Francesca Lia Block Quotes & Sayings

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. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground. Birthday candles. Baby teeth. — Francesca Lia Block

If death is your lover, you don't got to be afraid ever that he will ever leave you — Francesca Lia Block

air. I am still holding the scissors, pointing — Francesca Lia Block

I wanted to die, then. I wanted to destroy the body I was trapped in, become what she was, no matter what it took. No matter how much mutilation or pain. But he looked away, at me. He pulled my face down and pressed my lips against his like he was almost trying to suffocate us both. — Francesca Lia Block

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 it is nighttime up above, you can crawl out, but only for a little while. You feel ashamed of your matted hair, your torn clothes, the dirt on your face. Who would want to speak to you? They are all shiny and pretty. They have parents and house with gardens. What do you have? The earth. Whole handfuls of it. The lizard people with their slit eyes and scaly skin. Your loneliness. Your longing. — Francesca Lia Block

He might be faithless but I believe in him. — Francesca Lia Block

It's not that I literally think I'm a fearie. It's just that I feel so different from most people. And this idea of a race living underground in caverns, spending all their days dancing and playing the fiddle and eating flowers and reciting poetry and sharing their dreams, that to me sounds much more real than the way people live in this world, hating and fighting and wanting and hurting. — Francesca Lia Block

We are all insane. But how do you distinguish sanity from insanity, how do you diagnose abnormality in this new world? — Francesca Lia Block

for frail but surprisingly strong fairies who had lost their way above ground
for burned mermaids and sick vampire girls
for wild wolfish women with sharp teeth and leaves in their hair — Francesca Lia Block

Ash swirls in the air and the landscape is gray rubble that falls away into the sea. They kept saying global warming wan't going to be the end of us, that it was just threats from the fanatics, that we didn't have to make changes. But every year there were more earthquakes and flood and hurricanes and fires- every element expressing its imbalance. Every year the temperatures soared and the ice melted and no one did anything. My pink house - no longer mine - stands on the edge of nowhere like a rose in a Salvador Dali surrealist desert landscape ... — Francesca Lia Block

At the next Goat Guys show, the band came on stage with their wings, their haunches, their horns. The audience swooned at their feet.
Cherokee spun and spun until she was dizzy, until she was not sure anymore if she or the stage was in motion.
Afterwards two girls in lingerie and over-the-knee leather boots offered a joint to Raphael and Angel Juan. All four of them were smoking backstage when Cherokee and Witch Baby came through the door.
Witch Baby went and wriggled onto Angel Juan's lap. He was wearing the horns and massaging his temples. His face looked constricted with pain until he inhaled the smoke from the joint.
"Are you okay?" Witch Baby asked.
"My head's killing me. — Francesca Lia Block

The world isn't necessarily going to explode. There will just be vast change. There is hope. It is in the rain forests, the healing plants from there, and in sex and the children who are being born. They have different strains of DNA. They aren't really humans. So they will make the difference. — Francesca Lia Block

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. — Francesca Lia Block

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

You must reach inside yourselves where I live like a story, not old, not young laughing at my own sorrow, weeping pearls at weddings, wielding a torch to melt sand into something clear and bright. — Francesca Lia Block

The books downstairs were reciting their poetry to each other, rubbing together, whispering through the leathery covers. Wine was flowing through the water pipes. You had caught my leaping heart in your hands like a fish. — Francesca Lia Block

And then
with the curse, or, in this case, blessing, of the unpopular, the unathletic, the overweight, the strange
they vanished like shadows into the spring night. — Francesca Lia Block

It's so sick," Duck said. "I nicked myself shaving that last night at home, and I saw my own blood and I thought, How could I live in a world where this exists - where love can become death? Even if the doctor says we're okay, how could we go on watching people die?"
Duck buried his face against Dirk's shoulder and the streetlamp light shone in through the window, lighting up Duck's hair.
Dirk stroked Duck's head. "I don't know. But we've got to be together," he said. — Francesca Lia Block

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. He would have merry eyes and thick flesh of a god. My fingernails would be tiny shells and my skin would be like jade with light shining through it I would never have to come back up
— Francesca Lia Block

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. — Francesca Lia Block

At least the girls in stories were alive before they died. — Francesca Lia Block

Under the twinkling trees was a table covered with Guatemalan fabric, roses in juice jars, wax rose candles from Tijuana and plates of food - Weetzie's Vegetable Love-Rice, My Secret Agent Lover Man's guacamole, Dirk's homemade pizza, Duck's fig and berry salad and Surfer Surprise Protein Punch, Brandy-Lynn's pink macaroni, Coyote's cornmeal cakes, Ping's mushu plum crepes and Valentine's Jamaican plantain pie. Witch Baby's stomach growled but she didn't leave her hiding place. Instead, she listened to the reggae, surf, soul and salsa, tugged at the snarl balls in her hair and snapped pictures of all the couples. — Francesca Lia Block

