Quotes by Suzanne Finnamore

I know one thing about men, Bunny says with finality, leaving the room to check on A. They never die when you want them to.

He left a bit too easily and with obvious relief. His feet were swift and sure on the muddy path.

I am going insane. Yes. That is what´s happening. Good. Insane.

Bushwhacked, I examine my hands. Same hands. Rings still there but no longer valid.

I have a new mantra, which I chant softly to myself: Oh My God Oh My God.

It´s like watching someone do a triple backflip dismount and land on two feet, solid, arms splayed in the air. I know I could never do it, don´t even know where I would begin to learn, but some people are built for it. He was handcrafted to leave, had practiced on other women since adolescence. I was one of an unnumbered series.

I travel back in time, falling back into what I know for certain, the historical data I cling to in order to not go mad, not assume I made a suicidal and well-informed error in marrying this man.

I am not ready to think of him as either insane or evil, to consider in full how I could love and have a child with such a person. I am not ready to think about anything, except ways in which this may still be averted.

I played possum. I did this, as the possum does, out of fear.

The whole world seems tilted, my inner ear displaced by a hole where my spouse used to be.

My mind floats like ash. I blame myself most cruelly.

Soon he was online every night until one or two a.m. Often he would wake up at three of four a.m. and go back online. He would shut down the computer screen when I walked in. In the past, he used to take the laptop to bed with him and we would both be on our laptops, hips touching. He stopped doing that, slipping off to his office instead and closing the door even when A was asleep. He started closing doors behind him. I was steeped in denial, but my body knew.

I want to own this transition, not to simply swallow the shame of it entire. I will push for every little irony.

This people know where their husbands are. I would like to vomit. I would like to vomit my soul out.

Irrationally, I think, Will You Marry Me? Four words. I Want a Divorce. Four words. I would like time to count the letters as well, but there is not time.

The abandonment came, and now this shabby bacchanal.

This is much easier than when N left. Our son is unable to grasp and simultaneously turn doorknobs yet. If only this trick could be unlearned by men over thirty, many more families would celebrate Christmas together.

This is much worse than losing a cat. You do not wish the cat dead, for example, after the first two days. You still love the cat and presumably the cat still loves you, or some variation of love that may in fact be dependence and even indifference.

I sensed he may have occasionally strayed in some of his past relationships. It was something I felt but ignored, a rent in the fabric of an otherwise splendid garment I thought I could mend. I thought I could live with it—I thought, yes and I admit it, that I would be different. That at the very least, middle age and children would slow him down; however, they seemed to accelerate his pace.

They ought to do away with divorce settlements. Instead, both parties should flip a coin. The winner gets to stay where he or she is and keep everything. The loser goes to Paraguay. That´s it.