{"author":"Alexander Chee","author_id":"Alexander+Chee","total_quotes":14,"quotes":[{"text":"Lilliet Berne, La Generale, newly returned to Paris after a year spent away, the Falcon soprano whose voice was so delicate it was rumored she endangered it even by speaking, her silences as famous as her performances.","author":"Alexander Chee","tags":["voice","she","her "],"id":8344,"author_id":"Alexander+Chee"},{"text":"Liz Benedict, a teacher of mine at Iowa, is the person who introduced me to James Salter's work.","author":"Alexander Chee","tags":["work","me","person "],"id":51831,"author_id":"Alexander+Chee"},{"text":"My fascination with women's clothes began very early. My mother was a very fashionable woman. She also made her own clothes. She had these fashion magazines, and I would draw the women in them. My middle school art teacher suggested that I have a fashion drawing show.","author":"Alexander Chee","tags":["art","women","mother "],"id":85820,"author_id":"Alexander+Chee"},{"text":"I could stand before him, be in his arms as I was just then, and still be lost to him, some phantom of a desire he cherished more than he cherished me, the woman he claimed to love.","author":"Alexander Chee","tags":["desire","reunion"],"id":109914,"author_id":"Alexander+Chee"},{"text":"I resented the idea of being talented. I couldn’t respect it — in my experience, no one else did. Being called talented at school had only made me a target for resentment. I wanted to work. Work, I could honor.","author":"Alexander Chee","tags":["honor","respect","talent","talented","work"],"id":143192,"author_id":"Alexander+Chee"},{"text":"The beauty of Maine is such that you can't really see it clearly while you live there. But now that I've moved away, with each return it all becomes almost hallucinatory: the dark blue water, the rocky coast with occasional flashes of white sand, the jasper stone beaches along the coast, the pine and fir forests somehow vivid in their stillness.","author":"Alexander Chee","tags":["water","blue","dark "],"id":163862,"author_id":"Alexander+Chee"},{"text":"Every now and then, you find a book that feels like it was keyed to your DNA.","author":"Alexander Chee","tags":["books","reading"],"id":221146,"author_id":"Alexander+Chee"},{"text":"PhD, MFA, self-taught—the only things you must have to become a writer are the stamina to continue and a wily, cagey heart in the face of extremity, failure, and success.","author":"Alexander Chee","tags":["writing-life"],"id":252684,"author_id":"Alexander+Chee"},{"text":"You ought to know, you were my best friend. You were. I know you loved me. I loved you.No one should have gone through what we went through, but we did. And it kills me to think of it.But I didn't love you like you loved me. I don't hate you for that. It just makes me sorry, that there isn't someone else who could love you better.I know when you think about how I went, you'll get it. I was always uneasy about being alive. The idea of being dead makes me feel clear. When I think of it. It makes me think peace, peace, peace. It makes me happy. I am looking forward to it, to the absence of everything. And so I want you to be happy for me, that this is better for me. That I found what I needed. I know you won't be. But it's the last thing I want. You happy.","author":"Alexander Chee","tags":["death","friendship","love","suicide","suicide-note","wisdom"],"id":254088,"author_id":"Alexander+Chee"},{"text":"And I would tell him, as we rise into the air, The curse is not that we cannot choose our Fates.The curse, the curse we all live under, is that we can.","author":"Alexander Chee","tags":["curse","fate"],"id":270515,"author_id":"Alexander+Chee"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":14,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}