The Blind Assassin

There was a lot of dancing. I knew how to dance by then; well enough, but not too well. (Never do anything too well, said Winifred, it shows you’re trying.)

Soon you’ll regret all that sun-tanning. Your face will look like a testicle.

His idea of French was verb forms and Phaedra, with a reliance on pithy maxims from noted authors. Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait – Estienne; C’est de quoi j’ai le plus de peur que la peur – Montaigne; Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point – Pascal; L’histoire, cette vieille dame exaltée et menteuse – de Maupassant. Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains – Flaubert. Dieu s’est fait homme; soit. Le diable s’est fait femme – Victor Hugo. And so forth.

Prior to order being restored, a meeting of strikers ran out of control. Shop windows were broken all along the town’s main street, with extensive looting.

In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It’s loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.

“I never said Free Love,” said Laura. “I only said marriage was an outworn institution. I said it had nothing to do with love, that’s all. Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can’t put love into a contract. Then I said there was no marriage in Heaven.”

“The other students find it so. They believe she’s—well, showing off. Challenging established authority.”

I considered the word warn: was I that dangerous? Only in the way sheep are, I now suppose

Make them bend down, it’s what they’re for

for her lapses, her failures to comply. I was tired of being held accountable, period.