I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn’t make sense to my teachers. They didn’t rhyme. They...

Being a good mother is being a hero. Right?

I always wondered what it must be like to lose a twin—if somehow Mary felt it like it was happening to her. If she felt physical pain.

The girl in the mirror wasn’t who I wanted to be and her life wasn’t the one I wanted to have.

Stories are like genies…They can carry us into and though our sorrows. Sometimes they burn, sometimes they dance, sometimes they weep, sometimes they sing. Like genies, everyone has one. Like genies, sometimes we forget that...

You can’t doubt so much, Psyche

I’ll be inside the one who holds you. And then I won’t be.

I stand here waiting. To disappear or sing.

Maybe i would become a mermaid… i would live in the swirling blue-green currents, doing exotic underwater dances for the fish, kissed by sea anemones, caressed by seaweed shawls. I would have a doliphin friend....

Lex surfed wicked, like the devil. He wasn’t afraid of anything, seemed like. He grinned at West as the waves came up toward them like towers of green glass, an emerald city. We’re off to...

You are so intense. Like a storm. It’s shocking how intense you are.

…It felt like they were telling each other secrets. Everything they said felt like that—whispered, tender, full of other meanings, like when you tell someone a dream or talk about your astrological signs as code...

She wasn’t crying at all. This was what scared him the most. Where had she locked up the things he’d seen her feeling that day when she heard? She wasn’t that big a girl to...

Once she was standing by her locker and her puka shells broke and scattered and she made a joke about it but he could tell she was upset. He wanted to buy her some more....

It was like when we were little kids and we played games on the ivy-covered hillside in the backyard. We were warriors and wizards and angels and high elves and that was our reality. If...

If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model and the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister, then New York is their cousin. Her hair is dyed autumn red or aubergine or Egyptian henna,...

It was always a relief when she came home to him. Like water or food. Like music or that moment when you cut yourself with a knife and squeeze the skin and no blood oozes...

Nightingale”Did I wound you, mutilate. Take away your voice. Did I cut something from you. Leave you locked in silence?This is what you do: you sing. Every part of you. Your locks of hair sing,...

The true warrior isn’t immune to fear. She fights in spite of it.

Wish on everything. Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And stars of course, first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars....

Sometimes a wild horse needs to feel that his rider is just a little bit wilder.

Witch Baby wanted to ask Ping how to find her Jah-Love angel. She knew Raphael was not him, even though Raphael had the right eyes and smile and name. She knew how he looked–the angel...

If death is your lover, you don’t got to be afraid ever that he will ever leave you

Ugster vinyl pumps, Partridge Family records, plastic daisy jewelry, old postcards. . . . It’s a magpie Christmas market.

My reading and studying and retellings of old stories didn’t do anything except help me think better. I was at least thoughtful. Too thoughtful, my friends said. And all I thought about was myths and...

Under the ground seep the toxins of the population that lives above. If you have to, you will eat roots and earthworms. It is always night. Candles burn in lanterns made from tin cans. When...

valentinemy friends stitched it up with golden threadlike a redsatin pillow they gave me other whole ones tooroses and charms and red candlesmilagros to repair the real onethey told me i was no longer allowed...

War is being reminded that you are completely at the mercy of death at every moment, without the illusion that you are not. Without the distractions that make life worth living.

But death is stronger than that and when you cover your eyes you are the one who can’t see the dark. The dark still sees you.

If you want to find the trail, if you want to find yourself, you must explore your dreams alone. You must grow at a slow pace in a dark cocoon of loneliness so you can...

Love is a dangerous angel.

You have to make your own family, your own life.

L.A. kills people.’ Jacaranda said. ‘You’re lucky you’re leaving. You’ll be able to write.’She looked paler, going through another depression, smoking in bed in her lilac room. The walls were the color of her veins....

Weetzie could not even cry and make Kleenex roses. She remembered the day her father, Charlie, had driven away in the smashed yellow T-bird, leaving her mother Brandy-Lynn clutching her flowered robe with one hand...

Sometimes she has imagined what it would be like to fly, to live in the river, to run like a horse. She has dreamed of that freedom, that power, and fears the wildness in herself...

Under the pink Harlequin sunglasses strawberry dangling charms, and sugar-frosted eyeshadow she was really almost beautiful.

Each of us has a family tree full of stories inside of us, Dirk thought. Each of us has a story blossoming out of us.

They knew, though, she would not suffer as they had suffered. She was perfect. They were scarred.

It’s important to tell your story. It’s important to listen.

I’d sit around dreaming that the boys I saw at shows or at work – the boys with silver earrings and big boots – would tell me I was beautiful, take me home and feed...

Sometimes she wore Levi’s with white-suede fringe sewn down the legs and a feathered Indian headdress, sometimes old fifties’ taffeta dresses covered with poetry written in glitter, or dresses made of kids’ sheets printed with...

Happiness.” Isnt that cool?

I was starting to learn how to forget the things that made me sad. It was like a charm you followed step-by-step, collecting and blending the ingredients, placing everything in its proper place. It was...

Weetzie could see him–it was a man, a little man in a turban, with a jewel in his nose, harem pants, and curly-toed slippers. “Lanky Lizards!” Weetzie exclaimed.”Greetings,” said the man in an odd voice,...

You always fed strays and bent down to talk to the dogs you met on the street, looking straight into their eyes as if they were old friends. (Maybe they are, you said. From another...

Pianos, unlike people, sing when you give them your every growl. They know how to dive into the pit of your stomach and harmonize with your roars when you’ve split yourself open. And when they...

People worry so much. Just enjoy your body. That you can love. And you’re alive.

I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.

Magic can be found in stolen moments.

I will go to campus alone dressed in antique silk slips and beat-up cowboy boots and gypsy beads, and I will study poetry. I will sit on the edge of the fountain in the plaza...