eimi > eimi's Quotes

“If it grieves you,” he said, the words caressing my bones, “then I don’t think it’s absurd at all.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“He purred, the sound rumbling through my fingers, arms, legs, and core.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“For some, the distance between deciding and doing is a wide gulf. I’m fortunate not to be one of those people.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Human will is a particularly powerful magic. Alchemy happens when a person truly decides something; when a mind is changed.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Exchanges that had cut and left me bleeding, with my best stuff—confidence, clarity—pooling down, away from me, onto the floor. But not that night. No. Because that day I had decided to reclaim my might; to cease to be shrunk. And in my decision, I’d grown a new version of myself. My new skin thick like coconut shells, impervious to his attempts to crack my joy.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Men, I said, can talk about anything. Anywhere. Why must they opine about us in a gallery for women?”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“They were congratulating me on the show, commenting on how Third World art was really having a “moment.” “Yes,” I’d replied, “but don’t you think a permanent place would be better than a passing measure of time?”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“How do you think the softness of women’s work helps to reinforce the linearity of men’s art practices?” Who the fuck said women’s art existed to do or say anything about male art practices?”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Pero coño, here’s the thing: I don’t want to talk to you about Cuba. Because what do you know of it? Of the joy and horror of arriving at the place you’d counted on to answer all the nagging questions of your soul, only to find more questions?”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“To get to the destination your inner compass has been driving you back to, screaming to you was home, only to discover that you didn’t really belong?”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“I was disgusted with myself for trying so hard. Felt a need—an urge really—to make amends. To prostrate myself, in some way, for having gone to such pains to become one with a place that rejected me over and over and over again.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“So, Marcus was right that Nick had, slowly, one grievance or incident at a time, caused a shift in how she prioritized her time, but not because she ceased to care about the things that mattered to her before. It was that Nick made it intensely difficult to not put him first.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“It was his talking with Ingrid that night—before it happened—that set Anita off in the first place.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Honestly, even the terrible thing that happened, when he thought about it, only happened because of her work.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Why had it even occurred to this woman to compare the two of them? Just because they were both Latina?”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“That he thought he could do something so dramatic—so violating—and get away with it; presume her to be grateful for it, even—was only possible because he had told her, in ways great and small, that he knew best and she had signaled that he was correct.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“And that revelation sparked one that was even more painful: the reason that Raquel subconsciously believed that Nick knew “better” than her was that it was Nick’s point of view that had been affirmed and internalized by the white walls of every museum or gallery they had ever been told was worth looking at.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Not herself before the haircut, or before Nick, but a version that existed long before that, even. Raquel before she even got here. One that had not suffered a bruised ego and feelings of deficiency and a debilitating sense of anxiety. One who was not terrified of getting something wrong or missing a step or who held, even loosely, the axiom that she was undeserving”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“you have good intuition, but too often you lead with your brain and not your gut. You’ve let your confidence be shaken by people who don’t deserve to shake your confidence. You’ve swallowed this idea that there’s some people whose approval or validation will fill you, but in the process you’ve lost your ability to validate yourself. To feel that that’s enough. You elevate the position of others by allowing them to use your back as a step, but then are blind to people around you who see your worth. You feel lonely because you have blinders on, not because you are unloved.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“The truth is, I just really get it. You fall for someone, you get so into them your whole world shrinks, and suddenly you barely have a life besides them.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“They went on about how they really do believe in marrying for security, and how Margot’s father was way too conservative to ever accept her wanting to be with a woman, even if it was Claire. And I told them how they needed to stop being so juvenile and own who they were—” “That’s a bit harsh,” Raquel said. “My mother is a grown woman with adult children and she still has a hard time calling her girlfriend her girlfriend.” “Your mother is gay?” Mavette said. “So progressive.” “Just who she is,” Raquel said. “Also, she works in the lunchroom at the Met, not as a curator. Just to clarify.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Be angry at the system, Raquel,” Belinda had told her that day, “and then see how you can fix it. I’ve been very hell-bent on showcasing emerging artists from underseen backgrounds, but I’ve not paid enough attention to connecting the dots. To correcting this lie that you were taught and that I was taught: that art started with some white guys in ancient Greece and was passed on and made better and better exclusively at the hands of white men.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“And we would yell and not speak for days and what the fuck is wrong with conflict sometimes? It makes your brain better!! It makes you fight harder, it makes you more convinced in what you believe and who you are!”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“No, when I looked in his eyes, what I saw was the most dangerous thing of all in a man: insecurity. Because they will crawl over and push down anyone around them in their desperate thrashing to find themselves comfortably affirmed at the top.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“She was just drunk when she said it.” “She’s a fucking racist.” “My mother loves you!” “And that means she isn’t a bigot?” she said.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“You keep talking about building a life together. I don’t want a life with someone who isn’t bothered by that. I don’t want someone who doesn’t care that a woman was murdered by her husband and everyone looked the other way so they could keep making money off of him. So that they could keep their fake fucking world in place.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Eventually, she would lie there and remember there was more to her life than Nick. That missing was normal, that missing was part of the process. That missing, as her mother had reminded her, did not mean mistake.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Jealousy is constantly comparing myself to her and coming up short; is panicking that I’m not writing well enough or fast enough, that I am not, and never will be, enough.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“I don’t feel the same black, suffocating loss I did when my father died. I don’t struggle to breathe. I don’t lie awake in the mornings debating whether it’s worth crawling out of bed. I don’t resent every stranger I encounter, wondering how they can keep moving around the world as if it hasn’t stopped turning.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

“I felt, as Kanye put it, harder, better, faster, and stronger. I felt like the kind of person who now listened to Kanye.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface