Julia > Recent Status Updates

(Describing a friend with expensive habits) and bought handmade earrings from Etsy

Over the ensuing months and years, I began to appreciate the elastic nature of his personality

No, he only noticed me in the years after, at events in the occasional intersection of our overlapping social circles. My own social capital had increased … since my student days. Money, even the relatively modest amount I’d amassed, had transformed me. My style, my mannerisms, my lightly affected City vernacular, all intrigued him. He could see the person I was constructing. And he sensed opportunity.

Last year, I bought the top floor of a Georgian conversion in up-and-coming area. The other two flats are each rented out by youngish, anxious couples […] The familiar rhythms of our stacked lives have become a kind of closeness.

Recommended by Nathalie Portman. No idea what it’s about, let’s see…

I don’t feel like saving mortals anymore. I don’t feel like saving anyone anymore. I feel like opening my eyes and taking in everything I can see whenever I get the chance. I feel like using the power the goddess gave me, I feel like spreading fear wherever I go, wherever Perseus goes. I feel like becoming the monster he made. I feel like that

He has climbed the rocks by air… or rather the sandals climbed the rocks. Perseus is panting from the exertion or more probably from fear. Nothing I have subsequently observed about Perseus has changed my original opinion of him. He is spineless

But what I want has no effect on what happens

Athene and Hermes teaching Perseus about the gorgons. Hilarious

Wonderful. Come on. If you do die I’ll put in a word for you to get a constellation, I promise.

How could her father be so afraid of death that he would refuse to live

Baby Medusa’s crying - and her sisters wondering whether it is the time she finally turned into a gorgon

Stheno and Euryale perplexed by baby Medusa changing (got used to carrying her - she started crawling. Got used to it - she started walking)

Stheno and Euryale perplexed by baby Medusa changing (got used to carrying her - she started crawling. Got used to it - she started walking)

So what do you want me to do, Stheno? Never try something sweet, just because it might go sour in the years to come? How is that a way to live?

If you have to contort yourself like your snakes to get him to really see you, if you have to chop parts of yourself off, or hide your heart and mind – your entire self – to attract him, then you will live your life like a pauper in a queen’s body

It felt strange to listen to a goddess being wrong

Some people in the village said I should be grateful for the attention. Not many gods deigned to give us mortals the time of day. But Poseidon didn’t give me the time of day, for Hades’ sake. He gave me nothing in return for what he took. He tried to make me lose myself.

I was mesmerised by the shield - as too, of course, was Daphne. This was even better than the sandals. She wanted it, I wanted it - all of us hiding behind the rock, snake or mortal, wanted it

Have you ever tasted sweet danger? It’s one of the best and worst delicacies, all at once. Best, because nothing - and I repeat, nothing - in life will taste as heady and particular and deceptively right, and just for you. Worst, because once you’ve tasted it, anything that comes after it will only be dull

That prophecy made him dance to the tune of his own fear

Stheno and Euryale

Was this what attraction felt like - this loss of control?

Perseus laughed, a sound to make cracks in my resolve, a sound even now to be found in my soul. So here was a boy who could laugh at himself. Rare

My creek of eels, my needy puppies; a head of fangs, excitable

The convention of burlesquing the main action was present in the satyr plays performed before serious dramas.

He’s been a French general, he’s been a Mongolian invader, he’s been a tycoon in America, he’s been a headhunter in Borneo. He’s been a film star, an inventor, an advertising man. It’s always ended badly, with a suicide or an accident or a death in battle or an assassination, and then he’s back here again.

Helen has had more than a few excursions. That’s what she calls them – ‘my little excursions’. ‘I’ve been having such fun,’ she’ll begin.Then she’ll detail her latest conquests and fill me in on the changes in fashion. It was through her that I learned about patches, and sunshades, and bustles, and high-heeled shoes, and girdles,and bikinis, and aerobic exercises, and body piercings,and liposuction

Judge: What’s going on? Order! Order! This is a twenty-first-century court of justice! You there, get down from the ceiling! Stop that barking and hissing! Madam, cover up your chest and put down your spear! What’s this cloud doing in here? Where are the police? Where’s the defendant? Where has everyone gone?

The two of us were – by our own admission – proficient and shameless liars of long standing. It’s a wonder either one of us believed a word the other said. But we did. Or so we told each other.