They're Going to Love You

Not everything is a test,” she says gently. “Of how much you can stand on your own.

All this wasted time. For nothing. For ego. Because nobody could get exactly what they wanted. Because nobody knew how to stop themselves from being themselves.

Here it comes. Here it is. A rising, an exaltation. All this wreckage. All this gorgeous, unrepeatable wreckage. Life.

Having to struggle doesn't necessarily make you interesting. It might just make you tired. I want my work to be seen, to be part of the conversation of my art form, to collaborate with people I admire and respect. But these things are only important. They aren't sacred. The sacred thing is to feel, if only for a moment, that I'm not consuming, or forgetting, or losing the things of this world, but adding to them. That I have made something true, or beautiful, or both. That I might do it again.

Everyone I know has someone they love best. I'm no ones best.

I used to joke I'd escaped the curse of the male gaze, because so many men have to physically look up to meet my eyes. But the male gaze is a gods-eye view. Which is to say: omni-present, and internalized. There's still a man in the mirror, watching me look at myself.

You know what's more terrible than giving up a dream? To discover you haven't.

Good person, bad person. Success, failure. Outside, inside. These are danceable truths. To be flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. That’s danceable too. But the work of my life has been to ask undanceable questions and find a way to make ballets out of them. There’s nothing to do with this dance but be still.

The sacred thing is to feel—if only for a moment—that I am not consuming or forgetting or losing the things of this world but adding to them. That I have made something true or beautiful or both. That I might do it again.

What’s bred in the bone will come out in the flesh.

There was a time when all I wanted in the world was Bank Street. I didn’t call it that, I called it wanting to be a ballet dancer. I failed at both. But I’m not that girl anymore, and her dreams are no longer my dreams. Why should I feel like I failed her? I’m not that girl anymore. Oh, she’s still there.

Isabel's relations with her mother and sister were like those knots you get in necklaces. You try to tease them out and end up putting the chain back in the jewelry box.

I tried to help.” I can hear her swallowing. “I did try to get through to Robert, to remind him he only has one daughter. He’s the parent. He doesn’t get to hold a grudge.” Freya used to say that to me too. A parent doesn’t get to hold a grudge, a parent’s job is to be forgiving, et cetera. It’s not an argument that satisfies me, perhaps because I’m not a parent and don’t understand unconditional love. My view is Robert should have forgiven me not because I’m his daughter and he has to, but because what I did was forgivable.

What is the thing that happens in a friendship that isn't an absence of sex? The thing added, that's maybe only between women. Not a matter of our organs or whether we were born with them or what we do with them. It's this: a particular kind of glory that happens when we share our suffering and are seen. There's a rising - a cry, a rush, a beating of wings together. An exaltation. I'm loath to connect womanness with suffering, or suffering with greatness, but there it is.

This is my legacy. I come from people who are in the back of the photo. This is my inheritance: to know the precise distance between oneself, and greatness.

I think if you’re lonely too long, your sense of the world warps, and you can never find the right shape again.

The body which doesn't understand time remembers movement. Once class starts, my body falls into positions like batter filling a pan.

I miss talking with him,” he says. “I used to think I didn’t like most people. But it’s more that I don’t like myself around most people. I’m way more interesting and smarter around James. We’d separate for the night, you know, and I’d walk back to my place feeling like, I don’t know. Like I was a part of art or something.

Emotions have a way of collecting and hardening inside us, like neglected grease. We are all smoking stoves.

I've had a life of interrupted things, you see. Perhaps I can't bear to have one more part of myself go unfinished.

what makes an artist is what makes a woman: suffering, devotion, endurance

The first step isn't physical. It's the belief that what's inside you is important enough to repeat, and refine.

Your father is a man who needs devotion. I mean, he needs to be devoted to something. If ballet hadn't gotten him, religion might have. Or maybe he would have joined the military. I think we can all agree ballet was the best option.

It's one kind of power to understand, and another to bestow understanding.

You know what’s more terrible than giving up a dream?” he asks. “To discover you haven’t. “It’s not about this boy,” James says. “You do see that?” And then— “Is it worth it? All this—” He shuts his eyes. “All this wreckage.” I’m not sure what he means by wreckage. Himself ? His career? His relationship with my father? Perhaps he only means life.

The city skyline is too important to need to be welcoming. It tells you to get with the program or go home. I love it.

For the most part, one can only become as good a musician as one is meant to be. It's the same with dance. For every artist, there's a ceiling, as a teacher your role is to make the very best of what's there.

She cannot see the ghosts all around me, my past, the man dying.

It serves as answer to my puzzle: What is the thing that happens in a friendship that isn’t an absence of sex? The thing added, that’s maybe only between women. Not a matter of our organs or whether we were born with them or what we do with them. It’s this: a particular kind of glory that happens when we share our suffering and are seen. There’s a rising—a cry, a rush, a beating of wings together. An exaltation. I’m loath to connect womanness with suffering, or suffering with greatness, but there it is.