Karen Joy Fowler
I once broke up with a boy because he wrote me an awful poem.Collection: Boys
Baby, high school's over. High school's never over.Collection: Baby
Pheromones are Earth's primordial idiom.Collection: Earth
. . . strange and fantastic things really happen. During a rainstorm in Australia, fish fall from the sky; several Southern states consider legislation that would make the licking of toads illegal; Lisa Presley marries Michael Jackson. You read these things and you think to yourself that realism may not be the best medium through which to express the real world.Collection: Real
Owls hoot in B flat, cuckoos in D, but the water ousel sings in the voice of the stream. She builds her nest back of the waterfalls so the water is a lullaby to the little ones. Must be where they learn it.Collection: Voice
It was the marriage that was important; Jane Austen rarely even bothered to write about the wedding.Collection: Writing
We all have a sense of level. It may not be based on class exactly anymore, but we still have a sense of what we're entitled to. People pick partners who are nearly their equal in looks. The pretty marry the pretty, the ugly the ugly. To the detriment of the breed.Collection: Class
Every mother can easily imagine losing a child. Motherhood is always half loss anyway. The three-year-old is lost at five, the five-year-old at nine. We consort with ghosts, even as we sit and eat with, scold and kiss, their current corporeal forms. We speak to people who have vanished and, when they answer us, they do the same. Naturally, the information in these speeches is garbled in the translation.Collection: Mother
The value of money is a scam perpetrated by those who have it over those who don'tCollection: Scams
You learn as much from failure as from success, Dad always says. Though no one admires you for it.Collection: Dad
I thought there were moments to complain about your parents and moments to be grateful, and it was a shame to mix those moments up.Collection: Grateful
I am the daughter of a psychologist. I know that the thing ostensibly being studied is rarely the thing being studied. (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, p. 99)Collection: Daughter
You can’t imagine the white-hot fury someone who can’t sleep has toward the beautiful dreamer beside him.Collection: Beautiful