The Pisces Quotes
"There are good and bad ways of vanishing. I wanted no more belongings."
"Scholars were kind of assholes and they actually hated mystery—they detested any inability to fill in the blanks."
"I realized how much time I had spent with Jamie. Or maybe not how much time I’d spent with him, but how much time I spent alone but knowing, at least, that he was there."
"I didn’t want to suffer anymore. I couldn’t take it. That was clear."
"I was scared of what might come out of me: the things I would see, what others would see."
"I have always felt that it would be good to be a man."
"I always thought I could handle things, until I couldn’t."
"The trick, I now agreed, was you had to remain unattached to any future wishes or vision."
"I wondered if my advisory committee knew it. But I was about to be cut off and I figured that a shitty book was probably better than no book at all."
"The ocean swallowed things up—boats, people—but it didn’t look outside itself for fulfillment."
"I could have just cut it off there. I’d gotten what I said I wanted. I’m not sure why I didn’t."
"I love Bukowski maybe the best, actually," he said. "Find what you love and let it kill you. So raw."
"I guess in an effort to turn me on he inserted two more fingers into my wilting vagina, banging them in and out."
"You have such a hot body for forty," he said.
"It’s not that I hate poetry. But I’ve been working on a project about a particular poet for a very long time."
"I wondered if it was the scent of the ocean itself that made him angry."
"I felt bad, but Venice Beach had a massive fine if you were caught there with a dog."
"I mean, I had never spent time with him out of the water."
"I thought about whether he was an 'unavailable' man, and it seemed unlikely."
"I fell asleep spooning Dominic and felt the kind of love I felt the first night I’d arrived in Venice."
"You’re going to be okay, I said. But I wasn’t convinced."
"I’m probably not the best person to talk you out of suicide."
"I felt claustrophobic. I thought about Theo."
"I enjoyed being coy now, the elusive one for once. The independent one."
"I figured you got a restraining order, I wrote."
"I don’t think that will work, I said. I’m sorry."
"I lay around in bed for an hour, high on the potentiality of both of them."
"But if I think he is gorgeous then probably a million others do too."
"I think it’s very important that you be well fucked."
"We haven’t fucked yet, I said. I haven’t even seen his dick."
"We learned this in junior high school at swim practice: that your blood stops in water."
"Saltwater stained boats, but in a beautiful way—weathering them, rendering the wood a soft, gray color."
"The whole summer came flashing in front of me."
"Was this all it took to be cleansed: one beautiful person to treat you kindly and gently, and you were exonerated?"
"A warmth spread from my pussy up through my stomach and into my heart. It radiated out through the top of my head."
"I’m sorry, I want you to know I’m grateful to you."
"I’m going to have to go," I said to her, giving her one final pat on the head.
"I still didn’t love myself. I wasn’t sure how or when that was going to happen."