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But then you hear that he can't hear you, you see that he can't see you. You are not here--and you haven't even died yet. You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol on the ladies' room door.
Melissa Bank -
I tried to avoid Mimi. Her presence seemed to call forth every rejection I'd ever experienced-the teachers who'd looked at me as though I held no promise, the boys who didn't like me back. Around her, I became fourteen again.
Melissa Bank
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It's perfectly natural to doubt your judgment about doubting your judgment.
Melissa Bank -
I live by Edith Whartons rule to get rid of anything neither useful nor beautiful. So I put the TV out on the street.
Melissa Bank -
Olive Kitteridge' is a masterpiece: The writing is so perfect you don't even notice it; the story is so vivid it's less like reading a story than experiencing it firsthand.
Melissa Bank -
In the cab to the station, he told me that when he was growing up he'd see a look of pleasure cross his mother's face and ask what she was thinking: she'd say, I was just thinking of your father. "That's how I want us to be," Archie said. I smiled. "What?" I said, "I was just thinking of your father.
Melissa Bank -
It might sound ordinary for a woman to find out her husband's cheating on her, but not if you're the woman and it's your husband.
Melissa Bank -
Basically, all anyone has to do is ask me for fun details or tell me to be creative, and my mind turns to mud. I am instantly the most boring person you've ever met.
Melissa Bank
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You can feel that he wants to own you - not like an object but like a good dream he wants to keep having. He lets you know that you already own him.
Melissa Bank -
Everywhere you go, you see women more beautiful than yourself. You imagine him being attracted to them. You're drinking gasoline to stay warm.
Melissa Bank -
He tried to smile, but it was just a shape his mouth made.
Melissa Bank -
It scares me. But then I get this big feeling, simple but exalted: He's like me, just with different details.
Melissa Bank -
During chemo, you're more tired than you've ever been. It's like a cloud passing over the sun, and suddenly you're out. But you also find that you're stronger than you've ever been. You're clear. Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception. Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience. Now it's instantaneous.
Melissa Bank -
I realize i will never hear from dena again, and i will never call her. it gives me a chill. it is a strange thing to end a friendship, even if you know it's what you want. it's like a death; all of a sudden your experience of a person become finite.
Melissa Bank
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I felt I couldn't lose anything else, but just then I realized I already had: I'd lost the hope that I would ever be loved in just that way again.
Melissa Bank -
The only relationships I haven't wrecked right away were the ones that wrecked me later.
Melissa Bank -
She seems sort of lost.' I thought, Lost how? How am I lost? Suddenly I felt lost.
Melissa Bank