“The problem wasn't thinking of myself as the protagonist of a narrative it was that I hadn't figured out the right narrative yet.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“This is female socialization, that is, the desire to be everywhere approved of, carried to its logical extreme.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Later I understood that his ugliness gave him power. Or anyway it made him mean, and if you're a white man, being mean, usually you get what you want.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“You, I said to my reflection in the mirror, are a real bitch.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“No one has a plan for you and your life doesn't have a soundtrack, it's just a series of . . . accidents and split-second decisions and coincidences and demographics, where you live and when you were born and who your parents were and how much money they had.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Truth didn't help. Everything that had ever happened could never be integrated into something coherent. The trick was picking the right moments. The trick was knowing when to lie.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“But I had never had a self I was much interested in keeping . . .”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“The writer who depicts an abhorrent male character still demands that the reader pay the abhorrent man his attention.”
Source: Topics of Conversation
“Palestine is the anvil of our souls.”
“Perhaps all this time I have been wrong about the story's protagonist, the man who runs out of road. Because he hasn't, not really. I mean, he can drive into the ocean. He can always decide to turn around.”
Source: Topics of Conversation