Michael Cunningham, Flesh and Blood
“Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn’t stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren’t having any of those.”
“I felt this awful obligation to be charming or at least have something to say, and the pressure of having to be charming (or merely verbal) incapacitates me.”
“It takes a hell of a lot more than risk to be a good and relevant writer, and I’m not sure writers can judge whether our own work has merit in any way other than what it does for us emotionally. How “good” we are is for others to decide. But I know from the inside out that risk is the basic, lowest-common-denominator prerequisite. If you aren’t offending anybody, may I suggest you aren’t doing it right?”
“I can promise all the young, wild people out there that living a life of intensity does not end when you stop going home with strange men, stop snorting coke in the bathroom of the club, stop starving or cutting yourself, stop sleeping on the floor of the overnight train or ferry on which nobody speaks English, stop living in the squat, stop letting somebody tie you up who probably shouldn’t be trusted to drive a golf cart. I can promise that self-destruction or partying or adventure is but the surface of risk, and that bigger risks happen later, when you have more than your own body on the line and still dare not to numb out and cloister yourself inward to maintain the illusion of safety.”
“I can promise all the young, wild people out there that living a life of intensity does not end when you stop going home with strange men, stop snorting coke in the bathroom of the club, stop starving or cutting yourself, stop sleeping on the floor of the overnight train or ferry on which nobody speaks English, stop living in the squat, stop letting somebody tie you up who probably shouldn’t be trusted to drive a golf cart. I promsie that self-destruction or partying or adventure is but the surface of risk, and that bigger risks happen later, when you have more than your own body on the line and still dare not to numb out and cloister yourself inward to maintain the illusion of safety.”
Autostraddle — Things I Read That I Love #20:
Risky Writing: The Story I Always Tell And Never Tell (November 2010), by Gina Frangello for The Nervous Breakdown
n. a relationship or friendship that you can’t get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire.
“The pause makes you think the song will end. And then the song isn’t really over, so you’re relieved. But then the song does actually end, because every song ends, obviously, and THAT. TIME. THE. END. IS. FOR. REAL.”
—Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad
“Redemption, transformation — god how she wanted these things. Every day, every minute. Didn’t everyone?”
Nick Hornby, Songbook
Super interesting. Chronic pain not only is stressful, but actually changes the shape of the brain, changing the way the body processes pain. Morphine can not only relieve chronic brain, but help to reverse these brain changes.
“Because suddenly he is articulate. Suddenly he is not just sitting there going glub glub glub while examining a piece of his own feces on his own thumb, which is something we recently found our Billy doing. Sometimes we have felt that our childless friends think badly of us for having a kid who just goes glub glub glub in the corner while looking at his feces on his thumb. But now when childless friends are over, what we have found, Ann and I, is that there is something great about having your kid say something witty and self-possessed years before he or she would actually in reality be able to say something witty or self-possessed. The bottom line is, it’s just fun, when you and your childless friends are playing cards, and your baby suddenly blurts out (in his very own probable future voice): ‘It is very possible that we still don’t fully understand the import of all of Einstein’s findings!’”
“When I think back, I’m always kind of amazed that I didn’t see earlier that it was what I wanted to do. Or maybe I saw it and it scared me.”
