Bobcat and Other Stories Quotes

“This is the whole problem with words. There is so little surface area to reveal whom you might be underneath, how expansive and warm, how casual, how easygoing, how cool, and so it all comes out a little pathetic and awkward and choked.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“Only a man who hates his privilege can be trusted with it.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“It was late on a Friday afternoon, when the air is fertile, about to split and reveal its warm fruit—that gold nucleus of time, the weekend.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“What an idea--that with a few words you could catch another person in a little grammatical clutch, arrange the objects of the world such that they bordered the two of you.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“He was my teacher, and he had wrapped himself, his elaborate historical self, into this package, and stood in front of the high windows, to teach me my little lesson, which turned out to be not about Poland or fascism or war, borderlines or passion or loyalty, but just about the sentence: the importance of, the sweetness of. And I did long for it, to say one true sentence of my own, to leap into the subject, that sturdy vessel traveling upstream through the axonal predicate possibility; into what little we know of the future, of eternity.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“Meanwhile, Susan looked carefully into each of our faces. She was actually waiting for us to answer, to give reasons why people fall in love and get married. Nobody knows, I wanted to say. Nobody really knows. But that doesn't mean you're allowed to not do it.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“A woman reading is a grave temptation.”
― rebecca lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“Strain on the community -- That's a ridiculous arguement. Then nobody in the world should have children. I think asking people not to have children is just another form of genocide.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“Earlier that day I had found a sheet of paper on which Min’s grandmother had written her definition of the “superior woman.” At the top of the page is said, “Formula for Woman, According to Dignity.” The formula was “Has excellent posture, which is two-thirds contentment and one-third desire."
At first I thought this a bit arbitrary. But all day the idea had been passing through my mind like a mantra. I began to think, in this strange place—half kingdom, half city—that the grandmother’s formula caught the entire world in its tiny palm. Two-thirds contentment, one-third desire. Of course, I thought, as I spiraled my way through the trees to Asia Foodstore, that is the composition of the world.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“I bet you one million in money,” Rezvan said as he blew out smoke, “that the number of hours Americans spend per week in these—what do you call them?—therapy offices is exactly the same number of hours Romanians spend in line for bread. And for what? Nothing. To make their problems bigger. They talk about them all day so at night they are even bigger.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“I was like a woman at a drawer, putting away her party dresses between tissue paper, and there he stood in the doorway-- not Stewart Applebaum, but this feeling-- gentlemanly, feral, breathtaking, peaceful, something very close to life itself, asking me for one more dance down in the meadow.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“She put her hand on my shoulder, and her eyes let me know, just crouch down, hold tight, there's a little bit of pain for you, but not too much.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“If one of the things people do is establish a civilization out of nature, a way out of the chaos, then Ray was failing at being a person, falling back into the glut of the physical world. He’d been fooled by life. It had triumphed over him. I wanted to call it out to him, over his wife’s head, Hey Ray, life has triumphed over you.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“And I did long for it, to say one true sentence of my own, to leap into the subject, that sturdy vessel travelling upstream through the axonal predicate into what is possible; into the object, which is all possibility; into what little we know of the future, of eternity--the light of which, incidentally, was streaming in on us just then through the high windows. Above Stasselova's head the storm clouds were dispersing, as if frightened by some impending goodwill, and I could see tht the birds were out again, forming into that familiar pointy hieroglyph, as they're told to do from deep within.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“One thing about her," I said, "that often gets lost in all the scripts is that she can love unconditionally. She can love people that don't love her back."
"That's a superpower?" Andy said.
"No mortal can do it," I said.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“Infinity making its way into our battered little sphere of finity.”
― rebecca lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“Growing up is just a matter of gaining perspective.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“I think you have boundary problems," Groovy said.
"There's such a thing as too-strict boundaries, you know. You're all cut off from everybody."
"I am?". I felt just the opposite. I felt like I bled over everything, in an unseemly fashion, and my feelings for Sands was exacerbating this.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“Dat is het probleem met woorden. Hun oppervlak is te klein om te laten doorschemeren wie je onder dat oppervlak misschien bent, hoe mededeelzaam en warm, hoe vlot, hoe relaxed, hoe cool, en dus komt het allemaal nogal belachelijk en onhandig en onbeholpen naar buiten”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“Het was de terrine die me nekte. Ik werd er zo onpasselijk van dat ik bij mijn man in de woonkamer moest gaan zitten om de voor een terrine vereiste bruutheden voor hem op te sommen: het ontscharen, ontstaarten en ontzielen van zee- en andere dieren, om ze uiteindelijk te emulgeren tot een pasta die vervolgens kon worden doorkliefd met ongesneden groenten (...)
Met de bereiding van een terrine zijn als het goed is twee of drie dagen gemoeid - gedurende die tijdspanne moet zij in de vlammen van de immer omwentelende wereld worden verhit, gekoeld, gegeseld, getransformeerd - maar onze gasten zouden binnen een uur voor de deur staan.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories

“Lizbet basically knew how to live a happy life and this was revealed in the trifle—she put in what she loved and left out what she didn’t.”
― Rebecca Lee, Bobcat and Other Stories