—THE SUN’LL COME UP TOMORROW, THERE’S A MESSAGE IN THE BOTTLE

 

 

COMMONWEALTH  (part two)    /    Ann Patchett

 

 

Half the things in this life I can’t remember and the other half I wish I could.

 

She didn’t know how to hate her mother yet, but every time she left her father crying in the airport she came that much closer to figuring it out.

 

She thought about the fact that if she were in the garage rather than the carport, she’d be killing herself now.

 

It proved to her, yet again, that a person just needed to look.

 

--“I want to carry the gun.”

--“And people in hell want ice water.”

 

“Always ask the price. That can be thee lesson of our time together.”

 

It sounded like a lot of money at the time but nothing’s a lot of money when you weigh it out against the cons.

 

Men can be surprisingly tall once they’ve been unfolded from the high bar chairs.

 

It was her loan that was forced into prostitution.

 

He was a man who had been helped out of a straight-jacket before.

 

The nuns had led her to believe that God gave preference to people who did things the hard way.

 

Caroline stopped dead, as if her mother had shot her in the neck with a blow dart tipped in neurotoxins.

 

Most of the tests you take in life, you only get one shot. Here, you get two.

 

There was no vanity in winter.

 

She understood the way he felt. She, too, had been shut out.

 

The radiator hissed and clanked like someone was beating it to death with a lead pipe down in the basement. Neither Bintou or Sayo even flinched at the noise, but it made Albie want to take his skin off.

 

Bad habits were all a matter of perspective.

 

People are scared of the wrong things.

 

Theresa was shocked by the roaming idleness of her mind, as if she were sifting through trash on the side of the freeway and was stopped, enchanted, by every foil gum wrapper.

 

“Don’t you think we should go into therapy someday?”