The Bookshop Woman Quotes

Kizzy wanted to be a woman who would dive off the prow of a sailboat into the sea, who would fall back in a tangle of sheets, laughing, and who could dance a tango, lazily stroke a leopard with her bare foot, freeze an enemy's blood with her eyes, make promises she couldn't possibly keep, and then shift the world to keep them. She wanted to write memoirs and autograph them at a tiny bookshop in Rome, with a line of admirers snaking down a pink-lit alley. She wanted to make love on a balcony, ruin someone, trade in esoteric knowledge, watch strangers as coolly as a cat. She wanted to be inscrutable, have a drink named after her, a love song written for her, and a handsome adventurer's small airplane, champagne-christened Kizzy, which would vanish one day in a windstorm in Arabia so that she would have to mount a rescue operation involving camels, and wear an indigo veil against the stinging sand, just like the nomads. Kizzy wanted.

An angry man was dominant. An angry woman, on the other hand, must have lost her grip on sanity.

A stupid man is every woman’s downfall.

WOMAN: Hi, where are your copies of Breaking Dawn? I can't see any on the shelf. BOOKSELLER: Sorry, I think we’ve sold out of the Twilight books; we’re waiting on more. WOMAN: What? BOOKSELLER: We should have some in tomorrow. WOMAN: But I need a copy now. I finished the last one last night. BOOKSELLER: I’m sorry, I can’t help you. WOMAN: No, you don’t understand. I’ve taken the whole day off work to read it. BOOKSELLER: Erm… WOMAN: I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS! NOW! BOOKSELLER: Erm… WOMAN: Can you call your wholesaler and see if they can deliver this afternoon? BOOKSELLER: They only --- WOMAN: And then I can wait here for them. BOOKSELLER: I’m sorry, they only deliver in the morning. WOMAN: BUT WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW? BOOKSELLER: . . .we have many other books. WOMAN (sniffs): Do any of those have Robert Pattinson in them?

There are women who only look at another woman's shoes and never at her face. And others who always look women in the face and only occasionally at their shoes.

once when this woman was going on and on about how she would never read on download, that there was nothing like a real book and – I promise I normally am never rude to people but she was being truly insufferable – I said, ‘Well, they’re really only for people who read a lot’ which was mean of me but quite satisfying also.

As long as she doesn't turn too smart for men For the stupid ones, she will, Madame. But who wants them anyway? A stupid man is every woman's' downfall.

It takes only one word to hurt a woman, a matter of seconds, one stupid, impatient blow of the crop. But winning back her trust takes years. And sometimes there isn't the time.

there was a young woman who came to the library, miles away from her true home. She read a story about a girl who had come to a fork in the road and was so afraid of making the wrong decision that she stayed where she was, huddled in the hollow of a tree. After several days, an old woman came along and told her a riddle. She asked, ‘What is something you create, even if you do nothing?’ The answer was a choice. Choosing not to do something was still a choice.

We had only spoken for a matter of moments, but I was certain that she was the most intriguing woman I'd ever met.

Stupid, stupid woman. Intimacy is only one string on the bow. The instrument still plays the music.

The bitterness of this truth weighs on me still, and will to the end of my days.

My dear son, when you're a woman and you get married, you enter irreversibly into a supervisory position. You have to keep an eye on everything—what your husband does and how he is. And later, when children arrive, on them too. You're a watchdog, a servant and a diplomat rolled into one. And something as trivial as divorce doesn't end that. Oh no—love may come and go, but the caring goes on.

You build a relationship on laughing together, discovering new things you never even imagined you might like, Pride and Prejudice for example, and being welcomed into the heart of each other's families. And, say, you find a woman who likes quiet and won't hold your hand and doesn't believe in love...well, when she finally lets you hold her hand, you'll do anything, anything, to persuade her that love can actually be rather wonderful.

They implemented the Vichy regulations strictly and inexorably. These subservient men harbored a violent anger accumulated in the wake of the defeat, and it was as if they wanted to take it out on those weaker, less fortunate than themselves. There was nothing heroic about these agents of authority, not their job nor their approach.

You’re either a child or a woman, and neither of them have any idea how to relax.

You're a grown woman with a brain in your head, two good arms for carrying books and two strong legs to get you where you need to go.

I had five dolls, each decreasing in size, all made to perfectly fit inside the largest one. It was exactly how I felt: a fully formed woman, but the little girl inside was still there.

