What was beauty unless you intended to use it, like a hammer, or a key? It was just something for other people to use and admire, or envy, despise. To nail their dreams onto like a picture hanger on a blank wall. And so many girls saying, use me, dream me.
Beauty
beautiful girls have certain advantages.
I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.
Love, Art, Adoration
I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.
Pain, Memory
She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.
Dance, Freedom, Color
Rena noticed me watching it pass. 'You think they don't got problem?' Rena said. 'Everybody got problem. You got me, they got insurance, house payment, Preparation H.' She smiled, baring the part between her two upper teeth. 'We are the free birds. They want to be us.
Freedom, Envy, Problems
I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots-prostitute, housewife, saint-like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.
People, Labels
What’s real is always worth it,' she explained to me. 'Look how it’s made.' She showed me the shoulders, the way they were knit together with a separate yoke instead of a seam. 'You’ll wear it your whole life.
Money
They dream of men with gentle hands, eloquent with tenderness, fingers that brushed along a cheek, that outlined open lips in the lovers' braille. Hands that sculpted sweetness from sullen flesh, that traced breast and ignited hips, opening, kneading. Flesh becomes bread in the heat of those hands, braided and rising.
Women, Men, Body
don't sulk. you're acting just like a man.
Men
Men... No matter how unappealing, each of them imagines he is somehow worthy.
I almost said, you’re not broken, you’re just going through something. But I couldn’t. She knew. There was something terribly wrong with her, all the way inside. She was like a big diamond with a dead spot in the middle. I was supposed to breathe life into that dead spot, but it hadn’t worked.
Depression
I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despair wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favourite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy.
Despair, Sadness, Depression