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181 " It is a strange pressure to be across from a man who wants something that you don’t want to give. It’s like standing in a forceful current, which at first you think is not too strong, but the longer you stand, the more tired you become, the harder it is to stay upright. "
― Stephanie Danler , Sweetbitter
182 " This is just how things ended up for me. "
― Stephanie Danler , Stray
183 " YOU WILL SEE it coming. Not you actually because you don’t see for yourself yet, everyone is busy seeing for you, days filled with unsolicited advice you don’t take and trite warnings you can’t hear and the whitewashing of all your excitement. Yes, they definitely saw it coming, exactly the way it came. When "
184 " But the song was as intimate as a faucet dripping in the night. "
185 " Are you allowed to be in there?” What I meant is, Do you ever think about me the way I think about you? "
― Stephanie Danler
186 " It was Simone who used to say, on her better days, "Don't worry, little one, none of this will leave a scratch."But I see the marks on people. Strangers who sit at the bar alone and order a drink with intimacy, order the chicken liver mousse and chat with the staff. People who pay attention to their plates in a way I want to call worshipful. I see them on myself: the scratches, scars. No, I didn't wait forever, but in that way we were all lifers. "
187 " You're terrified of young people. We remind you of what it was like to have ideals, faith, freedom. We remind you of the losses you've taken as you've grown cynical, numb, disenchanted, compromising the life you imagined. I don't have to compromise yet. I don't have to do a single thing I don't want to do. That's why you hate me. "
188 " We are creating the world as it should. We don't have to pay any attention to how it is. "
189 " We fantasize about traumatizing events to maintain our equilibrium. Lovely. "
190 " The Monster is who I would be if I were a man and had better control over my feelings: loving when I felt like it, ruthlessly irreverent and impolite, ease greasing up all the gears of my life. "
191 " I like books. And everything else. "
192 " You're only beginning to learn what you don't know. First you must relearn your senses. Your senses are never inaccurate --- it's your ideas that can be false. "
193 " I did not look back. Once I hit the Second Avenue, I threw my arm up. I understood why taxis were so essential to life in the city, even with those of us who couldn't afford them. Desperation. "
194 " ¿Cómo puedes creer que todo es accidental cuando estamos juntos y sentimos lo que sentimos? "
195 " They were so well versed in that upper-middle-class culture --- no, in the tastes of upper-middle-class culture --- they could all pass... They were fluent in rich people. That was the fifty-one percent of it. "
196 " It’s compulsive but we actually find the painful repetition pleasurable.” He took another sip. “It doesn’t sound pleasurable.” “It’s how we self-soothe. How we maintain the illusion that we are in control of our lives. For example, you repeat ‘Pick up’ in hopes that the outcome each time will be different. And you are repeatedly embarrassed, are you not?” He waited for me to respond but I wouldn’t meet his eyes. “You are hoping to master the experience. The pain is what we know. It’s our barometer of reality. We never trust pleasure.” Every time Howard looked at me I felt bare. "
197 " I had created a life that was bent in service to all my personal cravings. "
198 " The sharing of secrets is a ceremony, marking kinship. You have no secrets yet, so you don't know what you don't know. But you can intuit it while holding yourself on the skin of the water, treading above deep pockets, faint voices underneath you. "
199 " It’s so much easier to have compassion for others than ourselves. "
200 " SWEET: granular, powdered, brown, slow like honey or molasses. The mouth-coating sugars in milk. Once, when we were wild, sugar intoxicated us, the first narcotic we craved and languished in. We’ve tamed, refined it, but the juice from a peach still runs like a flash flood. "