Home > Author > Guy Mankowski
1 " All of the administrative methods used in professional circles- confidentiality, whatever else is in vogue- are just tools. Tools that governing bodies can deploy, under the guise of fairness. Some of the most corrupt organisations I have worked with have the most finely developed guidelines that they work to. These guidelines gives them more rope to hang their victims. "
― Guy Mankowski , An Honest Deceit
2 " Apathy's just a front. People offer it when there's something stronger hiding underneath. You have to work harder to tap into it, but then your performance has even more power. "
― Guy Mankowski , How I Left the National Grid: A post-punk novel
3 " They all had darkened eyes, eyes that seemed to have a hunger behind them. Borne out of the private convulsions only secret passions can provoke. "
4 " I understood then why people were so often defeated by this world. Perhaps the web of support that they required just did not come into alignment when it had to. Or perhaps our culture lacked the channels by which to offer this support. "
5 " Culture always tells you to look to illusions for answers. ‘Look at me’, it says, ‘I’ve worked it all out’. Celebrities grow too powerful because people mistake their colour for content. They allow them to create a hole at the heart of our culture, in which they then flourish. "
6 " People never fully confront their wrongdoing. They are all trying to push for their own ends, and they lack the strength to truly apologise for that. In my heart of hearts, I wondered if I was just the same. "
7 " Like other corrupt people, he would never realize that his punishment was in missing out on what he didn’t know he could have. "
8 " People like you are the reason this album needed to be written in the first place. When you’ve got your salary, and your cosy little ivory tower, you’re dead happy to spout off about artistic integrity and us getting there together. But the minute you’re asked to back your promises up with some strength of character, you come apart. You say you love good music, but you can’t listen to it that carefully if you treat people like this. "
9 " She didn’t think that by hanging a chandelier from the ceiling you made a room with a chandelier. She felt you’d made another world, which you could slip in and out of by some vague process of application "
― Guy Mankowski , Letters From Yelena
10 " You consider me for a moment, perhaps balancing the weight of your fear against the loneliness you will later feel in your room if you do not speak now "
11 " We act as a conduit for the observers’ unexpressed desires, the silent appreciation they may contain for anything; a lover, a river, a building even "
― Guy Mankowski
12 " There’s this misconception that artists should create their own mythologies, through how they live. Not true. They should create their own mythologies through their work. In whatever styles, textures and approaches they choose to use. "
13 " It all stings. Every humiliation just illuminates, like a row of promenade lights, all the other rejections and betrayals that snake into the darkness of your past. You only think that record deals, gigs and minor fame create a net that will hold your life because you are on the outside of the net. It doesn’t hold shit. All you have is what people are doing in the room with you now. "
14 " I didn’t appreciate at that age the different way women loved, using their bodies and their heart and their spirit and their soul. I didn’t appreciate that they felt part of someone when they were in love with them. I promised myself I would never tell a woman I loved them unless I simply couldn’t bear not to. I told myself that relationships were not a game, no matter much everyone wants you to join in. "
15 " I remember the ecstasy of first going to a nightclub wearing eyeliner. Drenched in hairspray and glitter, dancing to Lou Reed records. I felt as if I was living on the outside, in a realm that most people could never enter. For so long I had felt completely alone, but makeup made my isolation feel special. The world came to life – the streets were no longer grey and cold, they sparkled with sordid possibility. But the most resonant pleasures in our lives are always individually defined. When you expect the world to appreciate them they simply expose their own bland uniformity. I learnt that the more unusual you are, the more personalised pleasures the world reveals to you. "
― Guy Mankowski , The Intimates
16 " Something occurs to me, that you should let a man into your world on your own terms. And if you’re going to do that, then you should probably let people into your world on your own terms. And what better way to do that than through your art? "
17 " Where does someone’s energy go when their body is cracked open? Does it end up in the corners of all the bedrooms they visited, nestled in the hearts of everyone they knew? Do they have their own secret portals through which they come in and out of the world, where we can sometimes feel them? And if they’re an artist, does their influence go even deeper, into places inside people that they didn’t even know they had? "
18 " We live in a world of many alarms, none of which sound our true concerns. "
19 " Sam marvelled at how easily people walked off the street and into these decadent dioramas. It was spooky how easily people’s inner landscapes were expressed in enclosed booths and glittering bars. Their private nightmares slid into the moulded furniture as if it had been designed for them. "
20 " I do wonder if the modern world creates these desperations for you. It makes you crave products you don’t want. It places its imperatives in front of religion, faith. It employs certain people for its cause. Celebrities, singers, musicians. When you conclude that the material world is disappointing you look to these figures for answers, as they sit just beyond the array. You hunt these figures down, like they are wise men. If they vanish from your life you imbue them as symbols with even greater potency. But really it is what you project onto them that’s interesting. "
