TinHouseBooks

“Let's draw straws to see who gets eaten.”
― Julia Elliott, The New and Improved Romie Futch

“I closed my eyes and saw the future, a red, fleshy blob pupating in dark fluid like something in a mad scientist's incubator. I saw strange organs throbbing beneath its translucent shell. Saw the future bust from its chrysalis in scattering blazes of diamond light, winged and glistening, already flitting out the window, darting off toward the horizon before I could get a good look at it.”
― Julia Elliott, The New and Improved Romie Futch

“As I ached for this lost part of myself, my missing finger became a synecdoche for all lost things in my life—women and mothers, youth and full-scalp coverage, soberness, and the bliss of solid sleep. Most of all, I ached for the future as a shimmering, distant thing.”
― Julia Elliott, The New and Improved Romie Futch

“Yet we all dragged our cyborgian carcasses across the trashed planet every day. We all chased various forms of intoxication, hoping to soothe our savage souls. I could see myself some twenty years hence, a gray-haired troll slumped on a barstool, my nose a bulbous mess of clotted capillaries.”
― Julia Elliott, The New and Improved Romie Futch