Grooves etched around my eyes and lines around my mouth suggested I was a woman who laughed unceasingly. That was the thing about me...I was very good at covering up my sorrows with a laugh or smile.

She hopes that one of them will be man enough (perhaps that should be woman enough?) to back down and admit that peace comes before ego and winning. Because with nuclear war, there can be no winners.

should have told you every day what a wonderful young woman you were. I sometimes feel like I wasn’t fully present, you know? Just going through the motions. That’s what happens when you keep a part of yourself hidden. Anyway, I wanted to tell you now so you’d know, you were always enough, Martha.

People say that Parisians are fiercely competitive about everything, and men charm women with their coldness. Every woman wants to net herself a man and turn his icy defenses into passion. Every woman, especially women from the south. That’s what Daphne says, and I think she’s crazy. Diets obviously make you hallucinate.

It’s about a woman, who may be a wife. But it’s first and foremost about a woman, and it’s not an unattainable description of an idealized woman. She’s born of experience and, I like to believe, knows her worth because she knows who created her. One of my favorite things John Paul II ever said was ‘Woman transcends all expectations when her heart is faithful to God.’ All expectations. And I’ve seen it too. My mom was amazing. My sisters are strong women—two are unmarried, by the way, and this is who they are. They don’t need a husband to be this woman. I believe God can do tremendous things through you—once you stop trying to wield all the power yourself.

Emilia held Sarah's hands and looked at her. She could see now the depth of sadness in Sarah's eyes. And she could feel the warmth and kindness that Julius must have been drawn to. And she was grateful to Sarah, for her compassion and honesty. It must have been a painful confession. She felt honored to be trusted with the secret. She supposed when she had time to think about it, she might be shocked, but she wasn't going to judge. She found it a comfort, that Julius had this woman's devotion. And she knew, from all the books she had ever read, that life was complicated, that love sprang from nowhere sometimes, and that forbidden love wasn't always something to be ashamed of.

(A couple approaches the desk) BOOKSELLER: Can I help you find something? MAN: Yeah, we're looking for a vocabulary book. It's either called The Soars or The Sars. BOKSELLER: Let me look it up and see what we have. WOMAN: Oh, it's OK; I made a note of the title. (Customer pulls a napkin from her purse and lays it down for the bookseller to read. Written on it is 'The Saurus').

A collection of Russian matryoshka dolls painted brightly in red and blue peeked out at me expectantly from one of the shelves. I couldn’t resist opening one, revealing a smaller doll inside. I opened that too, on and on until I had five dolls, each decreasing in size, all made to perfectly fit inside the largest one. It was exactly how I felt: a fully formed woman, but the little girl inside was still there.

Women and horses have a lot in common. Would you like to know what? Fine. Well, if a horse refuses, you've phrased your question wrongly. It's the same with women. Don't ask them: 'Shall we go out to dinner?' Ask: 'What can I cook for you?' Can she say no to that? No, she can't. Instead of whispering instructions to them like you would to a horse - lie down, woman, put your harness on - you should listen to them. Listen to what they want. In fact, they want to be free and to sail across the sky. It takes only one word to hurt a woman, a matter of seconds, one stupid, impatient blow of the crop. But winning back her trust takes years. And sometimes there isn't the time. It's amazing how unimpressed people are by being loved when it doesn't fit in with their plans. Love irks them so much that they change the locks or leave without warning. And when a horse leaves us, Jeanno, we deserve that love as little as when a woman does. They are superior beings to us men. When they love us, then they are being gracious, for only rarely do we give them reason to love us. And that's why it hurts so much. When women stop loving, men fall into a void of their own making.

What exactly is it you'd like to know? [the book store manager asked]. He had an odd expression, like he was asking her a trick question. [Katherine] thought a minute. What DID she want to know? Why had she taken the trouble to come out in the cold to learn about a woman she'd never heard of until yesterday? She had that feeling she got when she was doing her art and suddenly discovered the missing piece that ties everything together: a tingling in the back of her neck, a crazy buzzed-rush of a feeling that spread through her whole body. She didn't understand the role that Sara Harrison Shea, the ring Gary had given her, or the book he had hidden would play, but she knew that this was important, and that she had to give herself over to it and see where it might lead.

