CJ

“Her friend - and her partner on the stage. You will not believe me, but making love to Kitty - a thing done in passion, but always, too, in shadow and silence, and with an ear half-cocked for the sound of footsteps on the stairs - making love to Kitty and posing at her side in a shaft of limelight, before a thousand pairs of eyes, to a script I knew by heart, in an attitude I had laboured for hours to perfect - these things were not so very different. A double act is always twice the act that the audience thinks it; beyond our songs, our steps, our bits of business with coins and canes and flowers, there was a private language, in which we held an endless, delicate exchange of which the crowd knew nothing. This was a language not of the tongue but of the body, its vocabulary the pressure of a finger or a palm, the nudging of a hip, the holding or breaking of a gaze, that said, You are too slow - you got too fast - not there but here - that's good - that's better! It was as if we walked before the crimson curtain, lay down upon the boards and kissed and fondled - and were clapped, and cheered, and paid for it!”
― Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet

“People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“The implication of this particular tale is: Trust strangers. Believe in magic.”
― Michael Cunningham, A Wild Swan: And Other Tales

“Sometimes the fabric that separates us tears just enough for love to shine through. Sometimes the tear is surprisingly small.”
― Michael Cunningham, A Wild Swan: And Other Tales