Emma Forrest Quotes & Sayings

When I am in a relationship, I don't wear lipstick at all. I hate the smearing, the retouching, the constant throb of phoniness as you surreptitiously check the damage in your compact between kisses. I wear lots of mascara to compensate, different colors so I don't get bored. When I am about to break up with a guy, he has full warning because I start wearing lipstick again. — Emma Forrest

I think about pasta in the shape of Hello Kitty, stockings with diamond seams up the back, Marilyn's crumbling cake-mascara, and Liz Taylor's new white hair. I haven't got time for the trivials. — Emma Forrest

But I saw the pain and sadness in everything, and swirled it round my mouth like a fine wine. — Emma Forrest

Everyone asks about how I'll feel about the tattoos and scars in thirty years. I always say: "I'll like them." I've always loved damaged monuments, in architecture and in humans. — Emma Forrest

Every fear, every night terror, every hour I cried for Liev, every fight with Sebastian is registered as a neat white scar. — Emma Forrest

I used to devour biographies of people like Natalie Wood and Marilyn. — Emma Forrest

Write a page every single day, even if what you put on the page that day is no good - it's the only way to get better. — Emma Forrest

When he kisses me, I cry. I explain it's not because I wish he were someone else, it's because it's such a shock to the system to be desired after feeling so completely abandoned. — Emma Forrest

I'm in love with someone good and kind and gentle, and he's seen the darkness too, but somehow we've become each other's light. — Emma Forrest

You can have this kind of love. You can have it.
You just grab it. Of course the problem with
having that love is that you can lose it, too. — Emma Forrest

Cyndi Lauper was hilarious and generous, someone I'd loved from childhood who didn't disappoint. — Emma Forrest

He says he thanks every star the we existed on the same clestial plain. But here we are on earth, dirty, well used, a man made throughaway for intersecting dreams. — Emma Forrest

There's a boy whose affection I am determined to hunt down and kill. It used to be material objects I felt I needed to be happy. It would make me feel stable if I had him. If I had someone like him, it would prove that I'm stable, and then I wouldn't have to do the work to get there. I am constantly looking for ways to cede control of my worries to someone, anyone. — Emma Forrest

From the time I met him, he left me little clues of a man, a trail of bread crumbs to a gingerbread cottage. Inside the cottage were peeling pictures of Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe that keep sliding to the floor because the walls were too sweet to hold the Blu-Tack. I tried to pick the posters off the floor and got so distracted, I ended up in an oven. So I climbed out of the oven and out of the house and I was saving myself, but it hurt so bad. I found the boy I loved, but he didn't want to hug me because I was blistered and spotted with bread crumbs. I looked up close because, up close, I could always see myself reflected in the surface of his shiny, iconic beauty. But suddenly he had pores, grey hairs, and chapped lips. And I couldn't see a damn thing. — Emma Forrest

Are you mine?"
Yes.
"Are you mine?"
Yes.
"Are you mine?"
No.
"No?"
No. I loved being yours. But now I'm mine, which is all I ever was, in the end. — Emma Forrest

My thoughts are messy, my emotions are messy, my body goes in and out at will. The raised white scars on my arms and legs are the only aspect of my being that comes close to minimalism. They came from chaos, but it is hard to carve frustration and unease into the flesh. Only straight lines. — Emma Forrest

Yes, I have patterns of love addiction.
But I'm a woman.
Of course I do. — Emma Forrest

Now that he's gone, I feel like I'm a senior citizen who gave away her life savings over the phone.
And this is the crux: I never in my life believed in someone as much as I believed in him.
The shame is overwhelming. — Emma Forrest

Men and the pursuit of them are strongly intertwined with my mental health. I would say, in my defensive defense, that the problem with being a serial monogamist is, there isn't anybody random or unimportant: everybody you sleep with really means something, which is to say each of them is on your public record. At some point I wake up thinking, Fuck this! I don't want another man in my bed ever again. What I really want is a cat. — Emma Forrest

