34 Quotes by Melissa Febos

Such is the disconcerting miracle of good acting; at its best it implicitly challenges our faith in who we are, who anyone is.

[Women] are conditioned to ever prove ourselves, as if our value is contingent on our ability to meet the expectations of others. As if our worth is a tank forever draining that we must fill and fill. We complete tasks and in some half-buried way believe that if we don’t, we will be discredited. Sometimes, this is true. But here is a question: Do you want to be a reliable source of literary art (or whatever writing you do), or of prompt emails?

Back and forth from Brooklyn to Manhattan. New York at night, from its bridges, is a miracle. When I first came to the city, it took all my fantasies and set them on fire, turned them into flickering constellations of light. Then it did the same with my history. As a dark speck of energy hurtling over the water toward that galaxy, I felt myself disappear. Relative to the image of infinity I was nothing, a clump of quantum matter skidding through the ether. It was as good as any drug.

A speedball hits you like a huge, warm wave. The back of your neck throbs, your ears ring, and everything inside of you muffles while everything outside of you sharpens. The initial rush of it doesn't last long, a minute, maybe two. Then it's a downward slide into a normal high. Only the first one can be perfect. After that, you need more of everything. (128)

Our favorite stories can be like lovers. Make sense to me, we ask them. Make sense of me. Here, fix these hurting parts. And stories do, sometimes better than our lovers.

I’m always writing to a younger version of myself, or a young woman who is like I was. I want that girl to know that I really existed and that it all went down that way.

I want to tell her that darkness is not bad. It is only the place we can’t see yet.

You don’t leave out of anger or from coming to your senses, but because your love is not as strong as your reasons for going.

You don’t know how people are going to respond. But I would add to that, that getting your heart broken is not the worst thing and it’s actually quite unavoidable. I think in some ways I had to break my father’s heart and then face that in order to have a real relationship with him.