Black Swans: Stories

by Eve Babitz

Sometimes I think that jealousy, like skiing, is only for those with enough youthful stamina and energy to endure it.

things like jealous obsession, if you don’t give in to them, if you try not to give in to them and succeed even a little bit, well, sooner or later you begin succeeding more and more, and what takes their place is self-esteem.

what is there to say to someone younger than you who marries for money, except “How do you like your money?”

We live in a world where whoever sedates us with the most glamour and captures our imaginations with the greatest intensity becomes history.

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’ve always noticed that once you let your looks take over your life, you’re going to spend all the livelong day talking about being too fat, having the wrong hair, and otherwise reducing yourself to the most sluglike common denominator

after a few years, I realized that maybe I wasn’t the inspiration I felt people ought to notice I’d become.

the thing to do was to be a black swan myself. Stick to my own kind—freakish, beautiful outsiders. Become art, not decoration