Lucía’s Reviews > Writers & Lovers > Status Update

She seems active and zestful, the way people who die young always do, as if they were given an extra dose of energy and passion for life, as if they knew they had less time to spend it. Or maybe it’s just the way we see their photos afterward, when any life we still find in them feels exaggerated.

Nearly every guy I’ve dated believed they should already be famous, believed that greatness was their destiny and they were already behind schedule. (...) I thought I was just choosing delusional men. Now I understand it’s how boys are raised to think, how they are lured into adulthood. I’ve met ambitious women, driven women, but no woman has ever told me that greatness was her destiny.

I’m done with the seesaw, the hot and cold, the guys who don’t know or can’t tell you what they want. I’m done with kissing that melts your bones followed by ten days of silence followed by a fucking pat on the arm at the T stop.

It always takes me by surprise when someone wants to kiss me, even if they’ve met me at midnight with wine and a blanket. People change their mind. Between the idea and the reality falls the Shadow.

Between the idea and the reality
Between the motion and the act
Falls the Shadow
Eliot

Our dates are not self-conscious like that. We don’t acknowledge that they’re happening or say what they mean.

a good story is both an allegory and a slice of life
Kay Boyle

There’s a madness to beauty when you stumble on it like that.

I think of all the people playing roles, getting further and further away from themselves, from what moves them, what stirs them all up inside.

A novel is a long story with something wrong with it