The Heart Shattered Glass was a courageous scream from the abyss from an abandoned woman, written in four days from the side of a precipice down which she was hurling all her worldly goods, one at a time, meditating on their meaning. It had taken the world by storm with its candor and wit. The fact that the author had subsequently fallen madly in love with and married the book’s publicist had only prolonged its popularity, but it was truly a book that deserved its worldwide fame. It was . . . She got it exactly. Exactly what it feels like. Nina looked at the tightly buttoned-up woman she had struggled to connect with and marveled, not for the first time, at the astonishing amount of seething emotion that could exist beneath the most restrained exterior. To look at Lesley you would think she was just a middle-aged shopkeeper quietly going about her business. The fact that she completely and utterly empathized with an American woman who had let her own blood drip down a mountainside in anguish, who had changed sexuality and howled at the moon with a wolf pack, just went to show. There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew—apart from, sometimes, music—to breach the barrier, to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduit between the two worlds.

She picked up the book beside her. Jane Eyre. Used, bought recently in a bookshop in Camden Passage, shabby nineteenth-century binding, pages bearing vague stains, fingered, smoothed. She opened the book to the place she left it when the taxicab pulled up. “My daughter, flee temptation.” “Mother, I will,” Jane responded, as the moon turned to woman. The fiction had tricked her. Drawn her in so that she became Jane. Yes. The parallels were there. Was she not heroic Jane? Betrayed. Left to wander. Solitary. Motherless. Yes, and with no relations to speak of except an uncle across the water. She occupied her mind. Comforted for a time, she came to. Then, with a sharpness, reprimanded herself. No, she told herself. No, she could not be Jane. Small and pale. English. No, she paused. No, my girl, try Bertha. Wild-maned Bertha. Clare thought of her father. Forever after her to train her hair. His visions of orderly pageboy. Coming home from work with something called Tame. She refused it; he called her Medusa. Do you intend to turn men to stone, daughter? She held to her curls, which turned kinks in the damp of London. Beloved racial characteristic. Her only sign, except for dark spaces here and there where melanin touched her. Yes, Bertha was closer to the mark. Captive. Ragôut. Mixture. Confused. Jamaican. Caliban. Carib. Cannibal. Cimarron. All Bertha. All Clare.

Catherine, today Max understood that a novel is like a garden where the reader must spend time in order to bloom. I feel strangely paternal when I look at Max. Regards, Perduto. Catherine, for three seconds when I woke up this morning I had the insight that you are a sculptor of souls, a woman who tames fear. Your hands are turning a stone back into a man. John Lost, menhir. Catherine, rivers are not like the sea. The sea demands, while rivers give. here we are, stocking up on contentment, peace, melancholia and the glass-smooth calm of evening that rounds off the day in gray-blue tones. I have kept the sea horse you fashioned out of bread, the one with the peppercorn eyes. It desperately needs a companion. In the humble opinion of Jeanno P.

When, after his retirement, a husband gets under a woman’s feet so much that she feels like killing him, she can read your books and she’ll feel like killing you instead. Your books are lightning conductors.

he seemed to think I wouldn’t be interested. Was I interested? I felt as though I should be. Women were supposed to be interested in children, after all. Yet it struck me that being a woman was akin to a performance, with its cues and lines that had to be learned. I knew how I was supposed to act and what I was supposed to say, I just wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted to.

So, you’re leaving me so that you can find happiness. Fine. Be happy then. You must be happy, because I’ll be the miserable one. I never knew that anyone could suffer so much living with me. And that I was the source of your misery. Forget about me, then. Forget me, and all the memories we shared. Don’t you ever think about me again. Don’t you dare remember our times together, and all the moments we shared. I’ll never forget you. I’ll live my life resenting you. I’ll remember you as the woman who brought me suffering. Don’t you dare appear in front of me again. Let’s never see each other for the rest of our lives.

You think it’s strange that a woman has been silenced? Forgotten about? Written out of history?

Today’s orders: The Other Woman by Colette, Due vite by Emanuele Trevi, The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald, Il bosco del confine by Federica Manzon, Il giardino che vorrei by Pia Pera, Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, Storia di Luis Sepúlveda e del suo gatto Zorba by Ilide Carmignani.

My mind goes to Annie Ernaux’s A Woman’s Story, to the different feelings she experienced when her mother died. Another fragile, modern daughter, another ancestral, rock-solid mother figure, another gulf between them. And guilt, too, flickering through it all, involuntary contractions of the soul that logic cannot defeat.

The movie theaters showed an anti-Semitic newsreel called “The Eternal Jew,” but as we’d stopped going to the movies, neither Henk nor I saw it. Books that the Germans didn’t like were removed from our libraries and bookshops. It was said that they were also making changes in school textbooks to suit their ideology.

