Melissa Febos Quotes
The frustration of being marginalized often gets misdirected at the most visible members of one's own community, because they are more accessible than the real agents of marginalization.
Abandonment by a lover won't kill us. But it awakens the parts of us that remember when it could.
I see consensual S&M no differently than I see consensual anything: as beautiful, and never any one thing.
Children's stories force logic upon the gruesome facts of our lives. They mirror our troubles and submit them to a chain of causality.
All our stories are part invention - the way we've decided to make sense of what has happened.
A lot of the experiences I write about could be described as grasping for boundaries, trying to find the limits of things.
Maybe feeling of presence in my body is why I've always sought out extreme experiences; it forces me to be in a moment, to face the fact of my existing in that particular moment, in my body.
I'm always writing to a younger version of myself, or a young woman who is like I was. I want that girl to know that I really existed and that it all went down that way.
I can only see right in front of me when I'm writing, you know? I never think of it as raw or personal or anything but where I'm at in the moment. But I can see it sort of after I finish.
Being celibate was so wonderful. It taught me a lot about love, but even more about my own self outside of love. I'd never met myself out of love before, really.
Letting go of the cozy stories you've been carrying around is devastating. But there's more room for new stuff after you do it.
The craft work becomes a mediator between me and my secrets, between me and the listener.
Torch songs are confessions. They are an expression of feeling that cannot be concealed or contained or minimized. They are marked by anguish, yes, but also by yielding.
I can still discern people's weaknesses, but it doesn't make me want to exploit them; it makes me want to hug them.
You don't have to write like David Foster Wallace or James Baldwin or Maggie Nelson - indeed, you shouldn't. Those writers are doing it better than you ever could.
New York at night, from its bridges, is a miracle. When I first came to the city, it took all my fantasies and set them on fire, turned them into flickering constellations of light.
Anyone who makes a life of what they love is a hero to me, and it's important for those people to be visible in every kind of life, every kind of love, every kind of work.
It has been my experience that the people I judge most harshly are the ones in whom I recognize some part of myself.