Immaculate Conception Quotes

“People respond to jealousy in so many different ways. Some people use it as fuel or ammunition. They get more competitive, and they can become very successful with the engine that jealousy gives them. Others aren’t so lucky, and they get mired in pettiness and toxicity. These are often people who feel a good amount of entitlement. There are also those who can’t handle it at all. They withdraw slowly, depressed, unwilling or unable to find a space for themselves. In actuality, there is room for everyone, but the market benefits from an illusion of scarcity.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“Everyone is jealous, but they find a way through it. Not you. You nursed your envy. Used it to punish yourself. I saw how that toxicity bled into our relationship and made it one of comparison. And because you placed me so high, you could necessarily only be low and constantly wanting. Desperate enough to betray me again and again.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“What's so bad about derivation? Isn't everything derived? We just usually call it "in conversation with". Is it even possible to really copy someone? If someone tried their hardest to mimic another person, their unique life experiences and skills would still yield completely different results.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“If our lives were to be defined by inaccessibility, we could recontextualize that definition as a choice. A distaste for the interests of those who could afford to have interests. Art, which had never been truly democratic to begin with, was now an
unattainable interest.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“What an unbelievable scam it is to get everything you've been told to want.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“artists create works of art; geniuses curate an emotional response.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“This observer flits through and between these images and sees that the Enka recorded in this mind is at odds with the one Enka knows herself to be. This Enka is wise, powerful, and calm. This Enka is intelligent, thoughtful, and wildly creative. And where Enka has always thought of Mathilde as a bird at great height, soaring ever farther away from her, the observer now sees that Mathilde believes Enka to be just as mysterious. A sunk stone in the depths of the ocean that she longs to uncover, holding her breath longer to dive deeper each time.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“The public needs to be shocked and reminded of their own feelings, which everything else in the world seeks to numb. Whatever the purpose of art is, it isn’t to be original for originality’s sake.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“My screen, that shiny black pool I longed to escape into again and again, even though it filled my mind with the black bile of jealousy and bitterness. The shrinkage. The side-by-side comparison. There was a cultural obsession with the possibility of multiverses, but to me, social media was proof enough of their existence. With a flick of a finger, you could see every life you could have had if only you’d been born smarter or luckier, or made better choices.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“If jealousy was like a well, I’d never reached the bottom, hadn’t realized the well was a tunnel to the mother of envy, which is awe.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“I would choose her over any world or life where she didn’t exist.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“The internet stopped being a place to connect with others or to exchange knowledge, and became a way to perform belonging in the world you had inherited.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“Or maybe I was just so insecure that anyone with a strong sense of identity could destabilise me”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“I had truly believed that if you worked hard enough, with enough creativity and dedication, it was possible to make your way to a greener pasture where everyone made pieces from a place of love and introspection. I had believed that good art prevails. Events like these remind me of money’s total power to control and leech the substance out of everything. Sure, you can be a star in this world, as long as you keep your patrons interested and are willing to compromise everything to make them more money. Not too many women can succeed at one time…just enough to make the rest of us hungry, to believe it’s possible.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“The paranoia and processing eventually give way to something else: relief that someone knows the whole awful truth. Relief at finally owning every terrible thing I’ve done. And if she knows the worst of me, she must also know the best. She must know with certainty the love I’ve always had for her. But what good is a love like mine? I used my love again and again as an excuse, as absolution for the sins I committed against her. How much better would her life have been if I had hated her, or at least been indifferent? Whether or not she meant it to be, her presence becomes guidance, and shows me the only way forward.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“I’m repulsed by his display, yet jealous that he’s able to feel so deeply and so publicly. I’ve always wondered if my aversion to this kind of performance is why I’ve never been a good enough artist. I hold back, possessed by self-consciousness, which erects a barrier between me and my audience. But when have women been allowed to be hysterical? Especially in public?”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“Do you really believe there’s space for everyone?”
“I do. Maybe not in the market or in the industry. But I believe that every person is capable of art that meaningfully connects with others in the world.”
“I’ve always felt that I wasn’t as gifted as other people.”
“Ah-ah. Like I always say in my first lecture to every new class, there is no gifted. Only the gift of being fully oneself, and expressing oneself to the utmost.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“My body remembers the snaking circular structures before my mind does, before I remember those drawings I saw years ago. The words come to me last. This part of my life is just for me.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“I understood that if I wanted to ascend in this world, I would have pull myself out of a warm, unrelenting sludge that perpetually sucked me down.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“but to me, social media was proof enough of their existence. With a flick of a finger, you could see every life you could have had if only you’d been born smarter or luckier, or made better choices. The”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception

“Not only was upward mobility impossible, but swimming in place wasn't even an option.”
― Ling Ling Huang, Immaculate Conception