Suzanne Finnamore Quotes

My mother is a firm believer in the long pause, useful in interrogations, proclamations of truth, and the occasional cutting dead of someone without their knowing it.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Delusion detests focus and romance provides the veil.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Any way I slice reality it comes out poorly, and I feel an urge to not exist, something I have never felt before; and now here it comes with conviction, almost panic. I mentally bless and exonerate anyone who has kicked a chair out from beneath her or swallowed opium in large chunks. My mind has met their environment, here in the void. I understand perfectly.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I mentally bless and exonerate anyone who has kicked a chair out from beneath her or swallowed opium in large chunks. My mind has met their environment, here in the void. I understand perfectly.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

In so many senseless deaths, beauty is to blame.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Why is edamame always ready to expire? It´s so urgent for a vegetable. Edamame. It sounds like an assisted form of suicide. Is there an advertising concept in this?

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I remember one desolate Sunday night, wondering: Is this how I´m going to spend the rest of my life? Marrid to someone who is perpetually distracted and somewhat wistful, as though a marvelous party is going on in the next room, which but for me he could be attending?

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I used to loathe ambivalence now I adore it. Ambivalence is my new best friend.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

So many events and moments that seemed insignificant add up. I remember how for the last Valentine´s Day, N gave flowers but no card. In restaurants, he looked off into the middle distance while my hand would creep across the table to hold his. He would always let go first. I realize I can´t remember his last spontaneous gesture of affection.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

The snag about marriage is, it isn´t worth the divorce.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

They feel life is for the taking, and that everyone deserves happiness no matter what the cost. I must remember these tricks if I ever decide to have my soul surgically removed.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Someday I will have revenge. I know in advance to keep this to myself, and everyone will be happier. I do understand that I am expected to forgive N and his girlfriend in a timely fashion, and move on to a life of vegetarian cooking and difficult yoga positions and self-realization, and make this so much easier and more pleasant for all concerned.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Surprises, I feel now, are primarily a form of violence.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I love you as the mother of my child: the kiss of death.Mother of His Child: demotion. I am beginning to see this truism: Mothers are not always wives. I have been stripped of a piece of self.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I am replete with stamina in finding out every single fact I can about this whole affair.Yet, I think, do I want to pull that thread? Do I want to unleash the truth, unravel deceit, and kill reality as I´ve known it? It is irreparable, if I do, from the moment we met until now. It is long. If I discover too much that is false about what I thought my past was, Time will be skewed even further. I already have a poor connection with the present. Example: I have no sense of what day it is. It´s better.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

How could you do that to me? I repeat. I don´t have to itemize. He knows what I speak of.Eventually N produces three answers, in this

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Yes. THANK YOU. And say hello to Judas Iscariot.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I saw my reflection in their eyes, but not the men themselves, not clearly. This preserved the idea that all intelligent and even vaguely attractive men were essentially good. Delusion detest focus and romance provides the veil.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

The Betty Lady explains love and splitting up: It´s like playing the shell game with Jesus. You can´t figure anything out; it´s best not to try. You´ll just humiliate yourself.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I review what I know once again, confronting the monolith now alien and almost unconnected to me: my marriage.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I know my vision is impaired and cannot be trusted with even the simplest tasks, much less dating. Not that I´ve come within talon distance of a man.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I´ve blown it, the whole grisly charade.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I feel incendiary, a wildfire. My spirit licks at the gates of a very elaborate, customized, and distracting emotional Hades.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I´m just not sending out the right vibe lately. Perhaps the fact that I wear stained sweatpants and free T-shirts is holding me back. I just can´t seem to get back into the intelligent-slut-for-hire outfits that lure men even shoes with laces evade me. Plus my hair is Fran Lebowitz-esque. I think my eyes are getting closer together. I don´t know.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

It had all seemed as inevitable as sunset. Instead it was the beauty of the sun glinting upon the scythe.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Naturally, I do blame Françoise. I blame her for having N in the first place. She was young, she was beautiful, she was married to a doctor, and she was intelligent. She could have abstained from producing her first son. It was wrong on a variety of levels.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Although I notice there is never a truly good time to have a nice long chat with one´s mother-in-law, unless you are having an extraordinary life and marriage and your mother-in-law is, say, Maureen Dowd, or Indira Gandhi. Someone of that ilk.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

This does not escape my notice, it is a context. I resent the fact of a context; my social status has shifted and no one is going to acknowldege it, that´s certain. I´m expected to be Brave and Rise Above. I dress for the role; I must look far better now that I did when I was married. I must look pulled together into a nice tight Hermès knot of self-containment. I don´t make the rules; I just do my best to follow them.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

There is that, and there is also the Irreconcilable Differences line. It seems so catchall, so vague. You could say that about anyone, any man and woman at all. Jesus and Mary Magdalene: Irreconcilable Differences. JFK and Jackie, anyone at all. It´s built into the man-woman thing. What kind of paltry reason is that? Insanity is another box to be checked on the divorce petition, the only alternative to Irreconcilable Differences. I would like to check it.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

To keep myself from harming or calling N and to stave off the rage and despair, I focus on my extraordinary son, drink midrange Chardonnay every night after he is asleep, and make a barrage of late-night mail-order retail purchases placed from the couch. The couch has officially become my second battle station. I am angry and I have credit And I´m all blackened inside; I should wear a pointy witch hat around Larkspur as I go to the bank and drop A off at day care. It would be more honest.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Already things are changing; it´s starting with small shit but oh it´s starting, the change, the irrevocable, impossible change.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Such silence has an actual sound, the sound of disappearance.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I was steeped in denial, but my body knew.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

A heart can stop beating for a while, one can still live.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

He left a bit too easily and with obvious relief. His feet were swift and sure on the muddy path.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I am going insane. Yes. That is what´s happening. Good. Insane.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Bushwhacked, I examine my hands. Same hands. Rings still there but no longer valid.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I have a new mantra, which I chant softly to myself: Oh My God Oh My God.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

It´s like watching someone do a triple backflip dismount and land on two feet, solid, arms splayed in the air. I know I could never do it, don´t even know where I would begin to learn, but some people are built for it. He was handcrafted to leave, had practiced on other women since adolescence. I was one of an unnumbered series.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I travel back in time, falling back into what I know for certain, the historical data I cling to in order to not go mad, not assume I made a suicidal and well-informed error in marrying this man.

~ Suzanne Finnamore