“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.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“I love that word. Forever. I love that forever doesn't exist, but we have a word for it anyway, and use it all the time. It's beautiful and doomed.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“They look at us clean-haired, well-behaved children in our maroon blazers, starched white shirts and striped ties with contempt. Their holey grey socks are crumpled around their ankles, they don't wear silly short-shorts like all the other boys in my – their shorts are long, right down to their scabby knees. They have greasy brown fringes hanging in their eyes. One of them has a scar on his freckled cheek. I think to myself, Thank goodness, two good-looking boys at school at last. I want to clap my hands together with glee. I don't know where this thought comes from. I don't recognize it. I've never cared about boys before, up until now they've been invisible to me, not important in my world. No one's ever told me about bad boys, that they're sexy and compelling, or to stay away from them. I work all this out by myself, today - at eight years old, in Class Three.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“Skinny as Mum was, she'd always had a good appetite, so when she couldn't eat her roast potatoes I knew the end must be nigh.
[...] We opened our presents and Mum put a polka-dot shower cap on her head and let us take pictures of her in it, which was most unlike her, she liked to be a bit dignified about things. This was another indication that she knew she was dying. Other signs to look out for are when an elderly person starts giving away their things – usually about two or three years before they die – and if they insist, rather aggressively, on returning anything they've borrowed or get annoyed if you give them gifts – they don't want any more clutter.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“I'm glad I didn't know how my life was going to turn out when I was that child lying in bed staring at the curtains. I'd have been terrified of the good things that happened just as much as the bad.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“I think most people in long marriages have a touch of Stockholm Syndrome”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“The last time I was single the men I was looking at were in their thirties and I still had that youthful image fixed in my head. It was depressing at first, choosing from a pool that's not regarded as desirable or vital in your society. [...] I managed to re-educate myself eventually. Now I'm only attracted to people my age. A young face looks like a blank page to me.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“When I was little my balloon burst as we were walking home from a children’s party one afternoon. I saw a balloon about once a year so it was a huge loss. Mum bent down, picked the flaccid piece of rubber off the pavement, stretched it tight across her lips and twisted it as she sucked in her breath. Then she tied the old piece of string tightly around the little piece of rubber dangling from her lips and pulled a miniature balloon out of her mouth. She said the balloon had had a baby, it was a baby balloon. I stopped crying and trailed it after me all the way home. A baby balloon.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“The French love their dogs. I’m always suspicious of people who adore animals, they often don’t care much for humans.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“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.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“Musicians are our real teachers. They are opening us up politically with their lyrics and creatively with experimental, psychedelic music. They share their discoveries and journeys with us. We can’t travel far, no one I know has ever been on an aeroplane. ... whatever they experience, we experience through their songs. It’s true folk music — not played on acoustic guitar by a bearded bloke — but about true-life experiences.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“I used to drink occasionally when I was with Eryk. It made our time together dreamlike – sometimes life needs a bit of a nudge to live up to our expectations.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“You never look at your plate with disappointment here, eating seems to be a penance back home [in England] but in America they make food fun.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“I hear a phone ringing through the thick fuzzy air. It's Thunders, asking me to join the Heartbreakers. He says to come over to the rehearsal studios right now. I’m scared but I go anyway. That should be written on my gravestone. She was scared. But she went anyway.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“You have no idea how grief will take you. The same with severe illness, motherhood, any profound experience. You don’t know yourself. Others don’t know you. These events show who you are. And you’ll be surprised, shocked even. You’ll feel the way you feel when you’ve done a particularly offensive-smelling shit – That couldn’t possibly have come out of me – and start to rationalize it – Must be that bag of pistachios I ate earlier, or perhaps I am unwell. You can’t believe you could do something so foul and unrecognizable. Something so outside yourself.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“The pain I feel from the Slits ending is worse than splitting up with a boyfriend, my parents divorcing or being chucked out of the Flowers of Romance: this feels like the death of a huge part of myself, two whole thirds gone. Now the Slits are over and Tessa has recovered, I’ve got nowhere to go, nothing to do; I’m cast back into the world like a sycamore seed spinning into the wind. I’m burnt out and my heart is broken. I can’t bear to listen to music. Every time I hear a song I feel physical pain, just to hear instruments is unbearable, it reminds me of what I’ve lost.