Anelise Chen > Quotes

“I would rather be unhappy than be the kind of person who keeps an exercise journal.”
― Anelise Chen, So Many Olympic Exertions

“Athena thinks she is exceptional at suffering, but actually the only thing she is really good at is procrastinating.”
― Anelise Chen, So Many Olympic Exertions

“The runner is thinking of home. He thinks of the start of his favorite training run–the fartlek–two minutes on, one minute off. The mass of runners push and weave between each other like people funneling into the closing doors of a train. Towards the finish, he is usually the only person running, and there is nothing ahead of him but road, and it feels a little like communicating with God.”
― Anelise Chen, So Many Olympic Exertions

“Animals in the sea spawn based on external cues. They watch the moon and monitor the water temperature carefully. When conditions are just right, they spew their sex cells straight into the water for a night of orgiastic mating. The moon serves as aphrodisiac and North Star. The moon tells you when to open and where to go, and sea creatures hold in their bodies a memory of the moonlight and its directives.”
― Anelise Chen, Clam Down: A Metamorphosis

“She had no doubt that the desire to enclose, to sequester, came from a place of sincere anxiety. She had no doubt that when certain people refused to acknowledge that the same air and water cycled around the globe, or, especially, that America didn’t exist in a bubble, it was to protect a sacred and urgent sense of sovereignty.”
― Anelise Chen, Clam Down: A Metamorphosis