Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff (Riverhead Books, 2016)
“Grief is for the strong, who use it as fuel for burning.”
“Doomed people celebrate peace with sky bombs.”
“The word wife comes from the Proto-Indo-European weip. Weip means to turn, twist or wrap. In an alternative etymology, the word wife comes from Proto-etc, ghwihh. Ghwihh means pudenda. Or shame.”
“Mothers, Mathilde had always known, were people who abandoned you to struggle alone.”
“Unplug from the humble needs of the body and a person becomes no more than a ghost.”
“A speck on the slender child grows into a gross deformity in the adult, inescapable, ragged at the edges.”
“Sorrowing.”
“Almondine.”
“Exigent.”
“Vitiligo.”
“Widowhood sure as shit becomes you. Christ, look at you.”
