“All our stories are part invention - the way we've decided to make sense of what has happened.” Quote by Melissa Febos
“Sometimes I see my students, especially the ones with a gift for the lyrical, reaching far outside the realm of their own experience for language and images. I understand this impulse. We think, in the beginning, that striking exotic words together will create something entirely new. That we must be worldly in our vocabulary. We idolize the styles of other writers and don't trust or perhaps yet know our own.” ThinkingKnowsSometimesTogetherLanguageStyleStudentsImpulseRealmsReachingWorldlyVocabularyExoticDon't TrustLyrical Author:Melissa Febos
“You don't have to write like David Foster Wallace or James Baldwin or Maggie Nelson - indeed, you shouldn't. Those writers are doing it better than you ever could.” WritingBetter Than YouNelsonMaggie Author:Melissa Febos
“I've always looked very closely at people, and seen a lot; that was true even when I was a kid. That's what made me a good domme, but it's also what makes me well suited to being a writer, and a teacher.” PeopleWellsMadeKidsTeacher Author:Melissa Febos
“I can still discern people's weaknesses, but it doesn't make me want to exploit them; it makes me want to hug them.” PeopleWantStillsI CanWeaknessHugExploits Author:Melissa Febos
“Early in my career as a domme, I both admired and feared becoming one of those career dommes. I saw, in myself, and in some other women in that industry, the way that sex work could eclipse the other parts of your personality, the way that I started to feel as if I wasn't qualified to do anything else. I had always known that I wanted to be a writer, and I stopped writing for a time while I was domming; the experience subsumed my other interests, and it scared me. Now, however, I have nothing but admiration for them.” IfsWayFeelsWritingWantedSexInterestKnownCareersSawsPersonalityIndustryBecomingScaredAdmirationQualifiedEclipseSex WorkBecoming One Author:Melissa Febos
“Anyone who makes a life of what they love is a hero to me, and it's important for those people to be visible in every kind of life, every kind of love, every kind of work.” PeopleKindImportantLove IsHeroVisibleKinds Of Love Author:Melissa Febos
“I see consensual S&M no differently than I see consensual anything: as beautiful, and never any one thing.” BeautifulOne Thing Author:Melissa Febos
“S&M is just a set of practices that get classified as a single category, when more accurately they are a part of much larger set of behaviors: expressions of love, and self, and play, and even art. There is no hard line between "vanilla" sex and S&M sex, or any other kind of relation between people.” PeopleKindArtSelfHardPlaySexLinesPracticeExpressionBehaviorRelationCategoriesVanillaExpressions Of Love Author:Melissa Febos
“Behaviors and lifestyles that are classified as "normal" rarely get so generalized, public perception of heterosexual relationships, for instance, or of the "white" experience, allow for the infinite variety of experiences that exist under such headings, but people love to reduce the vastness of individuality and subjectivity within marginalized types of experience.” PeopleWhiteTypeBehaviorNormalPerceptionInfiniteIndividualityLifestyleInstanceVarietyHeadingsSubjectivityVastnessMarginalized Author:Melissa Febos
“We're going to rebuild America with American workers and American tools.” AmericaToolsWorkersAmerican Workers Author:Mike Pence