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“Shitting and bleeding. Always had a problem with shit and blood. The English love to talk about shitting, so other nationalities can skip this bit.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“You try all your life to be an adult, but something deep down inside you will always be that child.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“I feel more confident with the posh mums. I’ve found someone who gets me. It’s OK that I don’t fit in here, I fit in somewhere else, so I can relax. I’m not mad, I’m not wrong, I’m just not in the right environment.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“I decide I’ll just have to be myself. I’m sick of pretending anyway – of policing my words and editing my thoughts. Husband never wants me to talk about the Slits or my ceramics or make rude jokes, I’m losing every ounce of the person I used to be. I know she wasn’t all good, but she wasn’t all bad either. I’m not going to pretend to be something I’m not for this bloke who lives miles away across the sea. I’m not going to try and be nice and seductive for him. There are so many people in my life that I’m putting on a front for, I don’t need one more. If he doesn’t like me for who I am, forget it.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“Until now, I haven’t really been rejected because the way a girl usually lets a guy know she likes him, with looks, hints, smiles, telling a friend of his, means we don’t directly experience rejection. And the first couple of times it happens to me, it hurts. But after a while, I think,
Oh well, I’ve filled my quota. On to the next one.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“I've got so used to my life being challenging and fraught with danger that I don't question it any more. Whether I’m knocking on the door of a hardcore sex shop, walking through suburban streets being verbally abused and spat on, or being threatened on the tube, I don't give in. I don’t dress normally to have an easy life. The pilgrimage down the King’s Road to get to the Shop (Sex: everyone calls it ‘the Shop’), the place I want to hang out and buy stuff, is one of the scariest things I do — running the gauntlet of teds who want to kill people like me — but nothing will stop me looking the way I want. It’s a commitment.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“Like her [mother], I attempted to give the impression to Vida that I was a perfect person, had no complicated history and had never put a foot wrong in life. (What kind of a role model is that for a child?)
Divorce made an honest woman of me. Vida was eight when my marriage began to disintegrate and I couldn't bear pretending to her or anyone else any more. I was sick of trying to appear normal. Vida didn't reject me for showing my true self – that's what I imagined would happen. Far from it, we grew even closer. She especially enjoyed my swearing. (I only swore in front of her when she was older. Everything has to be revealed at an appropriate time.) A child derives a sense of safety from knowing the person who looks after them is respectful enough to be honest. Vida has never rooted around in my cupboards and drawers or turned the house upside down searching for letters and scraps of evidence to help her piece her mother together like I did. On the contrary, she knows too much. She's not fascinated by secrets because I haven't hidden anything from her, not even the ugly stuff.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“I can't imagine what a happy home is like: parents cuddling and laughing, music playing, books on the shelves, discussions round the table? We don’t have any of that, but if Mum’s happy, I’m happy.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“Palmolive wrote the lyrics to ‘Newtown’ too. The song was originally called ‘Drugtown’, but I changed it to ‘Newtown’, thinking about all the new towns that are springing up around the edges of London, like Milton Keynes and Crawley. The young people growing up there are so bored, they take loads of drugs and drive around really fast or beat each other up at football matches, then they get up and commute to their dull jobs on Monday morning. Palmolive made up these great words like ‘televisina’ and ‘footballina’ as drug names, I think only a foreigner could do that.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“In the past I listened to tracks as a whole, paying most attention to the lyrics. Words were what I knew, what I was familiar with; they worked or didn’t work for me. That’s how girls listened to songs.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“I go to my doctor, Dr Shah, for a check-up. He says he saw my husband in the surgery last week about a minor complaint. ‘He doesn’t love you, you know,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘He doesn’t care about you. I’ve seen it many times, when the weaker of the two becomes dominant and tries to undermine the stronger one.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“It’s become quite difficult nowadays to disagree with other women without being called anti-feminist.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“Anyone who writes an autobiography is either a twat or broke. I’m a bit of both.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“Anyone who writes an autobiography is either a twat or broke.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“Daddy, I want to be a pop singer when I grow up.’ There, it’s out, I’ve dared to voice my dream, to say it out loud. Dad is the only adult I know who has some interest in music, even if it is Petula Clark, and now I've told him, I've taken the first step towards making my dream real. Dad will know what to do, how to get me started, point me in the right direction.
'You're not chic enough.' I don't know what the word chic means but I know what he means. I understand from the tone of his voice that I'm having ideas about myself that are way above my looks, capabilities and charms, and I believe him. He must be right, he’s my father.
