{"author":"Emma Cline","author_id":"Emma+Cline","total_quotes":37,"quotes":[{"text":"No-one had ever looked at me before Suzanne, not really, so she had become my definition. Her gaze softening my centre so easily that even photographs of her seemed aimed at me, ignited with private meaning.","author":"Emma Cline","tags":["adolescence","identity","love"],"id":10524,"author_id":"Emma+Cline"},{"text":"For a moment, I tried to see myself through the eyes of the girl with the black hair, or even the boy in the cowboy hat, studying my features for a vibration under the skin. The effort was visible in my face, and I felt ashamed. No wonder the boy had seemed disgusted: He must have seen the longing in me. Seen how my face was blatant with need, like an orphan's empty dish. And that was the difference between me and the black-haired girl- her face answered all it's own questions.","author":"Emma Cline","tags":["adolescence","awkwardness","flirting","self-discovery","shyness","teen-girl"],"id":11463,"author_id":"Emma+Cline"},{"text":"She must have already forgiven him for leaving her behind. Girls were good at colouring in those disappointing blank spots. I thought of the night before, her exaggerated moans.","author":"Emma Cline","tags":["gender","girls","relationships"],"id":43683,"author_id":"Emma+Cline"},{"text":"The man was bearing down on me. My hands were limp and wet. Please, I thought. Please. Who was I addressing? The man? God? Whoever handled these things.","author":"Emma Cline","tags":["fear"],"id":51819,"author_id":"Emma+Cline"},{"text":"A lot of things in the house were broken or forgotten: the kitchen clock stopped, a closet doorknob coming off in my hand. The sparkly mess of flies I'd swept from the corners. It took sustained, constant living to ward off decay.","author":"Emma Cline","tags":["age","death","decay","time"],"id":52059,"author_id":"Emma+Cline"},{"text":"Money is ego, and people won't give it up. Just want to protect themselves, hold onto it like a blanket. They don't realize it makes them slaves. It's sick.","author":"Emma Cline","tags":["ego","money"],"id":67929,"author_id":"Emma+Cline"},{"text":". . . Even the surprise of harmless others in the house disturbed me. I didn't want my inner rot on display, even accidentally. Living alone was frightening in that way. No one to police the spill of yourself, the ways you betrayed your primitive desires. Like a cocoon built around you, made of your own naked proclivities and never tidied into the patterns of actual human life.","author":"Emma Cline","tags":["alone","fear","psychological"],"id":98026,"author_id":"Emma+Cline"},{"text":"Pamela was beautiful, it was true, and I felt that submerged attraction to her that everyone felt for the beautiful.","author":"Emma Cline","tags":["attraction","beautiful-people","envy"],"id":113152,"author_id":"Emma+Cline"},{"text":"At that age I looked at women with brutal and emotionless judgement. Assessing the slope of their breasts, imagining how they would look in very crude positions.","author":"Emma Cline","tags":["internalized-misogyny","judgement","puberty","women"],"id":118600,"author_id":"Emma+Cline"},{"text":"It was a gift. What did I do with it? Life didn't accumulate as I'd once imagined. I graduated from boarding school, two years of college. Persisted through the blank decade in Los Angeles. I buried first my mother, then my father. His hair gone wispy as a child's. I paid bills and bought groceries and got my eyes checked while the days crumbled away like debris from a cliff face. Life a continuous backing away from the edge.","author":"Emma Cline","tags":["death","depression","disillusionment","life","loneliness","passage-of-time","sense-of-self"],"id":128173,"author_id":"Emma+Cline"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":37,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}