22 Quotes by Kate Zambreno

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.

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.

Sometimes she is struck by how much she goes through life almost unconsciously. She is being swept along. She is a pale ghost.

Ruth loved color so much she rarely wore any. Except on her face.

The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness. But Jean Rhys, in her biography, is read as borderline; Anaïs Nin is borderline; Djuna is borderline; etc. etc. Borderline personality disorder being an overwhelmingly gendered diagnosis. I write in Heroines: “The charges of borderline personality disorder are the same charges against girls writing literature, I realize—too emotional, too impulsive, no boundaries.

When I was writing Green Girl,I was reading Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, and she’s very dismissive of the young girl. She writes about the girl as being from this space of bad faith and blankness. I’m more interested in a messy space.

The most important part of an introduction always occurs in one’s absence.

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.

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.