Black Swans: Stories

by Eve Babitz

It’s only temporary: you either die, or get better. —Something we used to say about life in general, feeling sophisticated and amusing in bars, back in the days when we thought how you behaved was the fault of other people.

The thing about jealousy that makes it so confusing is that it throws us out of civilization and beyond the bonds of humanity and allows us to believe that crimes like suicide and murder and spying are necessary.

Sometimes I think that jealousy, like skiing, is only for those with enough youthful stamina and energy to endure it. As people get older, they finally give jealousy up, or at least they put it off for as long as possible until there’s such incontrovertible evidence

Extreme weariness can make you rise above a lot of things that youthful exuberance would have tossed one into headlong, like shooting the rapids over Niagara Falls.

Anything difficult, as far as I’ve been able to determine, seems to work, and anything easy is just kidding yourself.

There’s one thing about being in a bad relationship for longer than you should just for sex: when you get out, all you can think about is sex, and my advice to you is—for great sex, get a vibrator (or do it yourself), and remember how fabulous it was; don’t go trying to get the person back, or you’ll wind up a skull in the desert outside the Bagdad Cafe.

But the trouble with life is, just when you think you’re having a happy ending, things are changing, because there are no endings except death.

“I feel like I’ve been doing the right thing for so long, if I don’t—I don’t know—do something pretty soon, something stupid, I’m not going to make it.”

Especially the kind of love we used to feel when we were young, the kind we wish we could feel again for someone new.

Before I got sober, I never really looked at anyone’s eyes, but I find myself looking at people’s eyes a lot more, just for the eye contact, which to me is such a rush, it’s like other people say they feel from gambling.

you’re being sacrificed for the good of the group, by others, and are more victimized than if you stand in line buying the herbs yourself.