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The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror
Mallory Ortberg
Top 10 Best Quotes
“She could not understand how she was here, when she had never said yes to being brought anywhere. She could not remember speaking to him, much less agreeing. She was beginning to learn the danger of silence, and that someone who wishes to hear a yes will not go out of his way to listen for a no.”
“Perhaps you would not like being married to me,' Beauty said. 'I do not know how to talk to people, and I have terrible taste in shirts.”
“I expect it's hard for witches ... now that most people work in shops and factories, and haven't any crops to ruin. They must be terribly sad, those witches, to have to go from blighting wheat fields to blighting houseplants.”
“I don't mind it so much when they're fully dead, you understand. Something that's supposed to be dead, and is dead, that's no surprise but there's something about a creature that GOING to be dead but isn't yet, something that KNOWS it's going to be dead and doesn't want to be. I've never liked that.”
“Then: “A man in a mustache is at the door to see Beauty,” Sylvia said one afternoon. “He looks as though he were going to speak German at me.”
“If you will not marry me,” Mr. Beale said, “perhaps I will die of grief.” Beauty’s expression did not change. “I’m so unused to compliments. I’m afraid that I take them quite seriously.”
“Aren't you supposed to be an educated woman?' 'No. Purely decorative. I read a story once; it was terrible and my head ached for days.”
“To be grateful is to be wakeful and watchful,” Paul said. “To be grateful is to remember. To be grateful is to acknowledge one’s lawful debts and keep a balanced ledger.”
“She was beginning to learn the danger of silence, and that someone who wishes to hear a yes will not go out of his way to listen for a no.”
“She could not remember speaking to him, much less agreeing. She was beginning to learn the danger of silence, and that someone who wishes to hear a yes will not go out of his way to listen for a no.”
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Book Keywords:
short-story, gratitude, feminism, humans-are-weird, choice, humor, dark-humor, silence, debts, witches