Books

"Maybe it will be good to remember the feeling of being alone. I’m always running around telling everyone how important it is for people to be alone for a while, which is weird because the only thing I learned while living alone was that I hate myself."

-Adrienne Eisen, Making Scenes

"At the end of every sexual relationship I never cry because I save my tears for shit like dog food commercials and reality television singing competitions, but I always want to because “that dude seemed cool with all my weird moles and dark fleshy patches and holy shit I can never show this wretched body to anyone ever again.”"

-Samantha Irby, “Forest Whitaker’s Neck” from Meaty

The liberating thing about publishing an essay collection before you are a fully formed person is that there is nothing to fear. You have no readers. No experience. No memories of doing it before. No wounds. The bad thing about publishing an essay collection at twenty-five, when the frontal lobe has barely finished developing, is there is nothing to fear. No readers. No experience. No memories of doing it before. No wounds.

Chloe Caldwell, I’ll Tell You In Person

"The wind smelled clean, like clean magazines. It smelled like invisible ink."

-Sarah Schulman, Empathy

I opened my eye. It was not confronted by pussy. That onslaught only happened in Tío Miguel’s room. If Abuelito was hogging the bathroom, the only other toilet you could use was Miguel’s, and to earn relief you had to journey through the labyrinth of pornography that filled his bedroom.

Even on his toilet, Miguel treated you to muff. On the door across from his commode hung a life-size poster of a lady in a see-through blouse splaying herself, Georgia O'Keefing you as things shot out of your own flower. I minded all the pussy but, at the same time, part of me welcomed it.

Myriam Gurba, “Georges Bataille, Look Into My Eye”