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 and an empty glass in the other, and leaving Weetzie holding her arms crossed over her chest that was taking its time to develope into anything — Francesca Lia Block

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 old paintings that made me feel drunk on wine or struck my lightning but didn't matter to most people. — Francesca Lia Block

I try to see the dark and light in everything. This is my way of comforting myself when I am dealing with those emotions. — Francesca Lia Block

She went out in the city with its lights like a radioactive phosphorescence, wandered through galleries where the high-priced art on the walls was the same as the graffiti scrawled outside by taggers who were arrested or killed for it, went to parties in hotel rooms where white-skinned, lingerie-clad rock stars had been staying the night their husbands shot themselves in the head, listened to music in nightclubs where stunning boyish actors had OD'd on the pavement. — Francesca Lia Block

This way she could feel the rush of warm air, blowing back her hair as if she were a plant. She could go out into the night and become a part of it and forget who she was. — Francesca Lia Block

Maybe he was real. Maybe I'd made him up. Either way, he didn't think I needed him anymore. Maybe he was right. — Francesca Lia Block

We both believe in monsters. But all the ghosts and demons are you. And all the angels and genies are you. All the kings, queens, Buddhas, beautiful boys. Inside you. No one can take them away. (Missing Angel Juan.) — Francesca Lia Block

You're meant to have whatever your heart desires. Whatever your heart wants that much is already a part of you. — Francesca Lia Block

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 pink piglets or Disney characters. — Francesca Lia Block

The girl in the mirror wasn't who I wanted to be and her life wasn't the one I wanted to have. — Francesca Lia Block

I pounded through the houses, staggering down the hallways, falling down the steps. It was a hot streaky dawn full of insecticides, exhaust, flowers that could make you sick or fall in love. My battered Impala was still parked there on the side of the road and I wanted to lie down on the shredded seats and sleep and sleep.
But I thought of the bones; I could hear them singing. They needed me to write their song. — Francesca Lia Block

Be love because you are. — Francesca Lia Block

The most Beautiful people are the ones that don't look like one race or even one sex — Francesca Lia Block

My heart is a teacup with hairline cracks. I feel like I have to walk real carefully so it won't get shaken and just all shatter and break. — Francesca Lia Block

You have to make your own family, your own life. — Francesca Lia Block

I wanted him to hold me, to take care of me. To make the pain dissolve away. I know that this was part of what had ruined everything but I wanted it once more anyway. — Francesca Lia Block

Same old boring boring story America can't stop telling itself. What is this sicko fascination? Every book and movie practically has to have a little, right? But why do you think all those runaways are on the streets tearing up their veins with junk and selling themselves so they can sleep in the gutter? What do you think the alternative was at home? — Francesca Lia Block

What would it be like if i thought i was pretty
what would it be like if i carried that knowledge around
like i do the knowledge that i am a writer
pretty like peonies pretty like satin pretty like the child i was
would i speak to you differently
would i be healthier less stressed
less worried
would i buy more shoes or fewer
would i be more or less afraid
of death would i find something else
to hate about myself
would i get this jealous
when your eyes aren't touching me
in this city of movie star beauties
would i be able to write such raw and seductive words
would you have fallen in love with me sooner
would i have frightened you away
before you had the chance? — Francesca Lia Block

Culturally idolized beauty is not only foolproof, but potentially dangerous. — Francesca Lia Block

A kiss about apple pie a la mode with the vanilla creaminess melting in the pie heat. A kiss about chocolate, when you haven't eaten chocolate in a year. A kiss about palm trees speeding by, trailing pink clouds when you drive down the Strip sizzling with champagne. A kiss about spotlights fanning the sky and the swollen sea spilling like tears all over your legs. — Francesca Lia Block

Love is the worst earthquake there is. Can crush you to the thickness of your bones. Love can be like cancer sometimes. Terminal. It can make you vomit. It can make you want to cut it out. It can take you over against your will. — Francesca Lia Block

We try on different dresses, different selves, but our souls are always the same - ongoing, full of light. — Francesca Lia Block

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

I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence. — Francesca Lia Block

Hopefully, when you are young, you discover something called love, which is really just another name for going home. — Francesca Lia Block

My baby brother would never call Hex soft. Not Hex.
And not me, either. Not anymore. Not any fucking more. — Francesca Lia Block

It's important to tell your story. It's important to listen. — Francesca Lia Block

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 the magic of forgetting. — Francesca Lia Block

Max asked, 'Why death, do you think?'
'The Iroquois say that the world was too full, so the men and women got together, separately, to find an answer. The men came up with the idea of not having any more children. But the women refused to give up having babies. Death was their answer.'
Max nodded. He took a deep breath. It felt like he hadn't breathed like that in month, maybe years. — Francesca Lia Block

