Suzanne Finnamore Quotes

I am not ready to think of him as either insane or evil, to consider in full how I could love and have a child with such a person. I am not ready to think about anything, except ways in which this may still be averted.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I played possum. I did this, as the possum does, out of fear.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I feel angry but not homocidal, this may be unlooked-for progress.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

The whole world seems tilted, my inner ear displaced by a hole where my spouse used to be.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

My mind floats like ash. I blame myself most cruelly.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Soon he was online every night until one or two a.m. Often he would wake up at three of four a.m. and go back online. He would shut down the computer screen when I walked in. In the past, he used to take the laptop to bed with him and we would both be on our laptops, hips touching. He stopped doing that, slipping off to his office instead and closing the door even when A was asleep. He started closing doors behind him. I was steeped in denial, but my body knew.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I want to own this transition, not to simply swallow the shame of it entire. I will push for every little irony.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

This people know where their husbands are. I would like to vomit. I would like to vomit my soul out.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Irrationally, I think, Will You Marry Me? Four words. I Want a Divorce. Four words. I would like time to count the letters as well, but there is not time.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

The abandonment came, and now this shabby bacchanal.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

This is much easier than when N left. Our son is unable to grasp and simultaneously turn doorknobs yet. If only this trick could be unlearned by men over thirty, many more families would celebrate Christmas together.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

This is much worse than losing a cat. You do not wish the cat dead, for example, after the first two days. You still love the cat and presumably the cat still loves you, or some variation of love that may in fact be dependence and even indifference.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I sensed he may have occasionally strayed in some of his past relationships. It was something I felt but ignored, a rent in the fabric of an otherwise splendid garment I thought I could mend. I thought I could live with it—I thought, yes and I admit it, that I would be different. That at the very least, middle age and children would slow him down; however, they seemed to accelerate his pace.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

They ought to do away with divorce settlements. Instead, both parties should flip a coin. The winner gets to stay where he or she is and keep everything. The loser goes to Paraguay. That´s it.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Flannel shirts should be outlawed for ex husbands, I realize this now. Flannel shirts are to women what crotchless panties are to men.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

The real genesis is forbidden to me, vis-à-vis N´s inability to confess even the mildest transgressions.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Conversely, I though humiliation would be everything, but it´s such a nothing.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

This is much worse than losing a cat. You do not wish the cat dead, for example, after the first two days. You still love the cat and presumably the cat still loves you, or some variation of love that may in fact be dependence and even indifference. People should be informed, as adopting a cat and becoming married take about the same amount of time and money and yet have such drastically different results. Indeed, except for the similar price($28)and the average time spent together, all similarity between pet adoption and marriage ends nastily.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

People told me not to get married; I didn´t listen. No one ever listens, it seems to me now. Perhaps people should stop trying to communicate. N was not a communicator; early on, I´d insisted on communication. Now I see his point acutely. I would love to have him back to not communicate with me. I would never ask for communication again, I would simply go elsewhere for the deep fish. Also, I´m not at all sure I want to hear what he has to say in this new vista. This works out well.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I think: I would like to take N back to a story right now, like a rake. I would say, Oh, this rake is uneven. Do you have any where the tines go straight across? I would like to do a straight exchange. But there are things that cannot be returned. Errant husbands are one of them. Wives are not. Wives can be exchanged; I have always known this.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

Together we agree that there are few tableaus more pathetic than a woman poring over a plethora of self-help books, while in a small café across town her husband is sharing a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé and fettucini Alfredo with a beautiful woman, fondling her fishnet knee and making careful plans to escape his life.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I've felt basically lucky ever since, almost every day of my life. That's something else love should make you feel. It should make you fell fortunate.It will be made clear to you in a stray gesture, the line of a throat. Something in the hands. There may or may not be any music playing. But there will be a certain velocity of the spirit, a sensation of dropping through clear space unimpeded, and you think, This is the one. I found you.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

It’s adult swim time and I’m diving in here at the shallow end.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

The marriage is over, counseling is the eulogy. The relationship autopsy is the wake.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

You are the closest I will ever come to magic.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

When you moved, I felt squeezed with a wild infatuation and protectiveness. We are one. Nothing, not even death, can change that.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

After you are here, I will try not to become one of those parents who brag incessantly about their children, who force them to recite the alphabet backward or sing the Lord's Prayer in German to horrified dinner guests. One of those parents who tell people who aren't interested and haven't askd what their progeny's grade-point average is, what school they go to, how handsome and brilliant and psychic they are. If something goes awry and I do become one of those parents, you have my permission to sneak into my bedroom while I am sleeping and pinch my nostrils shut.

~ Suzanne Finnamore

I said that additionally, since I was planning to nurse, it be best if you were off the breast before I came back to work. My boss just looked at me dreamily and said, 'That won't be for sixty years, at least.

~ Suzanne Finnamore