Dad and I walk along in silence. I think, He didn’t ask me if I can sing - but obviously that doesn’t matter. I’m just not chic enough.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“Imagine you were asked in a maths paper at junior school, 'Which would you prefer, a shilling or two sixpences?' and you answered, 'Two sixpences,' because thinking of the two tiny silver coins jingling together in your pocket made you feel good and you loved those cute little sixpences. But when the test paper was returned you saw a big red cross through your answer, and that night your mother explained to you that it was a trick question, two sixpences and a shilling were worth the same amount – which you knew, but you'd still prefer two sixpences. It wasn't that you were stupid, you just saw things from a different angle. Sixpences had character, shillings didn't. And you felt richer with two sixpences because there were two coins, not just one. But despite all these explanations, you were still wrong and you kept getting tripped up by these trick questions over and over again, in exams, in relationships, friendships, jobs and interviews. In fact, these misreadings of situations happened so often that you started to view the world as a tricksy and untruthful place. Then you noticed that the people who saw the tricks behind the questions were popular and always at the top of the class. Baffled by life and its unseen rules, you began to doubt everything around you. You felt you had to approach all of life as a trick, just to get it right a few times.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“How can someone who's stood by you your whole life – who helped you empty the contents of the kitchen bin onto the floor when you were seventeen because you accidentally threw away a piece of hash the size of a cocoa nib, or who accompanied you, when she was eighty years old, to the Southbank Cinema on Mother's Day to watch hardcore gay and lesbian sex films because no one else would go with you (ditto a Sparks concert at the Royal Festival Hall) – how can that person, who you've been through so much with and who is now lying in front of you with snow-white hair, pale-grey eyes, soft pink skin and worry lines, not be beautiful?”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“But somehow, without me noticing it happening, I became someone who after every failure, rejection and mistake can pick myself up, dust myself off and start all over again. That life skill, the first one you need, came from my mother. So thanks to her, despite the rest of my upbringing and my awkward personality, I've survived.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“My mother made me into the type of person who is at ease standing in the middle of moving traffic, the type of person who ends up having more adventures and making more mistakes. Mum never stopped encouraging me to try, fail and take risks. I kept pushing myself to do unconventional things because I liked the reaction I got from her when I told her what I'd done. Mum's response to all my exploits was to applaud them. Great, you're living your life, and not the usual life prescribed for a woman either. Well done! Thanks to her, unlike most girls at the time, I grew up regarding recklessness, risk-taking and failure as laudable pursuits.
Mum did the same for Vida by giving her a pound every time she put herself forward. If Vida raised her hand at school and volunteered to go to an old people's home to sing, or recited a poem in assembly, or joined a club, Mum wrote it down in a little notebook. Vida also kept a tally of everything she'd tried to do since she last saw her grandmother and would burst out with it all when they met up again. She didn't get a pound if she won a prize or did something well or achieved good marks in an exam, and there was no big fuss or attention if she failed at anything. She was only rewarded for trying. That was the goal. This was when Vida was between the ages of seven and fifteen, the years a girl is most self-conscious about her voice, her looks and fitting in, when she doesn't want to stand out from the crowd or draw attention to herself. Vida was a passive child – she isn't passive now.
I was very self-conscious when I was young, wouldn't raise my voice above a whisper or look an adult in the eye until I was thirteen, but without me realizing it Mum taught me to grab life, wrestle it to the ground and make it work for me. She never squashed any thoughts or ideas I had, no matter how unorthodox or out of reach they were. She didn't care what I looked like either. I started experimenting with my clothes aged eleven, wearing top hats, curtains as cloaks, jeans torn to pieces, bare feet in the streets, 1930s gowns, bells around my neck, and all she ever said was, 'I wish I had a camera.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“I adhered to this strategy right up to Mum's death, sharing experiences that I probably should have kept to myself, telling tales of drug-taking and STDs over a cup of tea at the kitchen table, graduating to infertility and marriage breakdown as I got older. There was never any condemnation from Mum, although she did gasp and shake her head sometimes. Whenever my life collapsed – which was often – I'd move back in with her, and no matter my age or what I was up to, she always put a hot-water bottle in my bed at night. [...]