What shall we do? All of us passionate girls who fear crushing the boys we love with our mouths like caverns of teeth, our mushrooming brains, and watermelon hearts? — Francesca Lia Block

Life was small but good. (15) — Francesca Lia Block

What sexual preference do you hope she has?" "Happiness." Isnt that cool? — Francesca Lia Block

Maybe one night I'll be asleep and I'll feel a hand like a dove on my cheekbone and feel her breath cool like peppermints and when I open my eyes my mom will be there like an angle, saying in the softest voice, When you are born it is like a long, long dream. Don't try to wake up. Just go along until it is over. Don't be afraid. You may not know it all the time but I am with you. I am with you. — Francesca Lia Block

I am constantly thinking ahead to what I want to write about in the future, and when I'm done with one project, I give myself a little time and then start the next one. — Francesca Lia Block

I think that poetry is perfect for women raising children, with just bits of time and such need to connect to other women out of the isolation of motherhood. — Francesca Lia Block

Let's not be afraid of anything that can't really hurt us. — Francesca Lia Block

Pulling heads off Barbies, sticking them on the TV antenna and ruining the reception. But thats how witch babies are. — Francesca Lia Block

I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands. — Francesca Lia Block

Are you?
What?
What you once were?
I can't remember. — Francesca Lia Block

Baby, I love you. Pen ... More then I love the color black. More than I love cigarettes, more than I love books. Even music."
"More than food. More than art or stories. More than words ... — Francesca Lia Block

After his kisses and hugs it feels like without them my body will fall apart into pieces. — Francesca Lia Block

Morning. Strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder sugar sun. And nobody to munch on it with — Francesca Lia Block

She was free, still, like a child, the way it is before you are seen and then after that you can never remember who you are unless someone else shows it to you. — Francesca Lia Block

She knew they were all afraid. But love and disease are both like electricity, Weetzie thought. They are always there
you can't see or smell or hear, touch or taste them, but you know they are there like a current in the air. We can choose, Weetzie thought, we can choose to plug into the love current instead. — Francesca Lia Block

I close my eyes. I am the visionary, the one-eyed seer, the storyteller. I am Pen. I can fight with the power of images and words. — Francesca Lia Block

She pushed the gardener away and called for them. In her sleep she had seen love. It was poisoning. It was possessing. Devouring. Or it was seven pairs of boots climbing up the stairs to find her. — Francesca Lia Block

You are my Marilyn. You are my lake full of fishes. You are my sky set, my 'Hollywood in Miniature,' my pink Cadillac, my highway, my martini, the stage for my heart to rock and roll on, the screen where my movies light up. — Francesca Lia Block

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 someone said, Isn't it cute, look at them playing, we would have smiled back, humoring them, but it wasn't playing. It was transformation. It was our own world. Our own rules. — Francesca Lia Block

When you look at pain as material it makes all the difference in the world. I thought, the pain that is too big to be eased by its use as material would be a pain I couldn't (and wouldn't want to) even imagine. — Francesca Lia Block

In Mexico people wear hummingbird amulets around their necks to show they are searching for love. Here people pretend that they aren't. Searching. — Francesca Lia Block

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. He wanted to give her a million strands of little nesting polished shells, and tropical flowers and ice creams and lemonades and a pale blue surfboard to teach her to surf on and anything else she wanted. Instead he let his checkered Vans step on one of the rolling shells and crush it. — Francesca Lia Block

Just like any woman, ... we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our children, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same. — Francesca Lia Block

Any love that is love is right. — Francesca Lia Block

Take my eye," I say. "I have another. — Francesca Lia Block

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 see you, guts shining, brain pulsing, heart right there exposed in a rhythm that beats need need, need need, need need, pianos do not run. And so she plays. — Francesca Lia Block

Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man and Dirk and Duck and Cherokee and Witch Baby and Slinkster Dog and Go-Go Girl and the puppies Pee Wee, Wee Wee, Teenie Wee, Tiki Tee, and Tee Pee were driving down Hollywood Boulevard on their way to the Tick Tock Tea Room for turkey platters. — Francesca Lia Block

That was when I cut my arms with a razor blade as a means of creative expression. I only did it lightly, just grazing the skin, to see the way the blood would bleed out, to make myself look tougher. Not like some of those kids who keep going deeper and deeper, wondering what they look like down to the bone, because it's a world that's so close and yet so far and so dangerous and so much their own. The only world that is their own. — Francesca Lia Block

It wasn't that shocking kind of feeling they both expected. More like a huge sigh of relief spreading through them. Like your cold, naked body falling into a soft, warm bed, under covers, into arms. The place that you knew you needed but you were afraid to even imagine for fear that it would never come. — Francesca Lia Block

