Words

We are reminded of the old Persian curse: “May your every desire be immediately fulfilled.”

I do it for the joy it brings
Because I’m a joyful girl
Because the world owes me nothing
And we owe each other the world

I am a poster girl with no poster

She reminded me of a warning I was fond of repeating: do not, under any circumstances, belittle a work of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.

For a brief time we experienced collectively the kind of awful beauty that can only be grasped through extreme anguish and expressed through art.

I am struck by a sudden thought: memories have ways of becoming independent of the reality they evoke. They can soften us against those we were deeply hurt by or they can make us resent those we once accepted and loved unconditionally.

She got ironic tattoos on her back
That ain’t ironic b****, I love Rugrats

“What a beautiful name,” Kimberly said. “Does it mean anything? I love multicultural names because they have such wonderful meanings, from wonderful rich cultures.” Kimberly was smiling the kindly smile of people who thought “culture” the unfamiliar colourful reserve of colourful people, a word that always had to be qualified with “rich”. She would not think Norway had a “rich culture”.

I am dying because nobody seems to have any need for me. Nuts and bolts come to life only if the whole machine remains active and if the nuts and bolts are accorded their proper spaces…

Simply and only to go on painting picture after picture – I have neither the mind nor heart to go on singing for the sake of singing alone… There’s no company in my life these days, only those who have an empathetic heart, they are few, and they only increase a sense of indebtedness that I cannot accomplish anything worthy of their stature.