dialogue prompts from orange world and other stories by karen russell.
is ‘historic’ your way of saying ‘haunted’?
what would you be, if you lived somewhere else?
how quickly you snap back into character.
everybody needs an audience.
i’m not much of a dancer.
you got me talking. now i won’t shut up.
who can say what the dead do or do not know?
there’s so much more to you than what they see.
i’m going to keep you safe now.
we were all fifteen once. we all survived it.
you’re just trying to embarrass me.
you’re so young. you can’t know.
you can’t survive your death, it survives with you.
heartbreak is the universal diagnosis for the end of love.
why did i ever get married?
i almost didn’t recognize you.
when you’re desperate, you make strange compromises.
find a hobby. raise a puppy.
be angry. you have every right.
love unlids pandora’s box.
how do you survive the peace and quiet?
live long enough and your life becomes your own to gamble with.
this part of me has always been the broken one.
good luck is luck i don’t deserve.
unscathed? i wouldn’t say that.
we are no longer the authorities on anything. not even our pain.
do i look like a drug dealer?
i don’t know what’s broken, my spirit or my heart.
my guilt is alive and well.
i don’t know how to do anything else.
i have not felt so alive in years.
nobody told me anything, but i listen to what is said.
you fit yourself around your circumstances.
if you cannot believe me, then you are not my family.
i wanted to know where you go, when you leave.
money can make sense out of almost anything, can’t it?
i wasn’t hired to ask questions.
make up a name for me. any name you’d like.
i wanted to see my home again.
people my age are criminals. we ruined the world.
i didn’t come this close to the end just to turn around.
you just wanted to disappear for a little while, didn’t you?
you came here to find me?
have we loved each other well?
could we love each other better?
you love to play the martyr, don’t you?
i feel that way about you still.