You’re a grown woman with a brain in your head, two good arms for carrying books and two strong legs to get you where you need to go.

tried to imagine myself as a very tall, strong-rooted tree. I let the muscles in my shoulders release and focused all of my energy into the centre of my belly. That’s where the fire burned, and I knew I would need to draw on it now, with precision and fierceness. A woman answered.

being a woman was akin to a performance, with its cues and lines that had to be learned.

Whenever I read a book with Black people in it, the point of them always seems to be Black, or it’s a novel about slavery or oppression, and that’s important, it really is, but I would like to see myself represented in the pages of a book and for there to be joy, rather than ISSUES. Or I would like to read books that feel true and real but are not about Black people suffering. I want to be offered books the way you would offer a white woman books, assuming you don’t feel the need to reflect them.

It didn’t seem to matter how talented, intelligent or independent a woman was, she was still seen as the property of a man, to do with as he pleased.

Instead of whispering instructions to them like you would to a horse—lie down, woman, put your harness on—you should listen to them. Listen to what they want. In fact, they want to be free and to sail across the sky.

Yes, the woman." Cunco took a deep breath. "Women like her don't come along that often, you know. Maybe only every two hundred years. She everything a man could dream of. Beautiful, clever, wise, considerate, passionate--absolutely everything.

... love couldn't stop a woman from wishing to string up her husband because he was a serious pain in the neck.

The woman with no aptitude for lying watched the Neapolitan walk away. “He’s short, fat and, objectively speaking, not the most obvious choice of pinup boy. But he’s smart, strong and he can probably do whatever’s necessary for a life of love. I think he’s the most beautiful man I will ever kiss,” said Samy. “It’s strange that magnificent, good-hearted people like him don’t receive more love. Do their looks disguise their character so well that nobody notices how open their soul, their being and their

If the woman wearing a shirt depicting a cat dressed up as Xena, Warrior Princess riding a fire-breathing unicorn with lightning in the background thinks this guy is eccentric, well, I just don’t even know what to expect,

Perdu saw Ida’s pain flickering in her eyes, saw that the red-haired woman was struggling to embrace a new future that felt even now like a second choice. She had been abandoned, or had left before she was rejected. The presence of the person who had been her polestar, and for whom she’d presumably forsworn many things, lingered over her smile like a veil. All of us preserve time. We preserve the old versions of the people who have left us. And under our skin, under the layer of wrinkles and experience and laughter, we, too, are old versions of ourselves. Directly below the surface, we are our former selves: the former child, the former lover, the former daughter. Ida was not looking for comfort on these rivers; she was looking for herself,

I loved our woman, but she was in possession of a set of pesky morals.

Yet it struck me that being a woman was akin to a performance, with its cues and lines that had to be learned.

We had only spoken for a matter of moments, but I was certain that she was the most intriguing woman I'd ever met.

Was I interested? I felt as though I should be. Women were supposed to be interested in children, after all. Yet it struck me that being a woman was akin to a performance, with its cues and lines that had to be learned. I knew how I was supposed to act and what I was supposed to say, I just wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted to.

She did not understand for some time why he had plucked her - middle-aged, a pear turning soft in the bowl - from the bookshop. At first, she thought it was because of what she'd been reading behind the counter - Mr. Ayles never objected to his staff reading once the chores were done. And then she thought it was because he had identified her as a specimen of a particular kind, a woman who, for one last moment, was still able to be wounded in that one way; who might, with a single touch, be brought back to life exactly once more. She was convinced it was this gratitude in particular - ignited by his pity - that he could never have enough of, one source of the great flow of gratitude his presence seemed to arouse in everyone.

Being a woman was akin to a performance with its cues and lines that needed to be learned. I knew how I was supposed to act and what I was supposed to say but I just wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted to.

Yeongju didn’t understand the woman, but for having lived so fiercely and intensely, she admired her.

You think it’s strange that a woman has been silenced? Forgotten about? Written out of history? Henry, what have they been teaching you?

it struck me that being a woman was akin to a performance, with its cues and lines that had to be learned. I knew how I was supposed to

There was a light in everyone, one that dimmed when death took them, like a torch whose battery ran down. Grace had seen it once before in an old woman crushed by a collapsed building as she’d tried to cling to life. That light in Mr. Evans’s eyes, the one that shone with intelligence, kindness and dry humor—that light that had been so bright and so alive—went out.

