The Air You Breathe

Fame is longing. Not yours, but the audience’s. A star is nothing more, nothing less, than the public face of private desire.

In life there are countless firsts and even more lasts. The firsts are easy to recognize; when you’ve never experienced something before – a kiss, a new style of music, a place, a drink, a food – you know exactly when you are encountering it for the first time. But lasts? Lasts nearly always surprise us. It’s only after they’ve disappeared that we realize we’ll never again have that particular moment or person or experience.

You are not you without me. And everything we are, together, is what we’re meant to be.

If remembering tells us who we are, then forgetting keeps us sane. If we recalled every song we’d ever heard, every touch we’d ever felt, every pain no matter how small, every sadness no matter how petty, every joy no matter how selfish, we could surely lose our minds.

Exile and fame have similar side effects: if you experience either one, your world is made narrow, and the only people can bear – the only ones who truly understand you – are the ones who are in the same boat.

It’s always easier to think that your intentions are just as important as the outcome, but this isn’t true. The outcome is everything. The outcome is what you live with.

We all take for granted things that come too easily. That's why I can't let you go--you're always a challenge to me. Here's my wow to you, here's all I believe: For you, I'll stay invisble. I"ll be the air you breathe.

When we are young, we give ourselves completely. We allow our first friends or first lovers or first songs inside us, to become a part of our unformed being, without ever thinking of the consequences, or of their permanence within us.

Being a woman is always a performance; only the very old and very young are allowed to bow out of it.

Her beauty was not a physical trait. Her beauty was an influence you fell under - like a stiff drink or a line of sweet flour - infusing you with bravery and wit and affability that you never knew existed inside of yourself until she coaxed it out.

In the deepest, purest parts of our imaginations there is no male or female, no bad or good, no villain or hero, no you or I. There is only feeling, and the exhilaration of feeling.

Happiness is not an end point. It is not a long-hidden treasure marked with an X on a map. It is not a reward, handed to you after years of diligent service. Happiness is like being in your mother’s womb—warm, safe, buoyant—with no inkling of when it will end and why.

If passion is deeply entwined with uncertainty, then a mother’s love is the opposite: it never wavers, never depends on performance, never requires an equal amount of love in return. You have the luxury of brushing off a mother’s love, knowing your scorn or indifference will never make it go away. It is like air—you can forget it exists, and that it is essential to your life.

People who attribute success to luck have never truly been successful. Luck may place an opportunity in your lap, but only a constant, obsessive attention transforms that opportunity into some kind of meaningful success.

when you have no power in this world you must create your own, you must adapt to your environment and try to foil the many dangers around you, so a woman’s pleasantness—her smile, her grace, her cheer, her sweetness, her perfumed body, her carefully made-up face—isn’t some silly by-product of fashions or tastes; it is a means of survival. The performance may cripple us, but it keeps us alive.

But life isn't as orderly as a story or a song; it does not always begin and end at compelling points.

Beyond that kitchen and those cane fields was a world of possibilities that I could not fathom, but wanted to. I was awed by the avarice of that cane fire. It was beautiful in its constant need, in its unbridled hunger. I watched it burn, its heat pounding against my skin, and knew that we were alike, that fire and me. We wanted more than we'd been given, and we always would

We allow our first friends or first lovers or first songs inside us, to become a part of our unformed being, without ever thinking of the consequences, or of their permanence within us. This is one of the beauties of youth, and one of its burdens.

watched it burn, its heat pounding against my skin, and knew that we were alike, that fire and me. We wanted more than we’d been given, and we always would.

Can something be called a memory if it is untrue?

We all have the same body parts: lips, teeth, tongues, palates, all leading to a series of tiny muscles in our throats covered in mucus the same consistency as hospital Jell-O. We take a breath, air hits the tiny folds of these muscles, they vibrate and produce sound. If we are lucky, they can produce song. It's more complicated than this, of course; we might all have the same body parts, the same ability to make sound, but not every voice is made equal.

Being part of an audience is like wading into a pool filled with strangers—you share the same waters, and when someone moves, even slightly, you feel the ripple. Without realizing, you also begin to move, and your movement sends its own signal. During any live performance there is always an exchange—not only from performer to the audience, but also within the audience itself.

Ambitions have planning and thought behind them. Needs are just instincts we feed. And they're always hungry. Needs make us into buckets with holes in them.

We think we need words because it is in our nature to define, to decode, to try to understand by piecing things apart and labeling them, like specimens in a museum.

What is sound but vibration carried over air? An endless and invisible tide that strikes our eardrums throughout our entire lives. It is overwhelming to think of the cacophony around us. Even the womb isn’t quiet; we hear the whoosh of our mother’s blood, the drumming of her heart, the growl of her stomach, and her voice – reverberated by fluid – until it vibrates inside each of our tiny bones.

It is a language we learn without even realizing it. We hear our first song and decipher its repetitions, its orderliness. The song teaches us what to expect and when to expect it. We learn to associate low notes with sadness

innate. Everywhere, you are observed and assessed: walking down the street, riding a bus, driving a car, eating in a café. You must smile, but not too widely. You must be pleasant, but not forward. You must accommodate and ingratiate but never offer too much of yourself, and never for your own pleasure. If you do this, it must be in secret.