I cannot write any sort of story unless there is at least one character in it for whom I have physical desire.
The last we heard of him was a picture postcard from Mazatlan, on the Pacific coast of Mexico, containing a message of two words: “Hello – Goodbye!” and no address.
BLANCHE: You see I still have that awful vanity about my looks even now that my looks are slipping!
I stayed and fought for it, bled for it, almost died for it.
I felt a great depression, probably because I never believed that anything would continue, would hold. I never thought my advance would maintain its ground. I always thought there would be a collapse immediately after the advance.
You were a wonderful lover... Such a wonderful person to go to bed with, and I think mostly because you were really indifferent to it.
And in the spring, it’s touching to notice them making their first discovery of love! As if nobody had ever known it before!
To be not alone, even for a few moments, is worth the pain and the danger.
But I think people always die alone... with or without relations.
Oh, I suppose I am sick, one of those weak and divided people who slip like shadows among you solid strong ones. But sometimes, out of necessity, we shadowy people take on a strength of our own.
Ignorance of mortality is a comfort.
You know, then, that the public Somebody you are when you “have a name” is a fiction created with mirrors and that the only somebody worth being is the solitary and unseen you that existed from your first breath and which is the sum of your actions and so is constantly in a state of becoming under your own volition – and knowing these things, you can even survive the catastrophe of Success!
The girl who said ‘no’ – she doesn’t exist anymore, she died last summer – suffocated in smoke from something on fire inside her.
Life has got to go on. No matter what happens, you’ve got to keep on going.
I cannot imagine any witch of a woman casting a spell over you.
You were a wonderful lover... Such a wonderful person to go to bed with, and I think mostly because you were really indifferent to it. Isn’t that right? Never had any anxiety about it, did it naturally, easily, slowly, with absolute confidence and perfect calm, more like opening a door for a lady or seating her at a table than giving expression to any longing for her. Your indifference made you wonderful at lovemaking – strange? – but true...
I never was hard or sell-sufficient enough. When people are soft – soft people have got to shimmer and glow – they’ve got to put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and put a – paper lantern over the light... It isn’t enough to be soft. You’ve got to be soft and attractive. And I – I’m fading now! I don’t know how much longer I can turn the trick.
I wish that you were my sister. I’d teach you to have some confidence in yourself. The different people are not like other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of. Because other people are not such wonderful people. They’re one hundred times one thousand. You’re one times one! They walk all over the earth. You just stay here. They’re common as – weeds, – but – you,- well – you’re – Blue Roses!
I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains – than go back mornings! I go! Every time you come in yelling that Goddamn “Rise and Shine!” “Rise and Shine!” I say to myself, “How lucky dead people are!
Why didn’t it happen between us? Why did I fail? Why did you come close enough... and not closer?
Read. Read a lot. Go home. Be quiet. Write. Write some more. It will soon be discovered if you are a writer.