He was only twenty-five.He was young enough to miss his youth just as it was slipping away. The worst kind of loss-the one that is happening as you feel it. — Emma Forrest

It's as if he can no longer acknowledge the love he felt or the pain I am in. I have been dismissed. I don't think I was smarter or as beautiful as the other girls he did this to. It's just that I was me. It was all I had. — Emma Forrest

The problem with writing a book about bulimia is that whenever you go to the washroom, people think you're throwing up. — Emma Forrest

I think that's such a beautiful sentiment. Love should only last as long as a very expensive and impractical bikini that looks stunning, but dissolves in the sea within days. So many pop songs tell of this terrible, tiresome love that they want to last forever. But that just makes me think of long-life milk, acrid and fake. Love should be like a movie trailer. Even if the film's a stinker, you get the best laughs and the biggest explosions in the space of two minutes. — Emma Forrest

And then, with the feather-green darkness pressed against the windows, he puts his filthy fingers on my scrubbed hope face and says, "If I kiss you, it's all over." And then he does. And then it is. — Emma Forrest

No one ever loved you like him.
And no one ever took it away so completely.
But it's here.
Look around. — Emma Forrest

When I was younger I loved Betty Blue, and at the moment I'm completely besotted with Angelina Jolie. But sometimes I'm unnerved by the idea of men liking her. Because I think that there is a side to every man that really wants to watch a woman fall apart. — Emma Forrest

New York is the first place I have ever felt safe. — Emma Forrest

I would say at the moment the only person who could have played me this past year would have to be Angelina Jolie. — Emma Forrest

You may right now be nursing a broken heart. Friends will say, "Aren't you glad you had the experience anyway?" And you may say "No." Eventually, unbelievably, you may not remember the boy that triggered it all. You'll recall all the places you visited, but not how you got there. You'll remember the songs that you listened to. — Emma Forrest

I wanted to know how ugly I could get, how ruined and ugly and spoiled, before they stopped trying to fuck me. I didn't think they'd ever notice. Nobody had so far. Because I was still in the shape of a beautiful girl. Although I behaved like an ugly one. — Emma Forrest

You do it how you can do it,
so long as it's getting done,
you're okay. — Emma Forrest

[ ... ] at least my face moves when you look at it. At least I know I'm a fool. — Emma Forrest

He meant everything he said, when he said it.
But this is his default. And it won out.
Right now you're depressed about one thing.
Before you were depressed about everything.
These are good times for you."
"I'm afraid of loving again.
I'm afraid I've lost my faith."
"You haven't."
"The trapdoor I have in my mind?
That can go to those bad places?
It's almost gave way again."
"You know the ways to keep it nailed shut. — Emma Forrest

In other words, it was a struggle with himself. And the product of that struggle: anger, bitterness, resentment, envy or transformation, aspiration, hope, decency..the product of that struggle is the quality of your life and the nature of your soul. — Emma Forrest

Dr. R scratches out a note on his pad.
"Losing you both was only the practice pain, wasn't it? For my mum and dad ... "
He puts his finger on his lips, his elbow at his chest, not racked with cancer. "Yes."
"And when that happens, this will seem like nothing."
He nods.
"When it happens," he asks me, "what will get you through?"
"Friends who love me."
"And if your friends weren't there?"
"Music through headphones."
"And if the music stopped?"
"A sermon by Rabbi Wolpe."
"If there was no religion?"
"The mountains and the sky."
"If you leave California?"
"Numbered streets to keep me walking."
"If New York falls into the ocean?"
Your voice in my head. — Emma Forrest

When you live with voices in your head, you are drawn inextricably to voices outside your head. Very often the voices work to confirm your worst suspicions. Or think of things you could never have imagined! There are only so many hours of the day to hate yourself. — Emma Forrest

I want you to stay.
I never want there to be a time
when we don't share space. — Emma Forrest

