Surprises, I feel now, are primarily a form of violence. - Suzanne Finnamore, Split: A Memoir of Divorce

"He announces that lately he keeps losing things. "Like your wife and child,"I want to say, but don´t. At fourty, I´ve learned not to say everything clever, not to score every point."

"How do you know? How best to ensure his nervous breakdown?"I ask."Keep going,"Christian says. "Just go on as if nothing has happened. We all hate that."

"Delusion detests focus and romance provides the veil."

"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."

"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."