Vox Christina Dalcher Quotes

Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. That’s what they say, right?

One thing I learned from Jackie: you can’t protest what you don’t see coming.

Monsters aren’t born, ever. They’re made, piece by piece and limb by limb, artificial creations of madmen who, like the misguided Frankenstein, always think they know better.

They won't kill us for the same reason they won't sanction abortions. We've turned into necessary evils, objects to be fucked and not heard.

Think about waking up one morning and finding you don’t have a voice in anything.

There's a resistance?" The word sounds sweet as I say it. "Honey, there's always a resistance.

My fault started two decades ago, the first time I didn't vote, the umpteen times I told Jackie I was too busy to go on one of her marches or make posters or call my congressmen.

I learned that once a plan is in place, everything can happen overnight.

Everything lately seems to be a choice between degrees of hate.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Think about where you’ll be—where your daughters will be—when the courts turn back the clock. Think about words like ‘spousal permission’ and ‘paternal consent.’ Think about waking up one morning and finding you don’t have a voice in anything.

Maybe this is how it happened in Germany with the Nazis, in Bosnia with the Serbs, in Rwanda with the Hutus. I’ve often wondered about that, about how kids can turn into monsters, how they learn that killing is right and oppression is just, how in one single generation the world can change on its axis into a place that’s unrecognizable.

You can't protest what you don't see coming

We all don't have to be carbon copies of one another to work on the same team, but we can learn from other people.

If you want to know what depression looks like, all you need to do is look into a depressed person’s eyes.

One thing I learned from Jackie: you can't protest what you don't see coming.

Memory is a damnable faculty.

Whoever came up with the ida of labeling classified documents with larger-than-life red stenciling that advertises—or at least hints at—the contents was a schmuck, I think. You might as well put a tag that says OPEN ME! on it. If it were up to me, I'd hide all secrets in back copies of Reader's Digest.

We’re on a slippery slide to prehistory, girls. Think about it. Think about where you’ll be—where your daughters will be—when the courts turn back the clock. Think about words like ‘spousal permission’ and ‘paternal consent.’ Think about waking up one morning and finding you don’t have a voice in anything.

In reality, there is no perpetual motion; all energy eventually gets absorbed, morphs into a different shape, changes state.

Se volete sapere che aspetto abbia la depressione, tutto ciò che dovete fare è guardare negli occhi una persona depressa.

I think it might have been that moment when I started hating my husband.

Don’t you worry, honey. I’ll love you ’til you’re dead. Maybe a while after that.

I have words now, but no idea how to use them, no clue how to make my daughter's life better, if only for a while.

Look, I don’t mean to be unkind, but you white gals, all you’re worried about is, well, all you’re worried about is you white gals.

There’s a resistance?” The word sounds sweet as I say it. “Honey, there’s always a resistance. Didn’t you go to college?

Anything" is a funny little word, overused and rarely literal. "Anything" never covers the whole gamut of existence.

You can start small, Jeanie," she said. "Attend some rallies, hand out flyers, talk to a few people about issues. You don't have to change the world all by yourself, you know." And the usual catchphrases ensued: grassroots, one step at a time, it's the little things, hope-change-yes-we-can!.

You can take a lot away from a person - money, job, intellectual stimulation, whatever. You can take her words, even, without changing the essence of her. Take away camaraderie, though, and we’re talking about something different.

Not your fault,” Lorenzo says. But it is. And my fault didn’t start when I signed Morgan’s contract on Thursday. My fault started two decades ago, the first time I didn’t vote, the umpteen times I told Jackie I was too busy to go on one of her marches or make posters or call my congressmen.

he handed out a sheet of paper with the foulest garbage written on it. You remember that old thing about seven dirty words? Well, they were there, and about fifty other ones.

you can't protest what you don't see coming.

Il primogenito è sempre speciale, suppongo. Non è che gli vuoi più bene: semplicemente il legame con lui è diverso.

You know, babe, I wonder if it was better when you didn’t talk.

Strange how I can remember the dead girl’s eyes but not her name.

MAKE AMERICA MORAL AGAIN!

They won’t kill us for the same reason they won’t sanction abortions. We’ve turned into necessary evils, objects to be fucked and not heard.

Del the mailman is already up the porch steps, courier bag over his shoulder, his key to our mailbox in one hand. He waves to me, and I wave back through the Honda’s rear window.

But there’s Sonia. If I’m going to trade my brain for words, I’ll do it for her.

Patrick is the third type of man. He’s not a believer and he’s not a woman-hating asshole; he’s just weak. And I’d rather think about men who aren’t.

Maybe. I’d just want someone who was tough when he needed to be.” “Patrick’s kind,” I said. “Isn’t that worth something?” “Not in my book.

Our only real hope had been the Supreme Court. But with one empty seat on an already right-leaning bench and two more retirements looming, the Supremes didn’t offer much hope.

It’s some kind of beautiful.” I understood, and still understand, little of Lorenzo’s work, but Patrick’s got the biochemistry background to process it.

Thanks,

They make so much noise, those boys and those crickets. Deafening.

