Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [510]

I like Curtis Talcott a lot. Maybe I love him. Sometimes I think I do. He says he loves me. But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just keeps getting worse, I think I’d kill myself. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 510

Note

Six short sentences build a ladder of qualification (‘like a lot,’ ‘maybe,’ ‘sometimes I think’) and then the ‘But’ drops the floor out. ‘I think I’d kill myself’ is delivered flatly, in the same register as the hedging, which is what makes it land — the hypothetical is weighed like any other option on the list.