Zoje Stage Quotes

• “It was hard to pour endless love into someone who wouldn't love you back. No one could do it forever”

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• “Sometimes she struggled with resentment watching her family eat a meal that she prepared. People took eating and shitting for granted, like the continuous beating of their hearts, the inevitable protection of their skin. They didn't think about their intestines doing everything wrong, fucking up the basic process of digestion.”

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• “How much had her young brain already misconstrued? Observing, absorbing. Warping, twisting. Drawing conclusions about everything they did.”

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• “She resented her body's betrayal. She still couldn't express how insecure it made her, how she lived on a precipice. The most basic parts of her could fail, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.”

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• “. . . her energy existed in precious spools that came unwound faster than she liked.”

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• “Now that she knew the name of the game - Scare Mommy - she should be able to defend herself. But goosebumps rose on her skin, even under the heat of the water, when she thought about her creepy daughter. The whites of her eyes. Her ability to sneak up on her as she slept.”

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• “Words, ever unreliable, were no one’s friend.”

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• “The baby wasn't supposed to remind her of an internal mass of pooling waste.”

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• “We had an accident--'
  Suzette cut Alex off. 'Hanna's trying to kill me.”

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• “She dreaded all the necessary doctor appointments where she was supposed to surrender her own privacy and fears of being tortured for the benefit of the baby. Like it was already someone else's body and their needs superseded her own.”

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• “But she knew how adults thought. They liked what they could see right in front of them, solid things. They encouraged imagination but hated anything imaginary.”

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• “She told herself it wasn't wrong to do what she most felt like doing in that moment.”

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• “Hanna kept her words to herself because they gave her power. Inside her, they retained their purity. She scrutinized Mommy and other adults, studied them. Their words fell like dead bugs from their mouths. A rare person, like Daddy, spoke in butterflies, whispering colors that made her gasp. Inside, she was a kaleidoscope of racing, popping, bursting exclamations, full of wonder and question marks. Patterns swirled, and within every secret pocket she’d stashed a treasure, some stolen, some found.”

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• “Hanna loved how the pencils and crayons looked, with their pointy unused tips. She liked the quarter-size circles of watercolor paint, like frozen puddles from a dripping rainbow.”

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• “It was hard to pour endless love into someone who wouldn’t love you back. No one could do it forever.”

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• “She couldn’t understand why she was supposed to be a robot and follow endless hours of obeying an evil master’s routine—even more rigid than Mommy’s. She wanted to be master of her own schedule, decide on her own when and where she sat. To think that children everywhere sat at similar desks in similar rooms following similar routines like they were all supposed to grow up and become the same person.”

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• “She’d expected her heavy-duty medication—an injectable biological drug—to eliminate the worst of her Crohn’s symptoms. And it did. But as the inflammation receded, scar tissue built up around a narrowing in her intestine.”

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• “Maybe someday there'd be a zoo full of people. Just ordinary people sitting at a dining room table with a meal they hated. The free people would stand on the other side of the glass, watching them sniff their food in misery. In another room, children in bunk beds would have to wear pajamas all the time.”

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• “Go home with your mother.” Hanna stopped, lost in an empty space between her two parents. “She wants to go with you, I think it’s better—” “Take her home, I’m going to the gym.” He slammed his car door and started the engine. “Come on, Hanna.” The girl looked back at her father, watched him pull out and drive away. When she turned to Suzette, her face bore a bewildered expression. Suzette fought the urge to taunt her: no pet names or special coddling from Daddy. Unlike after the Green Hill Academy expulsion, Suzette wanted Alex to stew in it this time, to really think about what the professionals were saying about his child. Hanna chewed on her lip, her face an open wound as Alex’s car disappeared. Even in Suzette’s worst moments she didn’t like to see Hanna in pain, though she knew Alex’s rejection of her wouldn’t last. “Daddy’s upset. He’ll come home when he’s feeling better. Come on.” She opened the back door for her, and Hanna traipsed over. She threw her backpack into the car. “You did this to yourself. I know you didn’t want to come here. And now you won’t be back. And now your parents are all pissed off, so.” Hanna buckled herself into her car seat, and Suzette closed her door. As they drove home, she monitored Hanna in the rearview mirror, half expecting Marie-Anne to make an appearance, but she only tapped the window with her finger. “Is this your doing, Marie-Anne?” Suzette couldn’t stop herself from trying to needle her. “I really wish you’d leave my daughter alone. Hanna doesn’t like it when her Daddy’s mad at her, and now he’s really mad.”

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• “She stuck her finger in her mouth, feeling the ridges of the new tooth that was poking through her gum. And gave one assertive nod.”

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• “Being a mom can be a lonely job too, sometimes other people dont see that.”

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• “She smashed the potatoes. Soft skyscrapers oozed through the masher.”

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• “Inside, she was a kaleidoscope of racing, popping, bursting exclamations, full of wonder and question marks.”

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• “She’d tried explaining it to him before, how her energy existed in precious spools that came unwound faster than she liked. He tried, but couldn’t really understand any more than she could about how it felt to be someone else. She gauged herself against what she saw other people do and how they moved through the world, their days filled with work and errands and chores and social lives and home lives, and no one else seemed too tired to live. But for her, by four o’clock in the afternoon she was often too weary to even stare at the television.”

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• “Why couldn’t other people be bothered to put on proper clothes? She saw them everywhere. At Starbucks. Rite Aid. The Giant Eagle. People who looked as if they were just going to, or just getting ready for, bed. Now she knew what it took for her to abandon the basics of propriety. Was everyone’s life in such a state of ruin? Were they all just barely going through the motions?”

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