NO ONE BELONGS HERE MORE THAN YOU - MIRANDA JULY

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 180 : How to Tell Stories to Children

"Tom began screaming, and I wondered if the baby's soft brain was, in this moment, changing shape in response to the violent stimuli. I tried to intellectualize the noise to protect the baby's psyche. I whispered: Isn't that interesting to hear a man scream? Doesn't that challenge our stereotypes of what men can do? And then I tried, Shhhhhhhhh."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 178 : How to Tell Stories to Children

"I wondered if perhaps our last conversation had been an overture. Not the conversation, exactly, but the silences within it. There had been many dark pits of tea-sipping silence; looking back, I could imagine placing my hand on his hand while kneeling in one of these dark pits. And in such a pit could one even be sure what one was doing? One might seek solace in a friend and literally go inside this friend to get the solace; and the friend, being old and familiar, might give especially good solace."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 177 : How to Tell Stories to Children

"There was almost nothing to say that the universe had not said already." 

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 172 : Birthmark

"She felt a real sense of loss. Even though she knew she had never had an accent. It was the birthmark, which in its density had lent color even to her voice. She didn't miss the birthmark, but she missed her Norwegian heritage, like learning of new relatives, only to discover they have just died."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 171 : Birthmark

"As the illusion of prettiness and horribleness flipped back and forth, we flipped wiht it. We were uglier than her, then suddenly we were lucky not to be her, but then again, at this angle she was too lovely to bear. She was both, we were both, and the world continued to spin."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 165 : Mon Plaisir

"Carl's new sense of humor flourished in silence, he made subtly absurd gestures that surprised me into almost audible laughter. And I could not make a move without making love. Every time I shifted in my chair, lifted my fork, brushed my hair from my eyes, I seemed to be pushing through the motions as through honey, slowly and with all kinds of implications." 

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 139 : Ten True Things

"For how long can you behold another person? Before you have to think of yourself again ,like dipping the brush back in for more ink. For a very long time; you didn't need to get more ink, there was no reason to get anything else, because she was as good as me, she lived on earth like me, she suffered as I did."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 136 : Ten True Things

"I went home early to study my apartment before the class. I wanted to look at everything though her eyes. I do this before I bring someone new into my life; I try to get a sense of who I am so that I can make it easier for them to know me."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 128 : Making Love in 2003

"I wept and curled and uncurled myself in a way I couldn't control. I was actually writhing in heartache, as if I were a single muscle whose purpose was to mourn." 

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 128 : Making Love in 2003

"I pressed my hot face against the chalkboard for a few seconds and then I wrote the word PEACE. That is the only good thing about being the special-needs assistant. you can write "peace" on the chalkboard any time you want. Who could complain? It was peace. It can only ever help to write it." 

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 115 : Making Love in 2003

"I looked out the windows and tried to see who the pedestrians thought I was when they looked at my car. But they didn't look at my car; they looked inward. They considered themselves and their own cars; they made love with their hurrying. They took each step as if it would not be their last, and it wasn't."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 113 : Making Love in 2003

"Our conversations happened in my blood, or if I wanted to hear its voice, I could hold down F-sharp and middle C on my plastic Casio, and from underneath these notes came a far-off staticky voice, like a truck driver on CB, just out of range."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 110 : Making Love in 2003

"I wondered if I would spend the rest of my life inventing complicated ways to depress myself, now that I had finished my book and gone to meet the man who said I had promise a year ago but wasn't home today." 

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 110 : Making Love in 2003

"Sometimes I would make left turns all the way around a block, and when I returned to original intersection, I would feel disappointed to find all the drivers were new. It wasn't like a square dance, where you miraculously end up with your original partner, laughing and feeling giddily relieved to find him after dancing with everyone else in the world. Instead, they swung around and kept on going, some people were at work by now, or halfway to the airport. In fact, driving might be the thing most opposite of dancing."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 66 : Something That Needs Nothing

"I looked at Pip and for a split second I felt as though she was nobody special in the larger scheme of my life. She was just some girl who had tied me to her leg to help her sink when she jumped off the bridge. Then I blinked and was in love with her again." 

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 64 : Something That Needs Nothing

"We needed time to consider ourselves, to come up with a theory about who we were and set it to music."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 64 : Something That Needs Nothing

"We were anxious to begin our life as people who had no people."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 61 : It Was Romance

"There were things of this general scale to cry about. But the biffest reason to cry was to drench the air in front of our faces. It was romance. Not the falling-in-love kind but the sharing of air between our shoulders and chests and thighs."

No one belongs here more than you - Pg 61 : It Was Romance

"It was a place of overflowing collaborative misery, and we cried together. We could smell each other's shampoo and the laundry detergents we had chosen, and I smelled that she didn't smoke but someone she loved did, and she could feel that I was large but not genetically, not permanently, just until I found my way again. The snaps on our jeans pressed into each other and our breasts exchanged their tired histories, tales of being over- and underutilized, floods and famines and never mind, just go. We wetted each other's blouses and pushed our crying ahead of us like a lantern, searching out new and forgotten sadnesses, ones that had died politely years ago but in fact had not died, and came to life with a little water."