It strikes me as a unique form of power to say your own name when you know that everyone in the room, everyone in the world, already knows it.
And I didn't say I was confessing any sins. To say that what I have to tell is a sin is misleading and hurtful. I don't feel regret for the things I've done — atleast, not the things you might expect — despite how hard they may have been or how repugnant they may seem in the cold light of day.
When you're given an opportunity to change your life, be ready to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The world doesn't give things, you take things. If you learn one thing from me, it should probably be that.
He invented me. He was the person who loved me the most unconditionally. The person I loved the most purely, I think. Other than my daughter. But no, he was not the love of my life.
Can she really tell the truth? Is she capable of it?
Everyone I loved is dead now. There's no one left to protect. No one left to lie for but me. People have so closely followed the most intricate details of the fake story of my life. But it's not... I don't... I want them to know the real story. The real me.
There are people who see a beautiful flower and rush over to pick it. They want to hold it in their hands, they want to own it. They want the flower's beauty to be theirs, to be within their possession, their control.
Intimacy is impossible without trust. And we would have been idiots to trust one another.
I needed him. I needed to be seen. I came alive under his gaze.
But the truth is praise is just like an addiction. The more you get it, the more of it you need to just stay even.
I don't look like I am half of one thing and half of another but rather one whole thing, theirs. Loved.
I don't want to be pitied. There's no power in pity.
Don may have taught me that I was capable of loving someone and desiring him. But he also taught me that you could desire someone even when you don't like him, that you can desire someone especially when you don't like him.
People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is "You're safe with me" — that's intimacy.
The world was about objects to them, all they wanted to do was possess.
And yet that sense that you can feel your heart in your chest, that your body tells you it wants more, that you lose yourself in the scent, taste, and feel of another person — it was all the same.
I love you too much to let you live only for me.
You know the key to impulsivity is believing you are invincible. No one goes around throwing caution to the wind unless the wind is blowing their way.
"I loved you so much that I thought you were the meaning of my life," Celia said, crying. "I thought that people were put on earth to find other people, and I was put here to find you. To find you and touch your skin and smell your breath and hear all your thoughts. But I don't think that's true anymore." She wiped her eyes. "Because I don't want to be meant for someone like you."
You do not know how fast you have been running, how hard you have been working, how truly exhausted you are, until someone stands behind you and says, "It's okay, you can fall down now. I'll catch you."
Never let anyone make you feel ordinary.
The way she said it, the pride in her voice, as if admitting that it hurt her was a vulnerability she wasn't willing to give into, made my heart break. It broke for her, and it broke for the me of all those years ago who did the same thing.
And we won't just give up when the bloom falls off the rose, because we already know each other better than that.
Unscrupulous, unfaithful, lustful sinners.
You were ashamed to love me.
She shook her heard, and my heart broke just a little bit more, like a tear that deepens from strain.
I was lost in her. In the feel of her on me once again, the sheer joy of her attention, the glory of knowing she loved me.
And taking pride in your beauty is a damning act. Because you allow yourself to believe that the only thing notable about yourself is something with a very short shelf life.
It was around that time that I started to believe that friendships could be written in the stars.
It's always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.
Guilt is a feeling I've never made much peace with.
Evelyn, you are not capable of giving it up. And you never will be. And it will be the tragedy of my life that I cannot love you enough to make you mine. That you cannot be loved enough to be anyone's.
I had not been kissed with desire, the kind of desire that spurs desire, since the love of my life walked out the door.
It is because I ache for you. It is because, from the very moment I set my eyes on you, my body was full of desire for you. It is because I have been falling in love with you for decades.
I was so relieved to feel loved, to feel love.
My heart was never in the craft of acting, only in the proving. Proving my power, proving my worth, proving my talent.
I couldn't stand the thought of losing her again, losing her in a deeper way than I'd ever lost her before. I couldn't bear the idea that I would be forever without her, with no tie to her.
And so I pretend. I pretend, for one picture, that I am not a bundle of nerves. I pretend that I am not furious and confused and heartbroken and torn up and disappointed and shocked and uncomfortable.
