Quotations from *Bloodsong*, 1 of 2
Jill Neimark
American

“I wanted to cut my life off like a bad arm, and I did, and Christ I was proud of myself, but you know how they say an amputated arm aches? Well, I ached for my old life. I always seem to be aching for something.”
—Jill Neimark, Bloodsong

Everyone has a first and then a last love, he wrote, and it’s the last love that stamps the soul. The first is simple, it’s a flying leap into life. The last must be Gordian in its knot, it permeates every memory, seeps into every pore; counterpoint to fate. It becomes fate. And so the last love is always a shock and an exception. She might be his last love.

“But I’m not gonna fuck you,” she’d retort.

“I don’t need that now.”
—Jill Neimark, Bloodsong

“Y poco a poco me olvide de vivir,” he said. And little by little I forgot how to live.
—Jill Neimark, Bloodsong

Virgins, bulls, men and gods; the world must be made to bleed.
—Jill Neimark, Bloodsong

And Nadal said those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart by it. They can follow the call of that misfortune, they can seed affliction in others, until they are so alone that no one can reach them.

But it is that same misfortune that is their gift, and their bridge back to humanity. They must make their way back. He’d tried to make his way back through love. In a tin hut in La Perla on a sunny afternoon he knew he could not.
—Jill Neimark, Bloodsong