'han de venjar del mal que se'ls ha fet. O bé si han de perdonar els homes i, amb això, aconseguir que se'ls obrin les portes del cel.

Where are they going to get a camera? I asked. I don't know, said Noehmi. They'll probably get sidetracked along the way. Or they'll come back with paint instead, or beer, or some new idea for a circus or something. They're social anarchists.

She lived in her head and that's why it glowed.

Això d'animar les altres a mentir en benefici nostre ha de ser un pecat més greu que el de mentir nosaltres mateixes.

Els dits humans poden notar el tacte d'objectes de fins a tretze nanòmetres, cosa que significa que si tinguéssim un dit de la mida de la Terra podríem notar la diferència entre un estable i un cavall.

A Molotschna, la sort no existeix. És pecat creure en la sort. Un s'ha d'avergonyir de plorar. Tot és voluntat de Déu, res no queda abandonat a l'atzar en la creació de Déu. Si Déu va crear el món, per què no ens hi hem d'incloure nosaltres?

two days before he disappeared, told me that the twin pillars that guard the entrance to the shrine of religion are storytelling and cruelty.)

What was my first word? I asked him, and he said: Don't. I asked him what my second word was but he couldn't remember. I think I'd have made something up if I was him. Like go.

For a few seconds I thought about my little brothers who loved connecting things with rope. I wondered if I'd ever see them again and a torpedo of sadness struck me and moved straight trough my body.

Isn't it interesting, she says, that the one and only request the women would make of the men would be to leave?

I don't have a catchy method of conversing and yet, unfortunately, suffer on a minute-to-minute basis the agony of the unexpressed thought.

I willed my hands to stop trembling and ruffled my hair a bit and prayed to a God I only half believed in. Why are we always told that God will answer our prayers if we believe in Him? Why can't He ever make the first move?

Ona stops laughing, barely. Do you think that's true, she asks, that it doesn't matter what you think? I blush. Maul my own head. She continues: How would you feel if in your entire lifetime it had never mattered what you thought?

When I put the poncho on to show Elf she said farewell to arms.

Cornelius, one of my students, wrote a poem called "The Washline" in which he described the sheets and garments on his mother's washline as having voices, of speaking with one another, of sending messages to other garments on other washlines.

Yoli, she said, I'm just saying that apologies aren't the bedrock of civilized society. All right! I said. I agree. But what is the bedrock of civilized society? Libraries, said Elf.

I went back to my medical information. I learned that my body would think it was pregnant [on the pill]. There would now be yet another part of myself that would not know what was really going on.

Mom, she says, I dreamt that you had died, and in my dream I said, But if you are dead then there is nobody to catch me if I fall. And then in my dream you came back from death, you were tired, your feet hurt, but you were happy to come back one last time, and you said: Then don't fall.

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.