crystal bridges


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Meri crossed to the lilies. Bending over them, she breathed in their sweet, almost sexual odor. When she went to the kitchen, Nathan reached to her face—for a moment she thought in love. But no, he was wiping at her nose and cheek with his thumbs. ‘Lily dust,’ he explained.
― The Senator’s Wife - Sue Miller
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We want. When we stop wanting, we feel dead and want to want more.
― Sue Miller, The Lake Shore Limited (via colourmegreenwich)
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well i’ve finished this novel

The Senator’s Wife by Sue Miller. i feel awfully mixed about it. it was a terribly good read; it made me laugh and joyous and cry and horribly angry. i feel only the best books can evoke such emotion.

i recommend it to anyone who has an open mind about life and love and sex and adulthood.

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‘Think we’re a match made in heaven, Natey?’
He didn’t answer for a moment, and she thought he’d dropped off. But then he turned and touched her face. ‘I think we’re a match made right here on earth, in this very house.’
― The Senator’s Wife - Sue Miller
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The point is to do everything you can as long as you can, isn’t it?
― The Senator’s Wife - Sue Miller
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‘Well, as an alternative to offing myself, for example, it seems actually appealing. Another kind of off.’ She waved her hand. ‘Off to Paris.’
‘That’s not funny, Delia.’
She turned and looked directly at him. His face was grim, his mouth a tight line. She lifted her shoulders. ‘Ah,’ she said, her voice lowered. ‘So you can make me want to die, but I’m not allowed to talk about it with you.’
‘You don’t want to die,’ he said fiercely. He gripped her hands, raised them to his mouth, kissed them.
Delia leaned against him, her forehead touching his chin. The she sat up straight, abruptly. ‘No. Not anymore. But I do want to disappear.’
‘What if I don’t want you to disappear?’ he asked.
She thought for a moment, wanting to be sure she didn’t speak from bravado. Then she said, ‘Well, but you’re no longer in charge of that.’
― The Senator’s Wife - Sue Miller
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‘Look, Evvie,’ she said. She’d made her voice gentle. ‘I hope that when you marry, I wish for you, that there’s only…that you both, whoever, are able to be nothing but in love with each other all the time. That neither of you ever wounds or hurts the other. I wish Dad and I, I wish for us, for you, that we had had that.’ He met her eyes for a moment, and then looked down at his own hands, encircling his glass. ‘We didn’t. But we had…we had a great deal else. Which kept us together Which served us well.’
― The Senator’s Wife - Sue Miller
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‘You’re just a little crazy right now, I think.’
― The Senator’s Wife - Sue Miller
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Delia was trying to master the subjunctive tense. And how fitting, she thought, to be struggling here in this foreign city with the subjunctive, when she was going to have to live her life out, for the foreseeable future, in foreignness, in subjunctivity, in the conditional suspension of everything she’d known as real.
― The Senator’s Wife - Sue Miller
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On the way home, just as she’d turned onto Dumbarton Street again, she fell on the ice. Nearly until she hit the ground, she made herself believe that it wouldn’t happen, that she could right herself. She landed on her side, almost lying down, her purchases scattered on the frozen lawn next to her. She didn’t get up for a minute or so, just lay there waiting for the pain and the sense of insult to subside, looking across the crusted snow at the cheap, ugly things she’d bought. As she carefully picked everything up, she felt so sorry for herself that she had to fight back tears.
― The Senator’s Wife - Sue Miller
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The air was dense with smoke, alive with music, with shouted bits of talk, with the smell of booze. Delia and Tom barely spoke, but Delia thought of their bodies as conducting a kind of conversation. Between dances they stood close to each other, waiting for the music to start again, feeling overwhelmingly the wish to be moving against each other; and then when they were aware of the charge between them, the surprise and thrill of it each time they touched. Once, standing next to him, waiting, she looked at him; their eyes met and they both laughed, knowing what was coming. Before she knew him, she loved him. Her body trusted him.
― The Senator’s Wife - Sue Miller
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‘Wherever you are is home to me, Delia. Lying with you is the deepest and most thrilling comfort I can know. Simply put, I’m myself with you as I am nowhere else in my life, and I’m happy that, clear-sighted as you are about me at other times, you can still love me in those moments.’
― The Senator’s Wife - Sue Miller
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