Who knew why they waited, I thought, understanding that I, too, had it in me to wait. To expect change to come from outside, to concentrate on the task of meeting it, waiting to meet it, rather than going out and finding it.
I was doing that thing the infatuated do, stitching destiny onto the person we want stitched to us.
A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious. They seemed to think it had something to do with them.
I’d been listening to men talk since I arrived in New York City. That’s what men like to do. Talk. Profess like experts. When one finally came along who didn’t say much, I listened.
If your parents died suddenly, Sandro understood, your home was wherever you were, and now you were from nowhere. Your parents were your provenance. Dead, you had no provenance.
What happens slowly carries in each part the possibility of returning to what came before. In an accident everything is simultaneous, sudden, irreversible. It means this: no going back.
A forced contemplation of the heavens, crisp and angelic blue, a classic prelude to death.
Gloria was still talking, something about how shooting people was in a sense safer than making art, in terms of avoiding serious lapses in taste.
I have enormous respect for people who are gifted mechanics.
I usually get up between 7 A.M. and 8 A.M., have coffee, and go right to work. It’s really important not to get sidetracked in the morning so I’m still in that dreamy state for my writing.
The Seventies seemed like this really open time. There were a lot of strong women characters deciding what kind of artists they wanted to be.
Most go to prison not on account of their irreducible uniqueness as people but because they are part of a marginalized sector of the population who never had a chance, who were slated for it early on.
Art is like a stock with a decent return for people in finance, and they get to feel like they are involved with culture, spend time with artists, as part of their dividend.
Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It’s very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.
These women were taking over these former manufacturing warehouses in SoHo and figuring out a way to be fashionable and viable without money. It’s hard to imagine a life like that in Manhattan now – there’s something romantic about it.
My dad had a Vincent Black Shadow, which was a quite particular thing: it was the fastest cycle of its era… It sparked a world for me; when I was old enough, I got a motorcycle.