Jennifer Clement Quotes & Sayings

Jean was black and had to present himself as separate from graffiti somehow. Keith was gay and white and could glamorize graffiti in a way that Jean could not. Jean and Keith both understood this. — Jennifer Clement

He stepped on my shadow. I could not walk. And then I could not breathe. I did not know what had happened until it happened. It was like trying to stop the rain. — Jennifer Clement

If you were quiet about something then it never happened. Someone would write a song about it for sure. Everything you're not supposed to know about, or talk about, eventually turned up in a song. Some — Jennifer Clement

High heels are a plot against women, they throw our spines out and stop us from standing on the ground. — Jennifer Clement

I miss you even
when you are here — Jennifer Clement

He refuses to sell his paintings and writes "NOT FOR SALE" on some of them. He is furious because people are writing about his ghetto childhood and call him a "graffiti artist" and "primitive." "They don't invent a childhood for white artists," he says. — Jennifer Clement

He loved to shock, even with generosity. It was like punching someone. — Jennifer Clement

She told me to tell you love is not a feeling. It's a sacrifice. — Jennifer Clement

He paints a simple square house with a triangle roof that has an "S" inside, "Because, Suzanne, you are my home. — Jennifer Clement

You can leave but you can always come back. You can live here again. Life can be a circle, not just a line. — Jennifer Clement

When we walk I hear your footsteps
and miss your voice — Jennifer Clement

Don't ever pray for love and health, Mother said. Or money. If G-d hears what you really want he will not give it to you. Guaranteed. When my father left my mother said, get down on your knees and pray for spoons — Jennifer Clement

He always appreciated expensive things, as if consuming them would make him valuable. — Jennifer Clement

A lot of the early jazz artists, of course, couldn't even walk through the front door of the hotels and clubs they were playing in and had to enter through back doors and kitchens, and I think Jean felt this was a metaphor for his place in the art world: he had entered through the back door. He broke into the white art world in a way that had never been done before by any black. — Jennifer Clement

But the reason I decided to go to New York was because I had seen Iggy Pop and I thought I had seen God. And because I had sent to Interview magazine for Rene Ricard's first book of poetry, The Blue Book. I had never sent for anything before but something told me to do this. I had read that book over and over again like a Bible. I realized that a book can reach out and embrace you like an arm and make you walk away from everything you thought you understood. — Jennifer Clement