But as I would later learn, Soon-Yi was not just a diamond in the rough but round cut and flawless.
There I was at fifteen, on the hook, confronted by Matisse and Chagall, by Nolde, Kirchner, and Schmidt-Rotluff, by Guernica and the frantic wall-sized Jackson Pollock, by the Beckmann triptych and Louise Nevelson’s dark black sculpture.
So she sells her hair to buy him a watch fob and he sells his watch to buy combs for her hair. The moral I drew was you’re always safer giving cash.
Charmingly, she feigns interest in my spate of self-aggrandizing anecdotes in which I come off like Rhett Butler.
I was able to liberate Soon-Yi from a terrible situation and provide her with an opportunity to flower and realize her potential, and she would never have to eat a bar of soap or long for a hug or get hit with a phone again.
I don’t know what the hell I was thinking; I hated nature, and more than nature I hated being a car owner.
Like all mechanical objects, we were instantly archenemies.
As I gushed earlier, the movie of Streetcar is for me total artistic perfection.
To be loved, certainly, is different from being admired, as one can be admired from afar but to really love someone it is essential to be in the same room with the person, crouching behind the drapes.
I don’t like the idea of awards for artistic things. They’re not created for the purpose of competition; they’re made to fulfill an artistic itch and hopefully entertain. I’m not interested in any group’s pronunciamento as to which film is the best film of the year, or the best book, or the Most Valuable Player.
According to Monica, the nanny, she said, “I’ve got him.” The head on the lap would over time somehow metamorphosize into my molesting her in the attic, but that reenactment of Dory Previn’s song scenario would come later.
Dylan was no longer seven but a grown woman of thirty-plus. Mind you, I have not been allowed to see her, speak to her, or correspond with her for twenty-three years. Everything she has heard about me since barely turning seven has been taught to her by Mia.
It seems to me the only hope for mankind lies in magic. I have always hated reality, but it’s the only place you can get good chicken wings.
We eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner together almost every day. You’d think we’d have long run out of things to say, but as the weather changes all the time, we are never at a loss for conversation.
I am one who shares Saul Bellow’s estimate of Hemingway rather than John Updike’s. I could pick up any book of his and turn to any page and read and the poetry of his prose kills me.
They’re all gone. Truffaut, Resnais, Antonioni, De Sica, Kazan. At least Godard is still alive, but he always was a nonconformist.
Hell is other people’s taste.
After I’m dead, I suspect very little will get on my nerves, even that annoying noise the neighbors make with their leaf blower.
She said, “My whole life, I’ve never been anyone’s top priority.” I, who had been the top priority of a large, extended family, the apple of many loving eyes, tried to put myself in Soon-Yi’s place and decided to make her my top priority. I decided I would dote on her, wait on her, spoil her, celebrate her, never deny her anything she wanted, and somehow try and make up for the horrific first twenty-two years of her life.
Suddenly, one day, out of nowhere, an enormous abyss opened up beneath our feet and I was staring into a face I didn’t recognize.
Lovers make their own moral universe.