Valencia Quotes

“She didn’t know that my heart was a sandstorm waiting to open her skin in a desert of cuts. She didn’t know the animal that waited in my stomach, silently shredding the walls. For her, my heart wore small white shoes and carried a purse, went to bed early. I wanted to shoot myself into her arms so she understood the need to crash cars with me, to tear up pavement because we were beautiful.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“Gwynn, she was always talking about wanting to be drunk and honestly I did want to encourage that, I wanted to go to a bar with her and let all the stuff sobriety pushed down be released so I could catch it in my palms and finally kiss her. She was just so sad. Melancholy was a fleshy wave permanently cresting on her face, she had to speak through it when she talked.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“She broke my heart, so now I have to write about her forever. It made everything different. It's something that can only happen once.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“She wouldn't have sex with me in public bathrooms. Little things like this haunted me. I was only twenty-five.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“The worst thing about depression is how true your vision seems, like misery is the only correct perspective and everything you think when you’re happy is a sham. I didn’t even want to be happy anymore because I’d rather live in honest misery than fake bliss. I”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“So I kept talking because nothing gets me going like knowing I should shut up. Oh, I should be quiet and full of potential like all those still flowers, but I know I am a weed and I've got to blow my seeds around the garden.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“Why were we tortured? We were in love and life was a fast current swarming around our ankles, threatening to topple us into the wet part of the planet. It was intense, that's why we were tortured. It was enormous and exploding like palm tree. Iris was my Yuri-G, my Delilah, my Stella Marie. Strong dark women you had to love with a strong dark heart that throbbed in gorgeous pain because love is terrible. I mean, ultimately. It would go away like a needle lifting from the vinyl at the end of the song, we knew this. The music would cease, one of us would die or else we'd just break up, and this drove us to drink from each other like two twelve-year-olds sneaking vodka from the liquor cabinet, trying to get it all down, trying to get as fucked up as possible before we got caught.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“I knew what I stood for, even if nobody else did. I knew the piece of me on the inside, truer than all the rest, that never comes out. Doesn't everyone have one? Some kind of grand inner princess waiting to toss her hair down, forever waiting at the tower window. Some jungle animal so noble and fierce you had to crawl on your belly through dangerous grasses to get a glimpse.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“I felt pure the way you feel after you vomit, kind of light and strangely holy, like having taken a sauna in hell.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“To have someone know you so thoroughly and not want you. Is there anything more painful?”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“This mouth had kissed me so much it had worn its own grooves into my teeth. It was like settling into the armchair that fit exactly the round of your body, only it was incredibly exciting because everything was different now, and it was horribly wrong to be kissing. It would only prolong everything. I sat there in the bus shelter, back up against the glass, hoping the bug would never come. Desperation is the sexiest emotion.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“I wanted her so badly, my heart hung out of my chest like some hound-dog's tongue, pant, pant.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“Our lives make awesome stories, especially if you don't get too attached to the thread of your own narrative.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“Melancholy was a fleshy wave permanently cresting on her face, she had to speak through it when she talked.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“The girls Iris went through wound up cracked vases no longer fit for flowers, leaky dust collectors. After Iris, girls left town or started fucking boys. She ruined everyone.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“I don't mind doing awful things as long as somebody else does. I would totally jump off the bridge, thanks for asking.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“I kissed her hand. My seduction technique is best filed under Obvious.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“She was just so sad. Her whole face hung with it, like sadness was her personal gravity.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“She was magnificent. She wasn't so much a person as an event, a gigantic presence.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“What confused thing had been created?”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“She didn’t want me. This was fear, this was the primal fear of abandonment, it was childhood, fear of death, the infinite void, fear of the unknown. This was not about me. That’s what killed me, worked me into a cold astrological bitch.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“So the crush withered and died the way things that aren't being fed usually do.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“The same, but different. I went somewhere she would never go and brought a loneliness back, and I would have to climb over it to reach her.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“So tortured about what? Why were we tortured? We were in love and life was a fast current swarming around our ankles, threatening to topple us into the wet part of the planet. It was intense, that's why we were tortured. It was enormous and exploding like that palm tree. Iris was my Yuri-G, my Delilah, my Stella Marie. Strong dark women you had to love with a strong dark heart the throbbed in gorgeous pain because love is terrible. I mean, ultimately. It would go away like a needle lifting from the vinyl at the end of the song, we knew this. The music would cease, one of us would die or else we'd just break up, and this drove us to drink from each other like two twelve-year-olds sneaking vodka from the liquor cabinet, trying to get it all down, trying to get as fucked up as possible before we got caught.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“I knew what I stood for, even if nobody else did. I knew the piece of me on the inside, truer than all the rest, that never comes out. Doesn't everyone have one? Some kind of grand inner princess waiting to toss her hair down, forever waiting at the tower window. Some jungle animal so noble and fierce you had to crawl on your belly through dangerous grasses to get a glimpse.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“I barely knew her at all. She was on hold, someone I'd be friends with when she got her shit together. And then she died.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“I had an awful time quitting jobs. It was so irresponsible, and being inherently irresponsible, I knew I had to be vigilant. So instead I would make them fire me. I have had girlfriends who employ this strategy in relationships, which is bad, but in regards to employment it is ok.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“No, I was not going to work. I was an artist, a lover, a lover of women, of the oppressed and downtrodden, a warrior really. I should have been somewhere leading an armed revolution in the name of love and no, I was not going to work.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“I was so sad that day. My heart was trying to climb from my body.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia

“This upscale Marin whorehouse allowed the men to come and pick from the lineup of women like we were donuts in a pastry case.”
― Michelle Tea, Valencia