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All Fours

Book by Miranda July · 5 quotes · Aging, Change, Fluctuation

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All Fours Quotes

“Maybe it all began now, my life as a wife comfortable in her own home, a real wife. I tried to remember how Pinocchio had become a real boy. It had something to do with being in a whale, maybe saving his father's life; I hadn't done anything like that. But surely a woman was more complex than a puppet boy and she might become herself not once-and-for-all but cyclically: waxing, waning, sometimes disappearing altogether.”

Women
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“This was my first experience of being too old. I had not always gotten exactly what I had wanted—men had been unwilling to leave their wives for me or to do more than flirt—but even in these humbling cases I hadn’t questioned my right to feel desire. Now suddenly my lust was uncouth, inappropriate. I was powerful and interesting, perhaps funny and unique; I took him seriously in a way he wasn’t used to—but he was not jerking off to me. Just a few years earlier, at forty or forty-two, I would have been a contender, but now it was too late. And he was just the first one. From now on this would be the norm. And not just with men younger than me, but with all men. I would never get what I wanted anymore, man-wise.”

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“You mean nonmonogamy?" she said, neutrally. "No, no, no." I was now so nervous that I was almost tearful. "It would be our own thing, not that! We'd have to really talk about it, down the road. Make rules. When we know each other better." I saw us sitting on the living room floor in front of her cozy fireplace, drawing up our bylaws. Old wounds would be tenderly revealed, kinks admitted; there would be laughing and crying and pauses for self-regulation. Then, given all this information (and in the context of Harris and Sam), we would know what sort of specific, customized relationship was right for the two of us. And it could change! As we changed! I didn't say any of this, but I thought about it while she kissed me. Frankly, I was proud that I'd said anything at all and that it had gone so well— apparently, based on this kiss.”

Marriage
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