What time are we upon and where do I belong? — Francesca Lia Block

Love is a dangerous angel. — Francesca Lia Block

No one noticed Witch Baby as she went back inside the cottage, into the room she and Cherokee shared.
Cherokee's side of the room was filled with feathers, crystals, butterfly wings, rocks, shells and dried flowers. there was a small tepee that Coyote had helped Cherokee make. The walls on Witch Baby's side of the room were covered with newspaper clippings - nuclear accidents, violence, poverty and disease. Every night, before she went to bed, Witch Baby cut out three articles or pictures with a pair of toenail scissors and taped them to the wall. they make Cherokee cry.
"Why do you want to have those up there?" Weetzie asked. "You'll both have nightmares. — Francesca Lia Block

She wears a Val Surf T-shirt and boys' boxer shorts and she has a boy's phone number scrawled on her hand. Part of her wants to spit on it and rub it off, and part of her wishes it was written in huge numbers across her belly, his name in gang letters, like a tattoo. — Francesca Lia Block

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, your eyes, your hands, your smile. If I listen closely I can even hear your blood.
Was I the one that took that away?
Go down to the water where we used to swim. Stand under the sky at dawn when the sky is streaked with blood. Open your mouth and shout our secret to the waves. The ocean will be your voice. You won't have to carry anything alone. Little Sister, my Spring, April. Little nightingale. Sant at the edge of the water. Your voice will come back to you. Maybe. If I am silent. — Francesca Lia Block

You'll have to take me to some museums, he said. He was being the young man on the road, following the sun because gray weather made him suicidal, writing his poetry in his mind in diners and gas station men's rooms across the country. — Francesca Lia Block

You still cry too easily, but without your tears, at least, everything would burn. You are Spring in your jeans, in the laughing leaves. I think pearls melted over your bones. — Francesca Lia Block

He said, You're so tiny, like a doll, you look like you might break. I wanted him to break me. Part of me did. — Francesca Lia Block

Grandma Fifi had two friends named Martin and Merlin who were afraid in a way Dirk didn't want to be. They were both very handsome and kind and always brought candies and toys when they came over for tea and Fifi's famous pastries. But as much as Dirk liked Martin and Merlin he knew he was different from them. They talked in voices as pale and soft as the shirts they wore and they moved as gracefully as Fifi did. Their eyes were startled and sad. They had been hurt because of who they were. Dirk didn't want to be hurt that way. He wanted to be strong and to love someone who was strong; he wanted to meet any gaze, to laugh under the brightest sunlight and never hide. — Francesca Lia Block

Writing is very cathartic for me. As a teacher, I hear many students say that writing can be painful and exhausting. It can be, but ultimately I believe that if you push through, the process is healing and exhilarating. — Francesca Lia Block

Yes, the Beast changed.
He spoke more now, and did not gaze at Beauty in the same intense, almost pained way, as if he were feeling every emotion she felt. He did not sigh in his sleep when she sighed and his stomach didn't growl when hers hurt. He could not read her thoughts anymore, and she could not read his. He seemed a bit more clumsy and guarded and distant, too. They no longer ran through the woods together, although they still walked there sometimes. They quarreled and raised their voices to each other once in a while. Each time, after they quarreled, Beauty bathed, combed the tangles from her hair, and began to wear shoes again for a few days. — Francesca Lia Block

My mother says that pain is hidden in everyone you see. She says try to imagine it like big bunches of flowers that everyone is carrying around with them. Think of your pain like a big bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one. — Francesca Lia Block

When I went back to look for it again I could never find it. It was as if someone had put some kind of glamour, some kind of spell, on that ground, and I felt as if I was walking in circles around it again and again, never able to see what was in front of my eyes.
That was how I felt about what happened to me when I turned thirteen. I felt as if I was always circling around my own brain trying to understand. — Francesca Lia Block

The lesson of this life is not for me to touch you again. It is to accept who I am now and not feel shame. — Francesca Lia Block

What are you going to do if you find art, Pen? You going to steal some and put it in the van?"
"I'm going to remember. When there was art. — Francesca Lia Block

No matter where I am, I am always loving you. — Francesca Lia Block

Pain can give you sight or make you blind. — Francesca Lia Block

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 that wants to live as beasts live, moved purely by need and desire. She has felt torn between the heat of her limbs and the thoughts in her mind telling her to be careful and good and always calm.
Don't scream or cry, don't run to him and throw yourself at his feet, pleading for him to take you in his arms, don't strip off your clothes and run naked to the water, wild with wanting. — Francesca Lia Block

love is the only thing we have to save us — Francesca Lia Block

Our eyelashes brushed like they would weave together by themselves, turning us into one wild thing. I say, I think I missed you before I met you even. — Francesca Lia Block