It is madness. And if you don't know who you are, or if your real self has drifted away from you with the undertow, madness at least gives you an identity. It's the same with self-loathing. You're probably just normal and normal-looking but that's not a real identity, not the way ugliness is. Normality, just accepting that you're probably normal-looking, lacks the force field of self-disgust. If you don't know who you are, madness gives you something to believe in. — Emma Forrest

There's so much guilt there attached to having a perfectly good life. — Emma Forrest

What people don't understand when you've already been a suicide and pulled through is that after the sadness comes fear: Where is my mind going with this? I don't want to die. I do not want to die. When you don't have so much control over your own thoughts, over the myriad voices in your head,
you don't know where they could go. — Emma Forrest

Accepting the presidency, Barack introduces "my best friend of sixteen years, the love of my life, Michelle Obama" and I think I will pass out.
That, right there, is love in action. — Emma Forrest

This boy has negative charisma. He walks into a room and the oxygen starts to evaporate. I guess that's why girls sleep with him. They find his awfulness transfixing. He's like a lousy 1970's disaster movie that they can't bring themselves to turn off, even though it is making their life worse every minute they leave it on. — Emma Forrest

I finally accept that not only do I not
understand the death of my relationship,
but I do not need to.
These men were good and kind to me,
they loved me and I loved them back
and the shock at the finish holds no wisdom.
The revelation is not that I lost them,
but that I had them. — Emma Forrest

Your own love story? Your paramour may have had lovers before you. But no one has ever loved him the way you do. No one has ever heard music. Not the way you hear it. The songs are beautiful vampires, asleep in your iPod, coming alive at night, aglow. You can have them on your hours, yours to conduct. Music shapes us and we shape it. — Emma Forrest

He was a super shiny boy and I liked the shape of him. Under the blanket. In the shower. I liked his shadow on the street and his imprint on the sofa. I hated the smell of hair gel on his head, but I loved it on the pillow. I love the smell of losing someone. — Emma Forrest

Bad people very often do one good thing. — Emma Forrest

Time heals all wounds. And if it doesn't, you name them something other than wounds and agree to let them stay. — Emma Forrest

We intersect. He says he thanks every star that we existed on the same celestial plain. But here we are on earth, dirty, well used, a man-made throughway for intersecting dreams. — Emma Forrest

People don't know. We don't know ourselves so we tell ourselves what we really know is other people. We could say the depth of pain we feel for the lovers who've left us is because we knew them so well. — Emma Forrest

If killing yourself is not an option anymore,
you have to sink into the darkness instead,
and make something out of it. — Emma Forrest

When he asked if he was mine, tears in his eyes,
I think he knew what he would do,
what he would have to do,
and he was mourning us.
He was mourning us the whole time. — Emma Forrest

At the exit, they sell home-made soap with the evil eye attached, to protect yourself from people who'd wish you ill. I buy one, wondering, How do you hang it inside yourself? — Emma Forrest

Jeff Bridges says that the reason he's one of the few stars in Hollywood whose made his marriage last for decades is that every time they think there's no more doors left to walk through in the room, they just keep looking and keep looking until they find one. — Emma Forrest

I'm not crazy or dangerous,
just a bit eccentric and lonely. — Emma Forrest

I still believe that you truly find yourself
not in travel, but in other human souls. — Emma Forrest

You want to know, but are afraid to ask, whether or not I found someone. If there could be anyone to fill that hole in my heart after I lost him. I did.
"Life is futile," says my new therapist, Michaela,
"and no one gets out of it alive. There is only love. — Emma Forrest

Since I'm a cat who doesn't know what I am, I wear track pants with old-skool Nikes but Gina Lollobrigida skintight sweaters. I am caught between childhood and va-va-voom. — Emma Forrest

Let me tell you something: when you dance, you are the greatest dancer who has ever lived. And when you sing, you will have the courage to raise your voice to the heavens, knowing that you may never get an answer. — Emma Forrest

