Idlewild Quotes

“What we mean to say, but what Ms Spider is not equipped to understand, is that Iago is gay in the way that all the best fictional murderers are gay. Norman Bates, Tom Ripely, The titular Third Man, and he was the original. Iago is gay like a black leather whip. Like Paris in the 1920s. Like calling non-food things “delicious.” Iago is gay like cold eyes and bony hips. Like a pearl-handled pistol tucked in one’s suit pocket. Like delicate fingers that could play a Chopin prelude or crush a throat with equal grace. Iago is gay in the way that we, the F&M unit, aspired to be gay. But it’s harder for girls.”
― James Frankie Thomas, Idlewild

“If I couldn’t manifest homosexuality in myself, I would instead locate it everywhere else. If Nell and I couldn’t be gay together, we could—we would, we did—create for ourselves a separate world in which gayness was ambient and immanent and unrelated to us.”
― James Frankie Thomas, Idlewild

“Iago is gay like a black leather whip, like Paris in the 1920s, like calling non-food things delicious. Iago is gay like cold eyes and bony hips, like a pearl-handled pistol tucked in one’s suit pocket, like delicate fingers that could play a Chopin prelude or crush a throat with equal grace. Iago is gay in the way that we the F&N unit aspire to be gay, but it’s harder for girls.”
― James Frankie Thomas, Idlewild

“regret who I was back then. At the same time, I don’t know if I’ll ever be happy in the same way again. And I don’t know what to do with that.”
― James Frankie Thomas, Idlewild

“That’s what bothers me most: I knew what was right, and I chose wrong anyway.”
― James Frankie Thomas, Idlewild

“I loved her as I loved myself—uneasily, protectively, sometimes not at all—but perhaps I didn’t know her.”
― James Frankie Thomas, Idlewild

“Eddie declared that “as people of fat-kid experience,” we’re allowed to be smug when skinny girls join our ranks.”
― James Frankie Thomas, Idlewild

“Brown, Oberlin, Occidental, Brandeis, Lewis & Clark, Emerson, Skid-more, and Smith,” said Nell. “Occidental and Lewis & Clark would be my safeties.” She paused, as if steeling her nerves.”
― James Frankie Thomas, Idlewild

“If heaven would make me such another world / Of one entire and perfect chrysolite, / I’d not have sold her for it.”
― James Frankie Thomas, Idlewild

“I raised my eyebrows. “Playdates, you say?” Back then I often spoke in sexual innuendo. It was an act of aggression, intended to throw people off-balance so that I could win the interaction, if you counted terminating it as winning it, which I did.”
― James Frankie Thomas, Idlewild