The readings and tributes were followed by a song, and they were all invited to join in. The lyrics were printed in the program. "No Rain" by Blind Melon had been a favorite of Blythe's, expressing the glory of escaping into a pages of a book. The woman playing guitar was a frequent patron of the shop. She had contacted Natalie and Frieda as they were organizing the program and asked to perform in Blythe's honor. As the lyrics of the song came out of Natalie on a shaky breath, she wished she could do exactly as the words expressed---Escape, escape, escape.

The young woman beside him was Natalie, his granddaughter, Natalie. Her regard felt like a whir of moth wings against his cheek, powdering his skin with a residue like May Lin's dusting powder, back when she had lived with him and they were happy. He summoned a smile for Blythe. No, not Blythe. Natalie. Blythe was gone, suddenly and irretrievably, like a zephyr shooting into the night sky, leaving a trail of moonlit particles that swirled in brief, unspeakable beauty, and then faded into nothing.

Now, now, there’s no need for all that,’ Sylvia said, handing me an envelope with the address and my wages. ‘You’re a grown woman with a brain in your head, two good arms for carrying books and two strong legs to get you where you need to go.

There is an old saying, Before you set out on a journey of revenge, you must dig two graves,’ said a woman’s voice, deepened by time and wisdom, yet unmistakably that of my old friend Jane.

He called her his farfalla and I wonder if he meant that she flits from flower to flower or meant something deeper, a caterpillar who grows beautifully patterned wings, like a woman who discovers her own power and chooses independence and flies into the sun

Yet it struck me that being a woman was akin to a performance, with its cues and lines that had to be learned. I knew how I was supposed to act and what I was supposed to say, I just wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted to.

being a woman was akin to a performance, with its cues and lines that had to be learned. I knew how I was supposed to act and what I was supposed to say, I just wasn’t exactly sure if I wanted to.

Hang on,” said Nina, standing up and going inside. She came back with a small book with a woman standing on the cover. “Here.” Lissa picked it up. “I got two copies by accident,” said Nina. “You can have it.” “The Accidental Tourist,” read Lissa. “What’s it about?” “Healing,” said Nina. “Best book ever written on the subject.

If someone left you, you had to answer with silence. She bore the scent of a mixture of oriental spices and the sweetness of flowers and honey. Dreams are the interface between the worlds, between time and space. He calls books freedoms. And homes too. They preserve all the good words that we so seldom use. Tango is a truth drug. It lays bare your problems and your complexes, but also the strengths you hide from others so as not to vex them. Saudade. It is the sense of being loved in a way that will never come again. It is a unique experience of abandon. It is everything that words cannot capture. They say that men who are at one with their bodies can sense and smell when a woman wants more from life than she is getting. Another woman found it incredibly erotic when I backed pate en croute. Aromas do funny things to the soul. Habit is a vain and treacherous goddess. She lets nothing disrupt her rule. She smothers one desire after another: the desire to travel, the desire for a better job or a new love. She stops us from living as we would like, because habit prevents us from asking ourselves whether we continue to enjoy doing what we do. Books can do many things but not everything. We have to live the important things, not read them. It was the season for truffles and literature. The countryside was redolent of wild herbs and glowed in autumnal rust reds and wine yellows.

As long as she doesn’t turn out too smart for men.” “For the stupid ones, she will, Madame. But who wants them anyway? A stupid man is every woman’s downfall.

Dance! Both of you. Afterward I’ll answer whatever questions you like.” A few seconds later, as the old man strode confidently across the dance floor toward a young woman with a severe ponytail and a slit skirt, he was utterly transformed into a lithe, ageless tanguero who pressed the young woman tightly to him and guided her gracefully around the hall. While Max gawked at this unsuspected world, Monsieur Perdu grasped right away where he was. He had read about places like this in a book by Jac. Toes: secret tango milongas in school halls, gymnasiums or deserted barns. There dancers of all levels and ages and every nationality would meet up; some would drive hundreds of miles to savor these few hours. One thing united them: they had to keep their passion for the tango a secret from jealous partners and families who greeted these depraved, suggestive, frivolous moves with disgust and rigid, pinch-mouthed embarrassment.

