The Circus Rose Quotes

“If you study something for one year, all you find out is how many things you don't know.”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Circus Rose

“And no memory is ever quite as you left it, no matter how carefully you lay it away.”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Circus Rose

“The dancing boys flip that deep-down knowledge neatly on its head in their first moment of performance. Men see bodies like their own offered up for the pleasure of . . . well, everyone. Anyone at all who has an appetite. Then they maybe start to sense a hunger of a different kind than they’ve let themselves feel before. And the women, even the married ones, are too often like I was that hot dusty day when I first saw the boys leave the tent—they’re waking up for the first time to the fact that, their whole lives through, they’ve been starving.”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Circus Rose

“That’s part of what I hated about performing, even as a child. The look on the faces of certain people—certain men—in the audience that you can’t describe in any other way than hungry. It’s what most of the more risqué circus acts have in common, something that undercuts every show and that everybody knows, but they know it so deep that they don’t think it’s even worth talking about. Women perform to make men hungry. Men watch to eat.”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Circus Rose

“The princess shows
me a story. A tale,
like something out of time,

so long ago
it might be yet to come.”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Circus Rose

“Women perform to make men hungry.

Men watch to eat.

The dancing boys flip that deep-down knowledge neatly on its head in their first moment of performance. Men see bodies like their own offered up for the pleasure of...well, everyone. Anyone at all who has an appetite. Then they maybe start to sense a hunger of a different kind than they've let themselves feel before.

And the women, even the married ones, are too often like I was that hot dusty day when I first saw the boys leave the tent—they're waking up for the first time to the fact that, their whole lives through, they've been starving.”
― Betsy Cornwell, The Circus Rose