Anita de Monte Laughs Last Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“My irritation began mounting as he and Arnold volleyed Leslie's unchallenging, simplistic questions. "Do you feel intimidated by women taking up more space in the art world?" What fucking space? I thought. We were given the corners men deemed too dark and dusty. "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 men's art practices?

"Leslie, this might be controversial to say here," Jack said, with the air of a provocateur, and I could feel the room -- the men, especially -- lean in toward him, eager to lap up the crap he was about to serve. "Because I admire what you've done. But should this gallery even exist?”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“You know,” she continued, “I used to feel so smart. Before I got here, you know? I would just blurt out opinions. I believed in what I was thinking. And now, I don’t know. If I don’t have fucking footnotes and firsthand sources and shit ready, I’m afraid to talk.”
― 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

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

“You’ve been so obsessed with ‘helping’ me and you actually have no idea how to help yourself.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“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

“Because you buried me! You threw me out a fucking window and then you buried me alive!”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“She was an artist too,” Raquel said, more to Astrid and Nick than anyone. “She was hardly anyone of consequence,” Mrs. Fitzsimmons said, rather firmly. “It’s not like he threw Frida Kahlo out a window.” “Jesus, Mom,” Nick said, “does it matter if she was good or not?” “Wait? What? He threw his wife out of a fucking window?” Astrid asked Raquel.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“And he looks at us like we’re there to clean his studio.”
― 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

“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

“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

“He needed to turn my pain into cocktail conversation.”
― 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

“It can feel so important to matter to someone who cares where your physical person is on this giant, wretched earth. To matter to another human being is the basis of having a life.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“we're all just here trying to get you to see your own light because it's strong enough to guide you.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“She realized that so much of what she thought was good art had simply been that which had been elevated by John Temple, because it was understood by and spoke to and created by men”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“We’re from different New Yorks, different campuses. Everything about us is different,” she said flatly. “Sorry to burst your bubble.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Why? Because at home everyone told us we were shit, and the only way we’d found to believe otherwise was to wrap ourselves in tiny moments of white validation.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Why not, Jack? You don’t love me. You don’t love these other women either. You don’t even love your art. But you love your fucking money and I’m going to love taking half of it.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last

“Catastrophe can be a course correction, you know?”
― 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

“For what it’s worth, those kinds of girls are always the worst,” Nick stated after they made a quick stop in a liquor store. “I’ve been in schools with them my whole life. Scratch the surface and there’s nothing but layer after layer of beige paint.”
― Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last