Biography of X

by Catherine Lacey

later I wondered if I found it easy to speak to him because he was so accustomed to speaking to children, in safe and neutered tones.

though being changed by a person is far more dangerous than simply loving them.

But he didn’t know me anymore, as the trouble with knowing people is how the target keeps moving.

people will say the most heinous things when they’re trying to justify their own failures and madness.

time after, believed her to be an oracle, almost inhuman. Now it is so clear to me that love is the opposite of deification, that it erodes persona down to its mortal root. She was always human, difficult as it was for me to admit that; I made so much trouble for myself by refusing to see it.

I was still romanced by grief, and stupidly hopeful that reconstructing her life might resurrect her,

one cannot make a bed while still tangled in its sheets.

No one wants to believe that they are, at heart, more interested in comfort than in truth.

‘Beware of anything that you hear yourself saying too often.’

It seems that the more she loved someone, the more pain she wanted to dredge up, the more demanding she became, no matter the cost, no matter the damage.

“People do cling to consciousness, and under the most dreadful circumstances. It shows you that it is all we have, doesn’t it? Waking up, the first and the last privilege, waking up once more.”

Everything blurs when held too near.

There are some times in grief when being witnessed is the only thing you need, and there are others, months and years in my case, when nothing suits but invisibility.

Literature isn’t written by the content. Why would I suffer to write when reading is so much more pleasurable?”

I have broken every rule I ever set for myself. And now I am busy, so busy, day and night, ruining my life.

Nothing makes a person less comprehensible to others than being in love.

pop music was simply too confident, that it was “the sound of only thinking one thought at a time.”

It was a clear confession—not wanting to be sad, as we often fail to hide ourselves in secondary languages.

‘You have to know what you’re leaving out in order for it not to be there. Otherwise, it’s not an absence, it’s just nothing.’

It is better to cut than to tear

“Il vaut mieux couper que déchirer.

Reverence kaleidoscopes the ordinary into the magnificent

“I can’t understand why I made this trip, except in the hope that there is something good in being so unhappy—as if I might use up my large portion of unhappiness + have only joy left.”

Most personal matters will reach an emotional conclusion once enough time has elapsed, and yet in this case, time has revealed nothing to me. I still have the bruise.”

Relief is often a stronger and more layered pleasure than happiness,