The Mermaid Girl Quotes

“Headaches were like birds. Starlings. They could be perfectly calm, then a single acorn could drop and send the entire flock to the sky.”
― Erika Swyler, The Mermaid Girl: A Story

“Sometimes you made love to a man because you wanted your body to feel something other than the aches and pains of use. Sometimes you made love to man because he looked so good that you wanted to try him on. Sometimes you made love to a man because he fathered your children, he made you a home, he loved you, and he staunched the parts of you that were always bleeding. Sometimes you made love to a man because you felt split in two, and joining with him pulled you back together.”
― Erika Swyler, The Mermaid Girl: A Story

“The problem with stealing the magician's assistant from a carnival was that you were always waiting for her to disappear. He expected her to vanish. She had in fact, multiple times, before Simon was born, and just after, too.

...Daniel wanted to be worried for, wanted to be missed without doing any of the leaving that missing demanded. When Paulina left, he counted breaths, and thought constantly of the disappearing box. The reappearing was the most important part of the trick. Eventually he stopped living in fear that she wouldn't come back. The more pressing concern was that she was cutting herself in two.”
― Erika Swyler, The Mermaid Girl: A Story

“She'd wanted that, a grandfather. Someone who would stay. Michel had an eyetooth that turned sideways and she loved it more than anything else in the world. But someone wasn't yours because you loved a tooth.”
― Erika Swyler, The Mermaid Girl: A Story

“The shine on your spouse was supposed to wear off. He’d seen it in his parents, how they had never really touched, how all their conversations were part of a single soft argument with buried razors. He’d seen it in his friends. Frank and Leah were comfortable. They’d settled into lifelong friendship; like a limb you’d not known you were missing until it appeared. Reliable, essential, but not something you burned for. No one ached; he told himself it was good to ache.”
― Erika Swyler, The Mermaid Girl: A Story

“The joy of children was the worry, the constant reminder that a piece of you was running loose in the world.”
― Erika Swyler, The Mermaid Girl: A Story