Morgan is an idiot who doesn’t know he’s an idiot. The worst kind.

Honey, there’s always a resistance. Didn’t you go to college?

We've turned into necessary evils, objects to be f*cked and not heard.

Her speech is like music, but the lyrics are all wrong.

After all, one day my daughter will be expected to shop and to run a household, to be a devoted and dutiful wife. You need math for that, but not spelling. Not literature. Not a voice.

We’re doing everything we can. When the dots connect, I’m left with one terrible, frightening, and at the same time relieving explanation: Patrick isn’t working for the government. He’s working against it.

The films are a distraction, the only time I hear female voices unconstrained and unlimited. Actresses are allowed a special dispensation while they’re on the job. Their lines, of course, are written by men.

Christina Dalcher earned her doctorate in theoretical linguistics from Georgetown University. She specializes in the phonetics of sound change in Italian and British dialects and has taught at several universities.

They have to put limits on choice for other reasons, for pragmatic reasons. The way things are, the way women are, no one would want a girl. No sane parent would want to choose a wrist-counter color for a three-month-old. I wouldn’t.

The old saying goes, "keep a stiff upper lip," but as I watch his reflection in the polished, steel walls of the elevator, I think that it isn't the lip we need to worry about. The bottom one gives our terror away. Every single time.

It’s like an elevator key, one of those round, single-purpose gizmos . . . a device that brings to mind all the other silly little inventions: can openers, lemon zesters, melon ballers. Things that do only one thing. We have so many of them.

For a six-year-old, she’s got some talent, and this drawing is among her better ones, in a way. The six figures actually resemble us—Patrick, Steven, the twins, me, and Sonia. We’re all standing in our garden, holding hands under a tree that’s blooming with white stars. She’s got the twins in matching outfits and she’s drawn something that looks more like a suitcase than a briefcase in Patrick’s free hand. Steven wears his new pin; my hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Around my wrist and Sonia’s are bracelets: red for her and black for me. We’re all smiling under a sun she’s decorated with orange hearts. “Beautiful,” I say, taking the drawing. But I don’t think it’s beautiful. I think it’s the ugliest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.

Sonia smiles at me when I tuck her under the sheets. As usual, there’s no bedtime story, no exploring Dora, no Pooh and Piglet, no Peter Rabbit and his misadventures in Mr. McGregor’s lettuce patch. It’s frightening what she’s grown to accept as normal.

New Orleans isn't Louisiana." Or maybe it is, I think. When you get down to it, what's the difference between some backwater asshole's advising men to marry teenage girls and a bunch of costumed drunks flinging beads to anyone who shows her tits on St. Charles Ave?

Today, she’ll be in a room with twenty-five other first graders, all girls. She’ll listen to stories, practice her numbers, help the older students in the kitchen as they cut cookies and knead dough and crimp pies. This is what school is now, and what school will be for some time. Maybe forever.

He’s mad, he’s hurt, and he’s frustrated. None of this justifies the next words out of his mouth, though, the ones he will never be able to take back, the ones that slice deeper than any shard of broken glass and make me bleed all over. “You know, babe, I wonder if it was better when you didn’t talk.

They were too well rehearsed, almost, too practiced in their even cadence and intonation. Even so, the hesitance was audible—a few too many ums and ahs littered his recital of the president’s intended changes, modifications, dispensations. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly the moment when I realized I didn’t trust him.

It’s Dad’s decision.” Maybe this is how it happened in Germany with the Nazis, in Bosnia with the Serbs, in Rwanda with the Hutus. I’ve often wondered about that, about how kids can turn into monsters, how they learn that killing is right and oppression is just, how in one single generation the world can change on its axis into a place that’s unrecognizable.

I want to hear her tell me about Quercus virginiana and Magnolia stellata and Syringa vulgaris in the way she did when she first came to my home, identifying the live oaks and the giant, starry trees and the lilacs with a scent that no perfumer has been able to match. She considered them God’s gifts, and I tolerated that. Whatever might be up there, he or she or it did a crackerjack job with trees and flowers.

Patrick and the boys, out on the back porch close to my window, are swapping stories about school, politics, the news, while crickets buzz in the dark around our bungalow. They make so much noise, those boys and those crickets. Deafening. All my words ricochet in my head as I listen, emerge from my throat in a heavy, meaningless sigh. And all I can think about are Jackie’s last words to me. Think about what you need to do to stay free.

No. Jackie would never fold, never work the system, never whore herself out to the president’s men in exchange for money or a voice or a month of liberty. Patrick would, of course. Lorenzo wouldn’t. That was the difference between my husband and my lover. But Lorenzo did, the second he signed the contract and agreed to work on the aphasia project. As I pull into my driveway, the reason dawns on me: Lorenzo has another agenda, and I think it bears my name.

Sonia doesn’t know what the wrist counters do, other than glow brightly and show her numbers and pulse against her wrist, one time for each word she speaks. We’ve been careful to keep this secret from her. Maybe it’s a foolish thing, but I’ve never been able to figure out exactly how to describe an electric jolt of pain to a six-year-old. It would be like telling a child about the horrors of the electric chair in order to instill some sense of right and wrong.

