“I’ve been constantly in situations in my life and career where I’ve had no technique, but if you just feel enough, you will get away with murder.”
- Audrey Hepburn, from Dutch Girl by Robert Matzen
“She was anonymous: a woman with a mutable story, a changeable history, someone who recognised that the world didn’t care about her, and chose to use that as a weapon in order to survive.”
- Hallie Rubenhold, ‘The Five’
“She’s not ashamed. Everything she was taught and learned by rote as a child has left her, gone away. What’s new and has come in exchange has washed away the fears, just as a flood from melting snow washes away last year’s twigs and decayed leaves.”
Guzel Yakhina, Zuleikha
“When you sat down on the side of the bed, the springs gave a little, but not much. You looked around and recognised that this room was her secret, that you shouldn’t have been there. Not that it was wrong, no, not that, but something more. You could feel it without having the words to say it, a kind of sorry. Not the sorry from robbing or getting hit or chased or even the sorry when you’d find your ma in a state or when your brothers jeered at your da behind his back. It was a new sorry that you felt you’d have for always.”
Karl Geary, Montpelier Parade
“I had fifteen-year dances
Church basement romances, yeah, I’ve cried
Spilling my guts with the Bowery bums
Is the only love I’ve ever known…”
Lana Del Rey, ‘Hope is a Dangerous Thing For a Woman Like Me to Have - But I Have It’
I’m proud to have contributed a sixteen-page article about David Lynch’s return to Twin Peaks for Volume 1 of SOLEDAD, a new arts journal. It’s the opening instalment in a two-part series - more info here.
“To start off let’s know that the people of this place don’t have a soft record when it comes to convicting people of evildoing. Poor souls. You know, don’t you, that in the early years if you were the least bit own-minded they’d call you a devil and burn you like a pig, roast you. There was nothing like a defence lawyer for someone they called a witch, nobody to prove them wrong by law. The law was all set up to keep people convinced their fears were well-guided. They came up with ways to prove themselves right about people who seemed a little different. All witches, they said, felt pain if you stuck them in the ribs and sank in water if you tied them down. For God’s sake, of course. Now we know it’s what’s called a personality—a difference of opinion. And thank God for that freedom, right, right. And these children pretending spells and things. All just spoiled brats dipping their hands in the wrong pots … I think the Devil’s just a story to scare children so they act right. And I think we should have more respect than to scare one another straight. I think people act in error, sure. It’s human. God alone is perfect and the rest is for shit, excuse me. So who’s to blame? That’s why I’m on the defensive side. It’s a natural fit with me. Not anyone should be condemned.“
From McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh
“When Lien wants to write to her father for his birthday on 10 December, Auntie has to tell her that there is no address to write to, that their papers have been displaced. That afternoon it is quiet in the kitchen, and Lien sits herself down in a corner. On her finger she has two little rings that were a gift from her parents, one silver and one gold. She takes them off and starts to roll them up and down along the floorboards, from one hand to the other and back. First one and then the second slips down through a gap by the wall into the darkness. Lien does not remember thinking about her parents at all for a long time after that.”
From The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found by Bart Van Es
“There’s something in the water
I can taste it turning sour
It’s bitter, I’m coughing
But now it’s in my blood…”
- Lana Del Rey, ‘Change’
“Uncertainty—that is appropriate for matters of this world. Only regarding the next can we vouchsafe certainty. I believe certainty regarding that which we can see and touch, it is seldom justified, if ever. Down the ages from our remote past, what certainties survive? And yet we hurry to fashion new ones, wanting their comfort.”
- From The Ballad of Buster Scruggs