22
" How many times I've sat with people, even as an adult, wishing I could hold their hand, or lie in their lap, or cry in front of them, or tell them how I really felt about them, or ask them how they really felt about me, and how many hours I wasted thinking of how I would do it, when I should do it, begging myself to "just do it now! Who cares!" Then once I did it, I'd wish I'd done it much sooner because it's was fine, it was safe, I was safe. "
― Lane Moore , How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't
27
" Aaaand then came the news that it paid, like, two hundred dollars a month for full-time work, which was a third of what I'd been told by people that it paid. I guess they cut the pay drastically because...fuck it. Having just come off a four-month, nearly full-time internship that paid absolutely nothing, having this full-time position pay next to nothing felt like a punishment in the most delightful form, but a punishment nonetheless. I know now that these industry practices are put in place with the assumption that everyone in the arts comes from a wealthy family who will bankroll them for The Opportunity, thereby shutting out people who have families but don't have money, or people who don't have anyone at all, and however you feel about that concept, it ultimately results in a loss of art from some of the people I want to hear most. "
― Lane Moore
34
" My parents were going out to dinner when I was six or so, and before they left, I felt instantly desperate and went to the bathroom and grabbed my mom's lipstick and put red dots all over my body and then begged them not to go. "I have chicken pox, you can't leave," I said. I remember they both laughed and laughed and then they left. And I cried and couldn't stop. They laughed at me like a was a wacky little child pulling a wacky stunt: kids say the darnedest things, etc. But I think about that night all the time, that little kid desperate for someone to love her, take care of her, spend any time at all with her, make her feel connected to literally anyone or anything and they just laughed. And left. "
― Lane Moore , How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't