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Quotations (25)

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Hidden from my husband, who’d be holed up in the study, I did push-ups, sit-ups, squats. My basic strength began to improve, so I started to go to the gym four times a week, where I did pull - ups, dumbbell presses, and narrow-grip bench…
Only my husband seemed not to notice anything, even though my chest felt so solid it was as though there was a metal plate under my skin, my arms looked huge enough to snap a log in half, my waist sported a six-pack, and from a distance I…
Our fitting rooms were movable, on wheels. “Tell everyone I’ll be out for a bit,” I said to one of the other girls, and hooked the rope around my shoulders. It was heavy, but not impossible to pull forward. I headed into town, towing the…
Anytime I saw typhoon coverage on TV, I just had to wonder: What on earth were these people thinking? Walking along looking totally focused on holding their umbrellas open in front of them when their clothes, their hair, and most likely…
Don’t laugh anymore when the news shows drenched people whose umbrellas flip and turn to bones. I don’t belittle their mental capabilities. When I pass people on the street who insist on trying to hold their umbrellas open on a stormy day,…
I was much more prone than the average person to experiencing pareidolic phenomena, which is when any grouping of three dots starts to look like a pair of eyes and a mouth. I’d see it everywhere. Three wrinkles on a suit in my wardrobe…
It wasn’t that someone pointed it out. It occurred to me by accident, while I was sorting through some files that had accumulated on the computer, comparing photos from five years ago, before we were married, to more recent ones. I…
I called myself a homemaker, I felt a lingering guilt about just how easy I had it. Owning a home at this age, I felt as if I’d somehow managed to cheat at life. I almost wished for a child so I could have a good reason to stay at home,…
When I paid careful attention, I could see that my husband’s face changed nimbly in response to whatever situation he was in. When we were with people, it stayed looking the way it always looked, keeping up appearances, but once it was…
“I mean, getting married, that means swallowing everything about the other person, the good things and the bad. What if there ends up being more of the bad? You’d both be in trouble then, wouldn’t you?” === There are two snakes, and they…
Whenever I’d gotten close to someone in the past, I’d had the feeling that little by little I was being replaced. The other person’s ideas, interests, and habits would gradually take the place of my own. === Men entered into me through my…
I’d expected marriage to be an even more constricting flower pot than my previous relationships. But after four years, I hadn’t tried to escape from the soil that was my husband. Hearing Hakone’s snake - ball story, I finally felt that…
In the darkness, my husband swiftly removed my pajama bottoms. When I thought about whether the thing that had started to move on top of me was my husband or just something like him, I felt a terrible dread and kept my eyes firmly shut.…
Hakone held the purse strings and, having a good head for money, made a rule of feeding Senta a bowl of rice before they went out to eat. === “I hate a problem without a good solution.” Maybe this was the kind of thing my husband was…
My husband noticed that my glass was empty, and got up smoothly and brought me a refill. What an attentive wife he was. === I’d switched over to shopping at the local shops on the main street. Prices were higher than at the supermarket,…
When I woke up and looked in the mirror, I saw that my face had finally begun to forget who I was. I guessed my features had just been caught off guard that day. When I peered closer, they rushed to reassemble, as though to say, Oh, shit.…
“You keep saying we need to talk, but is that even true? Maybe you’d like to talk about important things. But do you have anything important to say?” I started to feel less sure of myself. I focused on feeling strength in my stomach. “What…
A married couple was a strange thing. Although we’d lived in such close proximity and spent our days and nights together, I hadn’t had the faintest inkling that my husband’s desire had been to be a single bloom of a mountain peony. === I…
Other stalls in the market kept animals in cages to draw in customers, so Paprika Jiro did his best to compete by singing out the names of the fruits and vegetables in his clear boy soprano. His voice made people stop and listen, and…
One night, he filled a big pot with glue and placed it in front of the stall. A few days later, when he heard a woman scream at the entrance to the market, he stripped naked and jumped inside. Jiro waited inside the slimy pot of glue,…
Even the sunglasses were part of the man’s body. === “You said you’d do anything to get to know me,” she said, inching closer again. I’d said that, sure. But I was thirty-four. I was dubious about my chances of understanding someone so…
She needed to exercise more, it was true. She’d been putting in such long hours working that her fitness had suffered. Particularly her leg muscles. Now that she was out running, she couldn’t ignore it. It was like having to drag along…
“You let me down,” her husband said with a sigh, and dropped his head to his chest. Tomoko wasn’t sure how to respond. Her husband raised his head again. After a while, he repeated himself. “You let me down.” He sighed and once more…
Why did I get married to a thing like this? Why was I so happy to be married to a bunch of straw? Her husband was utterly unmoving. Maybe he was already dead. If I hit this body with something, she wondered, would it feel like there was…
Your town is overflowing in opportunities for you to meet your future partner. How many bicycle saddles are lined up outside the train station, just waiting for you to choose them? Nothing is stopping you from going up to the bike parking,…