## Metadata * Author: [[Blake Butler]] * ASIN: B0CTJ6KM4R * Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTJ6KM4R ## Highlights I imagine that’s how haunting works—only those who know, who’d been a part of it, can parse the signal linking the residue of history to how we are, what we’re becoming amid our slow transition, step by step. — location: [255](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=255) ^ref-63837 --- I couldn’t stand to be among writers, with their artificial grievances and their fraudulence — location: [302](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=302) ^ref-54311 --- This is a perfect example of why I say you have little respect for me. Because this situation shows how you obviously think your feelings are more important than mine on every level.” — location: [1451](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=1451) ^ref-28061 --- It hurt to watch her struggle so much, though at times it would grow to irritate me, thinking I saw logically exactly what she could do to slow the tide. — location: [1629](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=1629) ^ref-37071 --- Stranger still to find myself instead being the one writing out our life without her here—as if she’d already known what she intended. — location: [1681](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=1681) ^ref-54532 --- The whole scene was just a bunch of half-wit jokes and ambient ass-kissing, — location: [1972](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=1972) ^ref-1347 --- and it had only happened because she’d taken the easy way out and written about her life. — location: [1989](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=1989) ^ref-2803 --- six-page “Master List of Things I Like and Might Write About,” — location: [1993](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=1993) ^ref-7402 --- It felt like living under psychic siege, even on “normal” days, hidden in spin, pulled up at the roots, with little remaining clear consensus on what was true, what might be true tomorrow, but the need to froth more, to get online and run your mouth. — location: [2105](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=2105) ^ref-6685 --- “I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life (whether in the private sphere or on the level of ‘civilization’ as such) and the very possibility of the Holocaust.” — location: [2115](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=2115) ^ref-44458 --- Paul had been a traveling salesman for many years, and men who traveled for work most likely had affairs, didn’t they? — location: [2139](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=2139) ^ref-47261 --- opening up now from seven thousand miles away, — location: [2186](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=2186) ^ref-56397 --- Molly started getting Botox and lip fillers every few weeks. — location: [2474](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=2474) ^ref-60571 --- Molly admitted she had bigger plans: she’d been to see a plastic surgeon and received quotes on breast implants and liposuction, — location: [2479](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=2479) ^ref-21509 --- I brought it up immediately, while out to lunch at an Applebee’s on Valentine’s Day, following our silly tradition of spending corporate holidays at corporate chains. — location: [2744](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=2744) ^ref-39235 --- teen obsession with James Hetfield, — location: [2756](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=2756) ^ref-23883 --- Molly had tweeted, then deleted, that she was surprised to see how easy and cheap it was to buy a gun. — location: [2851](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=2851) ^ref-58227 --- fantasy baseball draft — location: [2936](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=2936) ^ref-43141 --- The day after the funeral, they closed the city in pandemic. — location: [3314](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=3314) ^ref-48052 --- “Aren’t you married?” — location: [3528](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=3528) ^ref-35294 --- her bottom drawer full of sex toys she kept while throwing out so much else without my knowing—as if she wanted to be caught, — location: [3583](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=3583) ^ref-24259 --- setting her estate in order, making it “easier” for me in the aftermath, while entirely omitting any mention of what was really going on in secret in her — location: [3584](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=3584) ^ref-62547 --- The gore of trauma pools inside us, colors over vision, breaks in waves that seek for land to crash and wear away until there’s nothing recognizable. — location: [3608](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=3608) ^ref-51836 --- at once seeming to ask for my forgiveness while simultaneously attempting to control her story from the grave. — location: [3638](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=3638) ^ref-41125 --- Our relationship had begun as an affair, — location: [3656](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=3656) ^ref-49068 --- I’m so sorry, Molly. I really tried. I know you tried too, as best you could. I love you forever. — location: [3757](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=3757) ^ref-9239 --- Soon, the walls would all be painted over white, as recommended by my listing agent, given how little imagination people had, she said, for living amongst someone else’s choices. — location: [3793](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B0CTJ6KM4R&location=3793) ^ref-61897 ---