Quotes from Emma Forrest

Bad people very often do one good thing.

I think I've lost my faith and I can't stop writing because I don't know how much longer I can hold on.

When he asked if he was mine, tears in his eyes, I think he knew what he would do, what he would have to do, and he was mourning us. He was mourning us the whole time.

It took a long time, but my heart now feels full when I think of him. When you fall in love again—which I have—it's funny the other things that come back in with that open-ness. You have this ghost chorus of the lovers who came before, but they're benign now, they're good spirits.

He meant everything he said, when he said it. But this is his default. And it won out. Right now you're depressed about one thing. Before you were depressed about everything. These are good times for you. I'm afraid of loving again. I'm afraid I've lost my faith. You haven't. The trapdoor I have in my mind? That can go to those bad places? It's almost gave way again. You know the ways to keep it nailed shut.

I don't want to go to university. I don't like unity and I hate verses. I just love the choruses of songs.

And then, with the feather-green darkness pressed against the windows, he puts his filthy fingers on my scrubbed hope face and says, If I kiss you, it's all over. And then he does. And then it is.

my quirks had gone beyond eccentricity, past the warm waters of weird to those cold, deep patches of sea where people lose their lives.

We're born alone and we die alone, but we get to travel with people along the way, and if you get lucky, you have a worthy consort.

at least my face moves when you look at it. At least I know I'm a fool.

We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be.

Since I'm a cat who doesn't know what I am, I wear track pants with old-skool Nikes but Gina Lollobrigida skintight sweaters. I am caught between childhood and va-va-voom.

There is something deeply unsettling about a child crying insincerely.

You could be together forever, but one of you is going to have to go first. I want it to last. I love him and I want it to stay.

You may right now be nursing a broken heart. Friends will say, Aren't you glad you had the experience anyway? And you may say No. Eventually, unbelievably, you may not remember the boy that triggered it all. You'll recall all the places you visited, but not how you got there. You'll remember the songs that you listened to.

There's a boy whose affection I am determined to hunt down and kill. It used to be material objects I felt I needed to be happy. It would make me feel stable if I had him. If I had someone like him, it would prove that I'm stable, and then I wouldn't have to do the work to get there. I am constantly looking for ways to cede control of my worries to someone, anyone.

In the grip of madness, materialism begins to look like an admirable belief system.

Hotel rooms are funny things. They make everything look different. If people have to sleep with each other, sexually or platonically, they should do it in kitchens. The kitchen is the epicenter of truth in any home or building. You could never misconstrue a look or a word or a touch in the icy cool, compartmentalized presence of a fridge.

I thought of him, with his feet in the Chateau Marmont pool and his fork in a carrot cake. He was just a little kid. I was upset at what I had introduced him to, the records and films he didn't already know. I felt like a mother who had left syringes around the room and let her baby get hooked on hard drugs.

No one knows we're there, no one sees us. We never leave the room. I think about the secret voice you use when you make love. No one but that person will ever hear it. And here, we listen to each other, but we lock it in with touch, and the room vacuum seals it to stay fresh until we can breathe together again. When he breaks the silence it is to say, I want you to know that, when you get pregnant, nothing is going to change except your dress size.

Accepting the presidency, Barack introduces my best friend of sixteen years, the love of my life, Michelle Obama and I think I will pass out. That, right there, is love in action.

I win, and we discover that when men peer into a car that is blasting True Faith on the outskirts of San Franscisco, they are disappointed to see three women.

And if you don't know who you are, or if your real self has drifted away from you with the undertow, madness at least gives you an identity.

Now here I am, seventeen with a bullet.