I enjoy films where two characters are coming of age, just different ages. That's why I love 'Paper Moon' so much. — Emma Forrest

Is it needy? It's not. We don't need each other. We just really, really enjoy each other. And we're good together. We're good people together. And I have the funniest feeling. I can really, truly touch this all, this happiness and the sadness too, I can trace all of it with my fingers. It isn't theoretical or distant. This feels like me. This is me. I love him, and, for the first time in a relationship, I also like me. Every time he says "I love you," I answer, "I believe you. — Emma Forrest

No one knows we're there, no one sees us. We never leave the room. I think about the secret voice you use when you make love. No one but that person will ever hear it. And here, we listen to each other, but we lock it in with touch, and the room vacuum seals it to stay fresh until we can breathe together again. When he breaks the silence it is to say, I want you to know that, when you get pregnant, nothing is going to change except your dress size. — Emma Forrest

I don't see what's so good about being genuine. Clog dancing is genuine. Isn't being fake more of an achievement? At least it takes some inspiration. Like, sherbet dips, they're a special food. Think of all the additives and coloring and grinding that it takes to create a sherbet dip. But carrots? They're just out there, shrieking, "Hi, we're some carrots! Love us for it!" They never have to prove themselves. — Emma Forrest

You're like Marilyn Monroe,' Ken tells me, which I take as a compliment and say a nervous "Thank You". Interrupting, he adds, 'You're all velvet and Velcro. Men want you because you're sexy and broken and when it gets too rough they can say "Hey! This toy is broken!" and toss you aside without feeling bad. — Emma Forrest

I say, "Well then I don't know if it was real,
and that makes me feel like I'm going insane again."
"Absolutely it was real. It was a real, partial picture. Because it ended preemptively, things you would have learned about him in the relationship, you are instead learning in the breakup. You have learned that he has a desperate desire for intimacy
and then a desperate desire for the cave.
He will get lonely there eventually and come back."
"To me?"
He doesn't pause. "To someone new."
"And I'll have to watch another girl?"
"You will have to, but you will also know
what lies ahead for that poor girl. — Emma Forrest

I'm not rich, though everybody thinks I am. — Emma Forrest

He was addicted to me
and now he has gone cold turkey.
He used to send me fifty texts a day.
And now he is ignoring me.
It's like I was once his Barack Obama.
And now I am John McCain,
conceding defeat like a sad-face sock puppet, knowing I have sold the best of myself.
He, my electorate,
not only does not want me,
he actively feels pity. — Emma Forrest

In hindsight, I have no idea why he was ever with me. He thought highly of my breasts. And ... that's it, I think. — Emma Forrest

It's like he has emotional amnesia ... I think you have to accept that the person you knew isn't there at the moment. I was witness to how much he loved you. I have the photos. This isn't the person we knew. I don't recognize this person. He's shed his skin. Her heart is broken too. She has to say the thing that will give me back my life. She draws on every reserve. I see how much it hurts her and it hurts me too. I came from her joy and her pain, I lived in it and I live in it now. — Emma Forrest

I will be forever grateful for your presence in my life. I am a much better human being because of you. The experience of loving you, living with you, was the greatest journey of my life thus far. You showed me an alternative to the man I was becoming.
I know I still have much to learn, much to accomplish, and I know my future is bright. I owe you the confidence I now have in myself. This is the confidence that could only come from the knowledge that a woman of your caliber loved me for who I am; for what you saw in me.
You are a great woman and I mean that in the strongest sense of the phrase. You feel deeply, think deeply, and live deeply. I admire so much about you. Regardless of whether our paths cross again, know that I am actively wishing you success and happiness. I pray that you will once again be part of my life. But if left with just the experience we've shared, I know my life was better because of it. — Emma Forrest

I like the cuts - they comfort me - I can't lie. — Emma Forrest

There is something deeply unsettling about a child crying insincerely. — Emma Forrest

