from Chapter 29
I sat back from the computer. I took my shaking hands off the keyboard. A tear trickled down my face.
The Book of Beings Read-Along at bookofbeings.com
Read-Along
yet another from Chapter 29
from Chapter 29
"Are you asking me to risk hurting you?"
"I'm asking you to risk love."
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another from Chapter 29
from Chapter 29
All right, he responded. Let's do this: we'll pick a time, and a place, and we'll both be there. Somewhere public, with lots of people. And if you recognize who I am--and I think you will, just by looking into my eyes--and if you want to be with me, we'll have the most wondrous weekend. If you don't, if you leave without coming up to me, I'll say I wasn't there. I'll say I was a coward and did not come. We can still keep writing. And I'll never ask to see you again.
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from Chapter 29
from Chapter 29
Your soul sits in your body the way a flower sits in its stem.
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another from Chapter 27
from Chapter 27
I kept running away from her only to find myself in the hallway of a medical building. She was trying to force me to have an abortion. I kept getting confused in the corridors. I kept thinking I had lost her, but then she kept finding me.
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from Chapter 27
from Chapter 27
What he whispered was puzzling, the way things in dreams sometimes are. What he whispered, over and over as I fell asleep within the dream, was "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
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from Chapter 26
from Chapter 26
"You must have practiced a lot," I said. Come to think of it, I'd
seen that same spraying around town in all kinds of crazy places.
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from Chapter 25
from Chapter 25
He took an enormous melon and put it on a post in his backyard and set off a stick of dynamite that he had stashed inside.
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another from Chapter 24
from Chapter 24
She started spending lots of time sleeping in places that weren't her bed, in other words, wherever she happened to pass out.
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from Chapter 24
from Chapter 24
He'd publicly denied having sexual relations with my mother. He said the devil made her say he'd impregnated her.
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from Chapter 23
from Chapter 23
I hung up the phone. I stepped out of the booth. I walked away as fast as I could.
I ignored it when the phone started to ring behind me.
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Epigraph for Episode Two
Epigraph for Episode Two
I've oft been told by learned friars.
That wishing and the crime are one.
And Heaven punishes desires
As much as if the deed were done.
--Thomas Moore
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from Chapter 23
If this book has a manifesto, (or as one reader likes to joke, a Manon-festo) here it is:
from Chapter 23
That was the moment when I understood that I was always going to be the weird girl. In order to not be weird, you have to care what other people think of you, and that has to be the most important thing to you, all of the time, no matter what.
But however much I cared what people thought, however much I obsessed about it, there were still times when whatever was going on inside of me was more powerful than whatever anyone else thought of me.
This was one of those times.
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from Chapter 22
from Chapter 22
What are you going to do? Fling open the door of a women's bathroom stall, step out, and announce that you've just seen God? Cause you haven't, not really. And even if you have, what good does it do to go around telling everybody? No good really. Probably, it just creates trouble.
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from Chapter 21
from Chapter 21
The heavens didn't open. The clouds didn't roll back. There wasn't any flash of light, or any dark void, or swirling galaxies, although I can see why that's what they show you in pictures when they try to show you what something like that is like.
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from Chapter 19
from Chapter 19
I figured it was one of the monastery cats, so I held out my hand to it. Until I saw in the moonlight that it was actually a fox.
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from Chapter 18
from Chapter 18
His wavy brown hair was getting longer and beginning to cur around his ears and on his neck. Normally, noticing that sort of thing would make me sigh and get all stupid, but instead I stood there panicking.
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and another from Interchapter I
from Interchapter I
Had I, impassioned beyond reason, forced apart that lone round ovum and defiled it? Had I torn it so violently that it tore its own self in response, and kept on, inside her, tearing and tearing?
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another from Interchapter I
from Interchapter I
I could remember how she had smiled and sighed as I lay over her. Had I invented the memories to fool myself? Had I misunderstood her moans? Did she shudder now, at the thought of me?
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from Interchapter I
from Interchapter I
Was she shy of me without a storm? Why did the rest of that summer have to be so clear?
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