Soft Core Quotes

“Show me a lifestyle that feels good all the time, I wanted to shout. Prove to me that your lifestyle is insured against longing. Show me a pie chart, a breakdown of breakdowns, the data on anguish.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core: A Novel

“All I know, in fact, is this: Men are dying to be let in on the secret pleasures of girlhood. They feel cheated out of ease and glamour, friend-kisses and hushed gossip.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core

“I carried a broken heart in my purse like a taser; I'd been doing it for so long I forgot it was weird. And yet, on the surface, my life seemed normal. She couldn't sense my decline, my divorce from reality.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core: A Novel

“bildungsroman”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core

“After a while, I had to repent: I was wrong about men. They too liked to be safe and warm. They had blankets and nicknames, candy stashes in their desks. The line cook kept his lava lamp on because he was scared of the dark.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core

“all other times I was fond of my body like you’d be fond of a favorite mug—I liked it enough to use it every day but not enough to talk about it.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core

“Mazzy put it best. We were holed up at the Geary Club one weekday evening, drinking martinis. Mazzy was stalking her current lover’s ex-girlfriend online, a self-professed yoga priestess named Clementine. Ugh! she shrieked, throwing her phone on the table. I can’t believe this basic bitch and I have a dick in common!”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core

“This is a memory I cherish. I carry it with me like a pocketknife. I carry it with me like a postcard that I need to send but I don’t have any stamps.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core

“Damn, Ruth, she said. I’m so glad I’m not in love with you. I choked on my soda, surprised. Why? She started to laugh. You know why! No, I said, I don’t. You don’t believe in happy endings. I raised my eyebrows. Come on, she said. You know what I mean. She swallowed, hesitating just a bit. What happened to your mom won’t necessarily happen to you, you know. Are you saying I have Daddy issues? Her cheeks pinked. Well … I don’t have Daddy issues, Maz. I slapped my thigh for emphasis. I just have issues with everyone else. There was a long, dense pause before we burst into laughter. Fuck, I moaned, I can’t believe I just said that. I want that on a T-shirt! Mazzy laughed so hard she zigzagged down the residential street, upsetting the bins left out for garbage day.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core

“Good, he said. Good. Sophia just graduated. Dual major from Vassar, art history and English. Still dancing, as always. Oh. Of course that was the daughter’s name. I pictured her in her dorm room: fairy lights, bunny slippers. Her long blond arms coated in an anorexic fuzz. The dining-hall mugs she washed out in the shower. She didn’t yet know about longing, the shapes it made your body take. Only poverty could teach her, be it material or romantic. I smiled at Charlie; he smiled back.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core

“I thought often of the girl who lived down the street. She only ate apples and wore long sleeves in the summer to hide the scars on her arms. Her sadness felt sharp, driven, surgical, whereas my mother's was smeary, matted, willy-nilly, something she'd dragged home one night. It had none of the neighbor girl's perverse clarity.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core: A Novel

“As an ex-slut, his comment gave me pause. Had I been bettering myself during my ho era? Not decreasing my value but stockpiling experience? This thought made me feel tenderly towards my younger self, that skittish girl beholden to her appetites, chasing many smidge of warmth. Men's bodies were the best blankets. It seemed smarter, in the long run, to have more warmth than less, to hoard this animal currency that never went out of style.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core: A Novel

“The electric days had come and gone, that period of grace and squalor.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core

“Kate Bush on the stereo, Cocteau Twins, Slowdive, anything swoopy and round with girls’ screams. How time felt like a pack of cards, shuffled in that Vegas way. The hours swooped and gooped around us like fallen ice-cream cones. We kissed and became millionaires. I rearranged my teeth to speak: You are my Lotto ticket. A stick of incense burns forever, stuck into an orange.”
― Brittany Newell, Soft Core