Cleopatra and Frankenstein

When the darkest part of you meets the darkest part of me, it creates light.

People are like this too, you know,” he says eventually. “We break. We put ourselves back together. The cracks are the best part. You don’t have to hide them.

Fondness was the best word she could think of to describe what they felt for each other. Fondness was warm but not tepid, the color of amber, more affectionate than friendship but less complicated than love.

But the people who did get that love, they grew up to be different from us. More secure. Maybe they’re not as shiny or successful as you and I feel we have to be. But it’s not because they’re not interesting. They just don’t feel they have to do the tap dance, you know? They don’t have to prove themselves all the time to be loved. Because they always were.

I'm so lonely I could make a map of my loneliness....Sometimes I'm so lonely I'm not even on that map.

Love looks through spectacles that make copper look like gold, poverty like riches, and tears like pearls.

The hole is loneliness,' said Cleo quietly. 'Why's that?' said Audrey, 'You can't stand above someone and tell them to get out of it,' she said. 'Or teach or preach it out of them. You have to be in it with them.

Fun was fine when you were young, but as you got older it was kindness that counted, kindness that showed up.

I need to make money. I need to write today. I need to clean the bathroom. I need to eat something. I need to quit sugar. I need to cut my hair. I need to call Verizon. I need to savor the moment. I need to find the library card. I need to learn to meditate. I need to try harder. I need to get that stain out. I need to find better health insurance. I need to discover my signature scent. I need to strengthen and tone. I need to be present in the moment. I need to learn French. I need to be easier on myself. I need to buy organizational storage units. I need to call back. I need to develop a relationship with a God of my understanding.

She’d learned early that it was quicker to bond with another person over what you didn’t like than what you did, and that the easiest way to feel close to someone was to do something transgressive together. That’s why smokers always made friends.

And you’re in love?” “Ma, we’ve never even kissed.” “And that has anything to do with it?” “Okay, fine. Yes, I think so. But don’t tell anyone. Don’t even repeat it to yourself.” “Why?” “Because it’s humiliating.” “Sweetheart, love is humiliating. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?” “Who would have told me that?” “Do you know the word humiliate comes from the Latin root humus , which means ‘earth’? That’s how love is supposed to feel.” “Like hummus?” “Like earth. It ground s you. All this nonsense about love being a drug, making you feel high, that’s not real. It should hold you like the earth.” “Wow, Ma.” “What? I have a heart, don’t I?

Everybody’s got a hungry heart. The trick is to learn when you’re eating to fill the heart instead of the stomach. Feeding the stomach, she said, is easy. That’s just diet. It’s learning how to feed the heart that’s hard.

We want because we’re wanting . Both senses of the word. The lacking and the longing, all rolled into one. The more you find yourself wanting, the more you want.

I don't understand this obsession with happiness," she said. "Happiness is like the Hollywood sign. It's big, it's unattainable, and even if you do make it up there, what's there to do but come back down?

He became the hook upon which she hung her whole self.

What a thing it must be to be indifferent to indifference.

Everyone I know is either more successful or more interesting than me. This realization is nothing new. In fact, it used to feel like everyone I didn’t know was more successful and interesting than me too. I still remember the sensation of watching a talent show on TV as a child and realizing that the girl dancing was a whole year younger than me. She was wearing a red sequin dress and patent tap shoes. She looked like a ruby, a human jewel spinning across the stage. I was in my pajamas from T.J. Maxx eating cereal for dinner, already destined for a life of mediocrity. Why didn’t I just pull myself together back then? I was five! I could have turned it around!

What do you do not to feel sad?", I ask. "I let myself feel sad.

He wished he loved her a little more or hated her a little less, something to tip the scale. Instead, he lived in the fraught balance between the two, each increasing the intensity of the other....

Sweetheart, love is humiliating. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?

Her laugh was the sound of a slot-machine jackpot, a soda can cracking open, fairground music in the distance, a Corvette engine coming to life, a thousand hands applauding at once. It was one of those truly beautiful sounds.

Just breathe, Cleo," Zoe said. "I won't leave you. I won't go anywhere. You're safe." Cleo smiled into Zoe's gold-flecked eyes. Everything she had ever wanted to hear from a man was hers from the mouth of a girl.

Only then, in the quietness beneath, did the new feeling arrive. It was shame . Shame that she had quit her job, shame that she did not paint, shame that she had married Frank, shame that he was in love with someone else, shame that she had run to Anders for comfort, shame that he had discarded her, shame that Frank drank like he did, shame that they let Jesus die, shame that Frank had let her tear apart the whole apartment looking for her before coming clean about what he’d done, shame that she’d covered for him and told everyone that Jesus had escaped, shame that it was her secret now too, shame that she was too afraid to leave him when she said she would, shame that her mother was dead and she could not ask her for advice, shame that her mother didn’t want to be her mother enough to not be dead, just shame, shame, shame.

Cleo’s like a cat,” said Frank. “She can touch you, but you can’t touch her. That’s her thing.

Cleo and Frank could not make each other happy, no matter how hard they’d tried.

It struck her that adult life ws endlessly harsh and exciting, something to be overwhelmed by again and again, like a wave beating her down as she tried to stand.

Two parts contentment, one part desire. It seemed a good formula for living, though one she had not mastered yet.

He didn't want to see anymore, he just wanted to feel and be felt, texture on texture.

All this nonsense about love being a drug, making you feel high, that's not real. It should hold you like the earth.

She was an artist, like you. With a—I don’t know how to say this well—an ego that is large but self-esteem that is small?