Potent quotables
The man eyes that were always roaming here and there like the eyes of tigers, those searchlight eyes, needed to be shielded from the alluring and indeed blinding power of us—of our shapely or skinny or fat legs, of our graceful or knobbly or sausage arms, of our peachy or blotchy skins, of our entwining curls of shining hair or our coarse unruly pelts or our straw-like wispy braids, it did not matter. Whatever our shapes and features, we were snares and enticements despite ourselves, we were the innocent and blameless causes that through our very nature could make men drunk with lust, so that they’d stagger and lurch and topple over the verge—The verge of what? we wondered. Was it like a cliff?—and go plunging down in flames, like snowballs made of burning sulphur hurled by the angry hand of God.
Right now I still have some choice in the matter. Not whether to die, but when and how. Isn’t that freedom of a sort? Oh, and who to take down with me. I have made my list.
You don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you.
It was also shameful: when a shameful thing is done to you, the shamefulness rubs off on you. You feel dirtied.
We know that some of these rifles contain blanks, some not; but we will all be killers nonetheless, because it’s the thought that counts.
There was an approved list of names, put together by Aunt Lydia and the other senior Aunts. Becka said the names were made from the names of products women had liked once and would be reassured by, but she herself did not know what those products were. Nobody our age knew, she said. She read the list of names out to me, since I could not yet read. “What about Maybelline?” she said. “That sounds pretty. Aunt Maybelline.” “No,” I said. “It’s too frilly.”