4. "The Heart Shattered Glass was a courageous scream from the abyss from an abandoned woman, written in four days from the side of a precipice down which she was hurling all her worldly goods, one at a time, meditating on their meaning. It had taken the world by storm with its candor and wit. The fact that the author had subsequently fallen madly in love with and married the book’s publicist had only prolonged its popularity, but it was truly a book that deserved its worldwide fame. It was . . . She got it exactly. Exactly what it feels like. Nina looked at the tightly buttoned-up woman she had struggled to connect with and marveled, not for the first time, at the astonishing amount of seething emotion that could exist beneath the most restrained exterior. To look at Lesley you would think she was just a middle-aged shopkeeper quietly going about her business. The fact that she completely and utterly empathized with an American woman who had let her own blood drip down a mountainside in anguish, who had changed sexuality and howled at the moon with a wolf pack, just went to show. There was a universe inside every human being every bit as big as the universe outside them. Books were the best way Nina knew—apart from, sometimes, music—to breach the barrier, to connect the internal universe with the external, the words acting merely as a conduit between the two worlds.

It happens the same way every time. The woman usually stands in front of the mirror for a while, turning this way and that, checking to be certain it isn't an illusion. And, when she is at last sure it's real, a blissful smile spreads into her cheeks and flushes through her whole body. In the mirror she sees herself as she truly is: beautiful, powerful, able to do anything. And she sees that the thing she wants most of all, the thing that seemed so impossible when she first stepped into the little dress shop, is really so possible, so close, that she could reach out and touch it. "Yes," Etta says then, "as easy as pie. Speaking of which, the bookshop on the corner does the most delicious cherry pie. You really should try some." The woman nods then, still slightly stunned, and agrees, saying that pie sounds like a perfect idea. So she stumbles out of the shop in a daze, new dress tucked tightly in her arms, and wanders down All Saints' Passage to the bookshop. There, she has the best piece of cherry pie she's ever eaten and leaves with a stack of books that will make the transformation complete.

What's your name?" he asked. She'd turned to him with a deep frown, instantly terrifying him. About to turn to escape back into the bookshop, Walt was stopped by her shrug. "Cora." "That's a funny name." "It isn't, actually." Cora's frown deepened. She pulled herself up to her full height of four foot three inches. 'Officially my name is Cori, but Grandma calls me Cora. I'm named in honor of Gerty Cori, the first woman winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine. I bet you didn't know that." "No," Walt admitted, embarrassed. "I didn't." "What's your name?" "Walt," he offered quietly, expecting her to retort that his was an even sillier name, but she didn't. "After the scientist?" Walt frowned, thrown. "What scientist?" Cora shrugged. "Maybe Luis Walter Alvarez or Walter Reed, but... actually Walter Sutton is the most famous. He invented a theory about chromosomes and the Mendelian laws of inheritance." Cora let slip a little smile of satisfaction at the blank look on the boy's face. "Or maybe Walter Lewis-" "No," Walt interrupted, "I've never heard of any of them." "Oh." Cora folded her arms and tilted her nose upward. "Then who are you named after?" she asked, as if this was a given. "Walt Whitman," he retorted. "The poet.

My dear son, when you’re a woman and you get married, you enter irreversibly into a supervisory position. You have to keep an eye on everything—what your husband does and how he is. And later, when children arrive, on them too. You’re a watchdog, a servant and a diplomat rolled into one. And something as trivial as divorce doesn’t end that. Oh no—love may come and go, but the caring goes on.

Oh and I also got cross at a dinner once when this woman was going on and on about how she would never read on download, that there was nothing like a real book and – I promise I normally am never rude to people but she was being truly insufferable – I said, ‘Well, they’re really only for people who read a lot’ which was mean of me but quite satisfying also.

She gestured toward her daughter. “This strange child of mine wants to have read the entire thing before she turns twenty-one. Okay, I said, she can have the enclyco…encloped…oh, all these reference books, but she won’t be getting any more birthday presents. And nothing for Christmas either.” Perdu acknowledged the seven-year-old girl with a nod. The child nodded earnestly back. “Do you think that’s normal?” the mother asked anxiously. “At her age?” “I think she’s brave, clever and right.” “As long as she doesn’t turn out too smart for men.” “For the stupid ones, she will, Madame. But who wants them anyway? A stupid man is every woman’s downfall.

It was almost the cruelest thing he did, not to leave me when I still had the chance of meeting someone else, when I still had a bit of juice left in me. Me and the woman who wrote that book—we both know we’re better than that.

when you’re a woman and you get married, you enter irreversibly into a supervisory position. You have to keep an eye on everything—what your husband does and how he is. And later, when children arrive, on them too. You’re a watchdog, a servant and a diplomat rolled into one. And something as trivial as divorce doesn’t end that. Oh no—love may come and go, but the caring goes on.

I’m sure you didn’t. You’re either a child or a woman, and neither of them have any idea how to relax.’ ‘You watch it,’ said Christine.