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To Throw Away Unopened QUOTES

To Throw Away Unopened QUOTES

21 " For sixty years I've been shaped by men's point of view on every aspect of my life, from history, politics, music and art to my mind and my body – and centuries more male-centric history before that. I'm saturated with their opinions. I can think and see like a straight white man. I can look at a woman and objectify her, see her how a man sees her. I can think like a male criminal. To stay safe you have to anticipate their thoughts and actions. I can think like a rapist for fuck's sake. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

22 " On the way to the cake shop I kept stopping to shake the wet leaves off the soles of my brown suede Whistles boots. I bought them at Sue Ryder, the charity shop in Camden Town. [...] I know how to find good clothes in those places. First scan the rails for an awkward colour, anything that jumps out as being a bit ugly, like dirty mustard, salmon pink or olive green with a bit too much brown in it. A print with an unusual combination of colours – dark green and pink, bright orange and ultramarine – is also worth checking out. If the quality of the fabric is good, pull the garment out and check the label. Well-cut clothes can look misshapen on a hanger because they're cut to look good on the body. I'll buy a good piece if it fits, even if it doesn't sometimes. Even if it's not my style or has short sleeves, or I don't like the shape or the buttons. I learn to love it. I never tire of clothes I've bought that I've had to adjust to. It's the compromise, the awkward gap that has to be bridged that makes something, someone, lovable. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

23 " I remember what Sid Vicious taught me about fighting: Do the worst thing you can think of first. Except I threatened the worst thing first, 'If you want to take it outside, let's take it outside,' I said, putting the hardest, coldest look I could muster into my eyes. 'And I'll put this bottle in your face.' I picked up an empty bottle of Heineken with such fluidity of movement you'd think I did this sort of thing every day. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

24 " I could have dated younger men during the last five years, but lovely as some of them were, I didn't want to keep wincing inwardly whenever I referred to something that called attention to my age. Or not be able to share the difficulties of growing older, or have to keep explaining references. I'd like to be with someone kind who can hold a conversation and is in my age group. If that's too much to ask, I'll do without. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

25 " Other rituals Mum performed on me at night were exercising my legs by gripping my knee and ankle and circling one leg at a time so I wouldn't be bow-legged, weaving plaster in and out of my toes so they wouldn't be crooked, and taping a penny onto my stomach so I'd have a flat navel, all of which worked. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

26 " I also tried to look conventionally attractive when I was in the Slits, but kicked against it at the same time. It's a painful position to be in, having a side, but being inexorably drawn to the other side too. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

27 " Every decision you make in life sends you off down a path that could turn out to be a wrong one. A couple of careless decisions somewhere along the line, that’s all it takes to waste years – but then you can’t creep along being so cautious that you don’t have adventures. It’s difficult to get the balance right "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

28 " It’s not so terrible a feeling, aloneness, or it’s so terrible it’s mind-blowing. I’ve never felt so present as I do now, every second on the brink of life and death. No sense of space or scale. I picture myself as a tiny person teetering on the rim of a glass of milk. (I don’t know why milk, I don’t like milk – a drink from childhood, perhaps, when I felt powerless.) I could go either way: lose my footing, fall in and drown, or recover my balance and survive. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

29 " We dressed outrageously, behaved aggressively, and fought every obstacle that came our way with a zeal that would have been impossible at that time in history if we’d had fathers. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

30 " Perhaps ‘defective’ is a middle-aged person’s default setting. Like the life cycle of a pear we go unripe, unripe, ripe, off. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

31 " Worse than being stuck with someone ill or being alone forever is the thought that I’ll grow to love a person very much and won’t have them for very long. Finding another person to love is finding another person to lose. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

32 " Sometimes my bladder is the only reason I get up. Not even hunger can shift me – the only time I can stand to be hungry is when I'm in bed. I've discovered that if I lie still and count to about ninety, the hunger pangs go away. They're like heartbreak: you just have to acknowledge the pain and wait until it passes. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

33 " For sixty years I’ve been shaped by men’s point of view on every aspect of my life, from history, politics, music and art to my mind and my body – and centuries more male-centric history before that. I’m saturated with their opinions. I can think and see like a straight white man. I can look at a woman and objectify her, see her how a man sees her. I can think like a male criminal. To stay safe, you have to anticipate their thoughts and actions. I can think like a rapist for fuck’s sake. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

34 " I’ve never regretted the loss of any man – or cat – I’ve known. I have regretted losing women though. Every woman, good or bad, who’s gone from my life has left a hole. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

35 " Sojourner Truth, "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

36 " Bad girls aren’t villains; they’re transgressive forces within patriarchal cultures. Made to choose between wreaking destruction and accepting their own powerlessness, they pick destruction. Judy Berman, ‘The cool girls, good girls and bad girls of modern books’, Guardian, 28 May 2016 "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

37 " He reminded me of my father, who also turned into a strange-looking, crooked old hermit as he aged. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

38 " It takes a concerted effort for me to look good dressed, but it’s nothing like the amount of work it takes for me to look good undressed. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

39 " ASD types are often attracted to each other; this is called ‘assortative mating’, and it has been suggested that the recent increase in numbers of autistic children in Silicon Valley is due to this phenomenon "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened

40 " After I’d been through a couple of art schools and bands I realised that most of us fail at what we try to do, especially in the arts, but our mothers didn’t know that. You don’t know how hard it is or how unexceptional you are until you’ve been at it for ten or so years. "

― Viv Albertine , To Throw Away Unopened