I think I've lost my faith
and I can't stop writing
because I don't know how
much longer I can hold on. — Emma Forrest

Well. There is a psychiatric occurrence we see in men-not often women-where they put all their hopes and dreams onto one person, so intensely that at some point it trips a wire in the brain circuitry, and that causes them to go, in a minute, 180 degrees the other way. — Emma Forrest

There is a blessing in losing the one we love. It's the blessing of self-transformation. You don't have to who you were anymore. You've struggled. And now you can change. It doesn't mean that bits of that person won't cling to you, they will throughout your life, but they are now subsumed into something greater. That person has given you, in fact, the most important blessing, which is they gave you the blessing of transforming your soul into
something better, something more beautiful. — Emma Forrest

I wish I had been less keen to inject my own opinions, but I was a teenager and your teenage self is generally an idiot compared to the adult you. That's the way it should be. If it's the other way around, you have a problem. — Emma Forrest

The truth is I have had, for whatever reason, several movie-star boyfriends. — Emma Forrest

[ ... ] my quirks had gone beyond eccentricity, past the warm waters of weird to those cold, deep patches of sea where people lose their lives. — Emma Forrest

I don't want to go to university. I don't like unity and I hate verses. I just love the choruses of songs. — Emma Forrest

We're born alone and we die alone, but we get to travel with people along the way, and if you get lucky, you have a worthy consort. — Emma Forrest

You could be together forever, but one of you is going to have to go first. I want it to last. I love him and I want it to stay. — Emma Forrest

It took a long time, but my heart now feels full when I think of him. When you fall in love again - which I have - it's funny the other things that come back in with that open-ness. You have this ghost chorus of the lovers who came before, but they're benign now, they're good spirits. — Emma Forrest

It's all in her walk, a cartoon swagger. Part Jayne Mansfield, part Muhammad Ali. Men never know if it's an invitation upstairs or an invitation outside. — Emma Forrest

Hotel rooms are funny things. They make everything look different. If people have to sleep with each other, sexually or platonically, they should do it in kitchens. The kitchen is the epicenter of truth in any home or building. You could never misconstrue a look or a word or a touch in the icy cool, compartmentalized presence of a fridge. — Emma Forrest

When I was old enough to know better, I ate a bar of soap in the shape of the Muppets' Fozzie Bear, because I loved him so much I wanted to consume him, even if doing so made me ill. I didn't yet know the word 'foreshadowing.' Fozzie was the only first of many pop-culture icons I feel shaped by. — Emma Forrest

Of course he freaked me out.
Of course it's nothing to do with me.
But none of that matters.
He loved me and now he doesn't.
I was everything to him and now I am nothing. — Emma Forrest

At least you know where you are with blood. At least other people can see it. — Emma Forrest

My radar, after all these years of sanity, is still off when it comes to what people do or don't mean. — Emma Forrest

It's only a heartache. It isn't a tragedy. A tragedy would be losing the father of my children to cancer. This I wrestle with the hardest. There are thirty-one flavors of pain, like Baskin Robbins in hell. Am I allowed to feel pain at a breakup? When there is so much other shit going on in this world? Love is extremely serious. I don't think this is trivial. — Emma Forrest

I envied women with signature hair-dos, signature perfumes, signature sign-offs. Novelists who tell Vogue Magazine: "I can't live without my Smythson notebook, Pomegranate Noir cologne by Jo Malone and Frette sheets". In the grip of madness, materialism begins to look like an admirable belief system. — Emma Forrest

I wouldn't say that my emotions are extreme. I'd say they are committed. My moods are the equivalent of Madonna's dancing: inappropriate but all-out. If I'm going to be sad, I might as well be the saddest a girl can get. And if I'm happy, I want to be the happiest. The trouble is, I feel highs so ecstatic that just being normal feels like a thousand-mile drop and being unhappy is excruciating. — Emma Forrest

The goal was to get sane, to get whole, to be complete enough to support someone else. — Emma Forrest