Each of us shapes our stories so they make sense of who we think we are.
But to be furious, murderously furious, is to be alive.
The apartment was entirely, was only, for her: a wall of books, both read and unread, all of them dear to her not only in themselves, their tender spines, but in the moments or periods they evoked. Sh...
My everyday Appleton life, my phones calls to my father, my occasional beers with friends, my Saturday-morning jobs around the reservoir - what was all that, but the opiated husk of a life, the treadm...
But who I am in my head, very few people really get to see that. Almost none. It’s the most precious gift I can give, to bring her out of hiding.
When, as a woman, you make yourself the work of art, and when you are then what everyone looks at, then whatever else, you aren’t alone.
We wouldn’t be proper children if we didn’t disregard our parents’ most vital instruction.
The professor husband of a friend of mine has likened children to the insane. I often think of it. He says that children live on the edge of madness, that their behavior, apparently unmotivated, share...
The person I am in my head is so far from the person I am in the world. Nobody would know me from my own description of myself; which is why, when called upon (rarely, I grant) to provide an account,...
No, obviously what strength was all along was the ability to say Fuck off to the lot of it, to turn your back on all the suffering and contemplate, unmolested, your own desires above all.
It was one of those moments when life's disguises are stripped away, when you see clearly what is real, and all you can say to yourself is useful to get that learned.
I've discovered over the years that the simplest explanation is almost always the right one; and that hunger of one kind or another - desire, by another name - is the source of almost every sorrow.
I wanted him to reassure me, and when I saw he wasn’t going to, I thought, This is when the shit hits the fan.
But you see, everyone has a part to play. In this theater, I’m a daughter and a sister and a mother—never an artist. I could be, I don’t know, Luc Tuymans, and it would mean nothing to them. They allo...
Without it being said, I was treated as a kid with a bright future and Cassie, well, she wasn’t necessarily not going to have one, but her path would be different from mine. Without anybody saying so...
When you’re the Woman Upstairs, nobody thinks of you first. Nobody calls you before anyone else, or sends you the first postcard. Once your mother dies, nobody loves you best of all.
When you’re the Woman Upstairs, nobody thinks of you first. Nobody calls you before anyone else, or sends you the first postcard. Once your mother dies, nobody loves you best of all. It’s a small thin...
The whole world seemed a maze of shifting mirrors in which I wandered alone, looking always and frenziedly for the exit back into my real life, where people had substance, did as they said they would,...
The novel is describing a time in which she felt hope, beauty, elation, joy ,wonder, anticipation-these are things these friends gave to her and this is why they mattered so much. Her rage corresponds...
Never let the sun go down on an argument, she said. Because one of us might die in the night, I said, as I’d replied since I was small. But this time, she laughed, a dry, sad laugh. One of us just mig...