Quotes from Antoine Wilson

In the wake of the breakup I was miserable, no real money, no close friends. I was living in a house in the canyons, house-sitting for an actor I knew. Actually, I was house-sitting for an actor who was house-sitting for an actor. I had nothing going on.

She was a rule follower but not a crowd follower.

To artists, he was the lefty son of Klaus, a man who lived by his values, who knew hardship. To himself he was Francis Arsenault, his own invention, ex nihilo.

The only reason Francis is in this business is because it's the most easily manipulated market in the world, and he's a master manipulator.

He wondered what could have possibly happened with his predecessor to make her cross the street in tears. Had it been him they would have been tears of boredom. He remembered what his mother had told him when he was a child: "Waiting is doing what you don't want until you get to do what you want." He would bide his time in the new sinecure, waiting for Francis.

We've got a gallery here, in Chelsea. Plus London and Berlin. That's why I'm trying to get to Germany. For an opening.

Francis ascended the stairs without slowing, calling for Marcus and Andrea before he'd reached the top. Then he was gone. If he'd clocked Jeff at all, it was only to verify that someone was behind the desk.

It was seductive, the machine. Enchanting. He couldn't help but be swayed and impressed.

The art is only the glue. It's not always just glue, obviously. Sometimes it's capital-A art. But for the most part, the work, from the perspective of the art world, exists to provide an occasion for buying and selling, for socializing, for crowing, for telegraphing taste, for cleaning up dirty money.

Based on what I'd heard thus far, I could have easily and justifiably accused Jeff of stalking Francis Arsenault.

I had an ex like that. Wasn't happy unless my head was full of her words.

There is no more powerful skill for success in any field than knowing how to ask the right questions. A painter, for example, might be working on a body of work, asking, "Is it beautiful? Is it beautiful?" and that might be, unbeknownst to him, the wrong question. He might go completely astray in search of a quality that has nothing at all to do with where the work should be going.

Frances had pegged Jeff as a computer whiz and Jeff did little to disabuse him of that notion. His newly acquired knowledge of Microsoft Excel had catapulted him to database wizard status and he went about making himself indispensable.

and thanked me for listening to his story. Now it's yours. It's out there. Do with it what you will. There it was. He wanted me to write it. I had no intention of doing so.

You listened so patiently. I suppose I want to know. What do you think? You did what anyone would have done, I said. It was the closest thing to a benediction I could offer. The fact that I didn't think it true, didn't make a difference.

A relationship needs its games. If there is no sense of play, there is only desperation, the fear of being alone.

Our relationship developed under a cloud of paranoia. We ordered in rather than going out. When we did meet out in the world, we avoided anywhere that we might bump into anyone we knew. This might have seemed like overkill, but it was also fun, one of the games we played.

One of those pretty boys we put up front to avoid being accused of only putting pretty girls up there.

Jeff sensed that he'd risen, that he was no longer someone who could be inconsequentially ignored. He sensed, too, that he was perceived as an opportunist and a carpetbagger.