The Moth Diaries

You don't know where you are or where your dreams end and the world begins.

She goes where she pleases. She appears unhoped for, uncalled for. She moves through doors and walls and windows. Her thoughts move through minds. She enters dreams. She vanishes and is still there. She knows the future and sees through flesh. She is not afraid of anything.

How do we know that our life really happened and that we are not simply accumulating details, making it all up as we go along?

I laughed when I read about being born with two hearts, one of which is devoted only to destroying humanity.

.. the truth is what you can't see but are certain of anyway.

You have to trust someone before you can have rituals with them.

If I know something, I am not a victim. Victims don't know the meaning of their suffering. I am an enemy or a collaborator, not a victim.

I have always been intrigued by the journals that girls keep. They are like dollhouses. Once you look inside them, the rest of the world seems very far away, even unbelievable.

To sublime: to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state. To sublimate: to divert the expression of an instinctual desire or impulse from its primitive form to one that is considered more socially or culturally acceptable. Sublime: of outstanding spiritual, intellectual, or moral worth.

Nothing existed outside ourselves and school. For us, the world of politics, social revolution, the war in Vietnam never happened.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to have sex with a man. To be so intimate with another person. Not to hide anything. I don’t know if I could do that. It would have to be a boy anyway, not a grown man, someone as scared as me.

It's true that I never wanted to grow up. But how important was it really — to have decided to be human?

Hey, Ernessa, where the fuck are you?

I spent most of this weekend sitting on the sofa reading Proust. The only time my mother left her studio, which she locked behind her, was to go to Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt’s house.

Voor iedereen die zich afvraagt of het mogelijk is de puberteit te overleven, is een bevestigend antwoord de enige geruststelling die ik kan geven.

Some days I wonder how I'll get through a whole lifetime of thinking. A life that's just words, words, words, shuffling around in my head. Was I born that way?