Green Girl Quotes

“Sometimes she narrates her actions inside her head in third-person. Does that make her a writer or a woman?”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“What does she want to be? A green girl doesn't like to consider this question. She is waiting around to be discovered just for being herself.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“Ruth loved color so much she rarely wore any. Except on her face.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“Sometimes she is struck by how much she goes through life almost unconsciously. She is being swept along. She is a pale ghost.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“The green girl necessarily pines for the past, because the present is too uncomfortable to be present in and the future, unimaginable. The need to long, to desire that which she cannot have, that which has eluded her, because she deceives herself that it was this person, this chance, where she would have found happiness.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“What is it with young women and exclamation points and smiley faces! So afraid of appearing somber, always wanting to appear light and happy and sparkling, even when they are dying inside. Not ever being able to escape the mask that smiles. She wants to write, really write someday. But she is not fully formed. So she does not write. Not really. Unless attempting to live is a form of attempting to write. The agony of becoming. This is what she experiences. The young girl. She would like to be someone, anyone else. She wants, vaguely, to be something more than she is. But she does not know what that is, or how one goes about doing such a thing.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“We live in such fear of puncturing the moment, of forgetting our lines.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“Sometimes she forces herself under water. She pretends she’s dead. She pretends she has drowned. She is Millais’ Ophelia floating down a stream, clutching flowers. The painting hangs in the Tate Britain.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“The passivity of the green girl masquerades as politeness”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“What is it with young women and exclamation points and smiley faces! So afraid of appearing somber, always wanting to appear light and happy and sparkling, even when they are dying inside. Not ever being able to escape the mask that smiles.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“Agnes always wanted to go out. Out was better than in. In was inside, in was interior, in was introspection.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“The most important part of an introduction always occurs in one's absence.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“It is again the season for a woman with a strong identity, the magazine tells Ruth. Could she, did she have it in her to update her visual sense of herself?”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“She couldn’t remember how to talk, how to socialize outside of her head.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“She wants to write, really write someday. But she is not fully formed. So she does not write. Not really. Unless attempting to live is a form of attempting to write.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“Sometimes walking down the street she sends out signals of distress.

Look at me
(don’t look at me)
Look at me
(don’t look at me)
Look at me don’t look at me look at me look at me don’t look at me don’t look
(Look)
(Don’t look)
I can’t stand it if you don’t look
Look
Look
Please
Stop”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“Ruth's days off always oppress her. The realm of choice paralyzes her. To sleep is to choose neither life nor death.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“She prays to be preyed upon. She is a deer standing in the middle of the forest road, knees buckling, begging for a predator.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“I want to go to a church she thinks. I want to sit in a church and let the white light bathe me. It doesn’t matter what church, what religion. It would be best if I did not understand the mumbling pleas directed up high. I want to go to a church and direct my eyes up high and open my arms open my arms up to the ceiling.
And scream. And scream. And scream.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“She fingers her tiny stub of a ponytail. Oh, to shave it off to shave it all off. To be reborn. To be wiped clean.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“The noises oh the noise. The noise makes one forget oneself. The noise so thick it can tear away at one’s identity.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“She is curious to see what will happen, a gaper’s block of self. She is the voyeur of herself. She is willing, a willing victim. If not wanting then willing although she is wanting she has a hole a void and perhaps he has what she needs to fill it.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“And here she is. That is how Ruth approached so much of her life—and here she is. She finds herself in situations. She could leave. She couldn’t leave. She wouldn’t know how to leave. She is frozen to the spot. She is also curious to see what is going to happen in this film of her life.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“Do you ever get the feeling a camera is following you around at all times? She brings her face up close to Ruth. Her teeth are stained gray from the wine. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, me too.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“She craves her own stand-in, posted politely on her glass window: “The Part of Ruth for the next few days will be played by [fill in the blank]”. That’s what she needs. She needs her blank to be filled in. It all began to blur into the same train ride home. Doors closing. Mind the gap. The gap between who she was and who everyone thought her to be. The gap between the past and now, between her fiction and her reality.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“She is such a pretty girl. Such a pretty girl. Everyone showers compliments on the pretty girl. She really has a delightful, dreamy quality to her.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“She is not political. She is not political yet. She is halting, she is silent, she is unsure. She has not formed any opinions that are her own. Sometimes she hears someone else’s opinion, someone more forceful than herself (which is almost anyone) and she says that’s good for me too. So malleable she changes identities easily. How else does one figure out who one is? She has flashes of who she could be someday. She speaks in advertising jingles and silly catchphrases and slang. I am not really into politics she would say. She is self-involved. She is volunteering for her own Party of One. The Me Party. Campaigning under the Woe Is Me ticket. My seductive little solipsist. Does she know there is a war going on? Is there a war going on? Turning on the television I thought there was a sale going on, and a season finale, and some celebrities getting a divorce. She knows there is a war waging inside of her. Yet she doesn’t know who is winning. She did not vote in the last presidential election. I can’t believe it either, but there you are. She is the apathetic youth we always read about. They are silent when not texting away on fancy mobiles or talking on their cell phones about their new game console.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“The car stops in darkness. She is in the corner in the back, pressed against the glass door. The train thick with passengers. Rows and rows. Bodies, bodies, more bodies. Her face grows hot. People pushing her, pressing up against her. She feels herself swaying, swaying. I am going to be sick, she thinks. But she steels herself.

She closes her eyes and tries to die inside.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“Agnes (as if in consolation): You know who you remind me of?

Ruth: No, who?

This is a favorite game that green girls play.”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl

“Moments ago she was on her stomach distractedly rubbing herself against the mattress. When she masturbates the face she usually conjures up first is her own. In her fantasies she is beautiful, more beautiful than what youth naturally lends her. But not only is she beautiful, in her fantasies she is beautiful through another’s eyes. Her fantasies are of being witnessed, of being watched. By HIM, the one she must banish from her thoughts but that she allows to star in these fairytales. She can feel his gaze upon her. But today she tries not to think about HIM, she thinks about Olly, with HIS face, or maybe the reverse, trying not to think about HIM so making HIM look like Olly….It wasn’t working. The only way she could get off, could ride herself to ecstasy dry humping herself on her bed was to resurrect the past starring HIM her episodic Lazarus, peeling off the Olly mask, yes it was HIM, HIM, HIM, gazing at her face like it was composed of stained glass, she allowed herself to remember his face, just one last time, but she was having trouble recalling it exactly. And if she remembered his face, if she could only remember his face…”
― Kate Zambreno, Green Girl