What Lin didn’t consider—what none of us considered—was how much of a bubble our city was, how different from the rest of the country with its bearded duck people and Christian communities cropping up like weeds. There was a documentary about one of those places, Glorytown or Gloryville or something like that, where all the women wore pretty blue dresses with high collars and followed special diets and milked cows. The director, when interviewed, had called it “neat.

At the beginning, a few people managed to get out. Some crossed the border into Canada; others left on boats for Cuba, Mexico, the islands. It didn’t take long for the authorities to set up checkpoints, and the wall separating Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas from Mexico itself had already been built, so the egress stopped fairly quickly. “We can’t have our citizens, our families, our mothers and fathers, fleeing,” the president said in one of his early addresses

Who do you think is angriest right now? In our country, I mean.” I shrugged. “African Americans?” She made a buzzing noise, a sort of you’re-out-but-we’ve-got-some-lovely-consolation-prizes-backstage kind of a sound. “Guess again.” “Gays?” “No, you dope. The straight white dude. He’s angry as shit. He feels emasculated.” “Honestly, Jacko.” “Of course he does.” Jackie pointed a purple fingernail at me. “You just wait. It’s gonna be a different world in a few years if we don’t do something to change it. Expanding Bible Belt, shit-ass representation in Congress, and a pack of power-hungry little boys who are tired of being told they gotta be more sensitive.” She laughed then, a wicked laugh that shook her whole body. “And don’t think they’ll all be men. The Becky Homeckies will be on their side.” “The who?” Jackie nodded at my sweats and bed-matted hair, at the pile of yesterday’s dishes in the sink, and finally at her own outfit. It was one of the more interesting fashion creations I’d seen on her in a while—paisley leggings, an oversized crocheted sweater that used to be beige but had now taken on the color of various other articles of clothing, and purple stiletto boots. “The Susie Homemakers. Those girls in matching skirts and sweaters and sensible shoes going for their Mrs. degrees. You think they like our sort? Think again.

With his free hand, Thomas produces a small key. It’s like an elevator key, one of those round, single-purpose gizmos that don’t seem to have a reason for being except in an elevator, a device that brings to mind all the other silly little inventions: can openers, lemon zesters, melon ballers. Things that do only one thing. We have so many of them. Where do we get this shit? Bridal shower and wedding gifts, stocking stuffers, spur-of-the-moment purchases at Ikea. They’re all so goddamned useless, hidden in the backs of kitchen drawers, taken for granted and never taken out. This is what goes through my mind as Thomas frees me with the high-tech equivalent of a can opener.

Language, for them, had become an inescapable labyrinth of non-meaning. I imagine it must feel like being lost at sea. So, yes, I want to go back. I want to forge ahead with the serum and—when I’m ready—inject that potion into Mrs. Ray’s old veins. I want to hear her tell me about Quercus virginiana and Magnolia stellata and Syringa vulgaris in the way she did when she first came to my home, identifying the live oaks and the giant, starry trees and the lilacs with a scent that no perfumer has been able to match. She considered them God’s gifts, and I tolerated that. Whatever might be up there, he or she or it did a crackerjack job with trees and flowers. But I don’t give a shit about the president or his big brother or, really, any man.

He shoulders past me, pours himself a glass of milk from the fridge, and downs it. “Of course you don’t just get them, Mom. You have to earn them.” “I see. And how does that happen?” Another glass of milk disappears down Steven’s gullet. “Save some for cereal tomorrow,” I say. “You’re not the only human in this house.” “Maybe you should go out and get another carton, then. It’s your job, right?” My hand flies with a will of its own, makes contact; and a bright palm print blooms on the right side of Steven’s face. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t raise his own hand, doesn’t react at all, except to say, “Nice, Mom. Real nice. One day, that’s gonna be a crime.” “You little shit.” He’s smug now, which makes everything worse. “I’ll tell you how I earned the pin. I got recruited. Recruited, Mom. They needed volunteers from the boys’ school to make the rounds to the girls’ schools and explain a few things. I accepted. And for the past three days, I’ve been going out in the field and demonstrating how the bracelets work. Look.” He pushes up one sleeve and brandishes the burn mark around his wrist. “We go in pairs, and we take turns. All so girls like Sonia know what will happen.” As if to defy me once more, he drains his glass of milk and licks his lips. “By the way, I wouldn’t encourage her to pick the sign language back up.” “Why the hell not?” I’m still trying to absorb the fact that my son has purposefully shocked himself “so girls like Sonia know what will happen.” “Mom. Honestly. You of all people should get it.” His voice has taken on the timbre of someone much older, someone tired of explaining how things are. “Signing defeats the purpose of what we’re trying to do here.

I don’t mean you’re weak. Just different.” Christ. I pointed to my temple. “See this, kiddo? Ten more years of school and you might have one like it. Or you might not. And it has absolutely shit to do with gender.” My voice was rising.