a gate at the stairs:favorite lines.

edit: i think i just need to have this consistently open so i can add my favorite lines.

on fridays there were fish fries or boils at which they served "lawyers" (burbot or eelpout), so-called because their hearts were in their butts. (moore, 17)

all my books had fortunes protruding like tiny tails from their pages. you are the crispy noodle in the salad of life. [...] i had donated my plasma several times for cash, but the last time i had tried, the clinic had turned me away, saying my plasma was cloudy from my having eaten cheese the night before. ...it was so hard not to eat cheese. (moore, 19)

where were the husbands? "oh, at work," the women all said vaguely. all except the journalist, who said, "good question!" (moore, 22)

her hair was cropped short and dyed the fashionable bright auburn of a ladybug. her earrings were buttons of deepest orange, her leggings mahogany, her sweater rust-colored, and her lips maroonish brown. she looked like a highly controlled oxidation experiment. (moore, 24)

"the neighbors just put in that invisible fence," she said. "in november. i'm sure it causes ms or something." (moore, 30)

"...filets and cutlets sprinkled with lavender dust once owned by the pixies..." (moore, 34)

it startled me to hear my father's potatoes--kennebecs, norlands, pontiacs, yukon golds, somethe size of marbles, some grapefruits, depending on drought and digging times and what the beetles were up to--all summed up and uttered that way right here in her living room. [...] he was a... truck farmer, with no real acreage, just some ducks (who every fall raped one another in a brutal fashion we never got used to)...(moore, 35)

we had also once had an ebullient pig named helen, who would come when you called her name and smiled like a dolphin when you spoke to her. and then we didn't see her for a few days, and one morning over bacon and eggs, my brother said, "is this helen?" i dropped my fork and cried, "this is helen? is this helen?!" and my mother, too, stopped eating and looked hard at my father: "bo, is this helen?" the next pig we got we never met and its name was #wk3746. (moore, 36-37)