Mum advised, supported and steered me through my many disasters. Whether I'd said something stupid to someone at a party, made a mistake at work, fallen out with a colleague, was lonely, applying for a job, in a difficult relationship or spiked with drugs at a nightclub, she helped me make sense of the situation and find a way forward.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“Things get a bit out of hand at Caroline's. No one eats anything, someone pisses in the pot plants and the turkey is stuffed, arse up, down the toilet. I didn’t see who did it, but it was obviously the silly English boys, the Americans would never do anything like that, they’re much more respectful.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“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.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“I rush home and put the record on ['Horses’ by Patti Smith]. It hurts through stream of consciousness, careers into poetry and dissolves into sex. [...] She’s a private person who dares to let go in front of everyone, puts herself out there and risks falling flat on her face. Up until now girls have been controlled and restrained. Patti Smith is abandoned. [...] Listening to Horses unlocks an idea for me - girls’ sexuality can be on their own terms, for their own pleasure or creative work, not just for exploitation or to get a man. [...] Hearing Patti Smith be sexual, building to an organic crescendo, whilst leading a band, is so exciting. It’s emancipating. If I can take a quarter or even eighth of what she has and not give a shit about making a fool of myself, maybe I can still do something with my life.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“Six months after Lucien traveled to Australia, Mum left her son, her parents, her brothers and sisters, her work, her friends and her country, sailed over the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, through the Suez Canal, across the Indian Ocean, into the Pacific and joined her husband in Sydney to start a new life. That's the sort of thing people did back then. Everyone was starting again after the war, after losing mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, children, husbands and wives. It seems shocking now, but there wasn't such a sentimental attitude towards family or such a fear of death then as we have now. (People who live through wars often develop attachment disorders as protection from loss.)”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“It's often not until after a decision is made that you know whether you've made the right choice. The relief tells you.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“I’m too outspoken for most people, they think you’re rude if you tell the truth. ‘Punk’ was the only time I fitted in. Just one tiny sliver of time where it was acceptable to say what you thought.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“Perhaps 'defective' is a middle-aged person's default setting. Like the life cycle of a pear we go unripe, unripe, ripe, off. Except the men I meet seem to go adolescent, adolescent, adolescent, old, with no ripe bit, no wise bit, no emotional maturity before they wither.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“Jeannot offers me heroin. I’m tempted. Not because I want to forget what I’ve done, or because I’m so down, even though both are true, but because I’ve lost my identity. I haven’t a clue who I am. I feel like a nothing. But I know without a doubt, if I take heroin now, I will destroy the tiny morsel of myself that is left, I will be lost forever. (Funny how heroin comes along at times like this. These guys can smell your weakness, like sharks smell blood.) I muster all my strength and say no.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“I can’t stand up in front of people and play and sing. I would rather die.
Remember, Viv, the Year of Saying Yes. So what if I die? So what if I’m crap and make a fool of myself? I know that no one ever does anything or gets anywhere without failure and foolishness. I’ve got to do it. Nelson has made me an offer I can’t refuse, the bugger.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“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.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“I think of it as saying Yes to Nothing. If your choice is either the wrong thing or nothing, however frightened you are, you’ve got to take nothing. Haven’t you?”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“There's a moment in the buddleia's lifecycle, purple flowers blooming, cabbage white butterflies flitting, when it's beautiful and triumphant, sprouting out of the broken wall without an ounce of earth to flourish in. That's what we humans have to do, I think whenever I see it, keep blooming despite the barren circumstances we sometimes find ourselves in. After a few weeks the buddleia becomes a weed again, , with grime-splattered leaves and crispy brown flowers that never fall off. You can only fight so hard, and for so long, before your environment engulfs you.”
Source: To Throw Away Unopened
“Ari [Up] was an artist and an artist needs love more than anyone, she needed loads, but I don’t know if she got enough on a one-to-one level. Everything came second to her music, even family. You have to be selfish to be an artist; your family just have to accept that. It’s not personal, it’s not that you don’t love them. What an artist gives their family isn’t routine and their constant presence, they give vitality and ideas, independence and creative thinking.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys
“I put on a tight black lace dress Sid got me from a jumble sale. It didn’t quite fit so he slashed a slit in the side – which is now held together with safety pins – then he hacked the bottom off whilst I was wearing it, leaving the hem really short and frayed. I pull on my holey black tights and Dr Marten boots; I still never wear heels if I’m seeing Sid.”
Source: Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys