Kimberly King Parsons > Quotes

“Being alone never bothered me back then. I'd step out into my yard at any hour with a cold beer and a feeling like I could walk as far as I'd like and be just fine, nobody to hurt me, nobody I could use to hurt myself.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“We were ruined, permanently, and this was one of many signs to come, a message meant for me especially, glowing neon gas that said: LET HER GO.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“You are sweet and smart and definitely not extremely strange. You are lovable and deserving of love--everybody is.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“Every mother rages sometimes--this is called "parenting.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“There is a not-small part of me that can't help but see a thing through to its disappointing end.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“When she lets it, Trish's voice puts a fullness in you that is beautiful and awful, makes you feel like a glass of something waiting to be spilled.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“know there’s nothing to be afraid of—death is just a countdown to the calm—”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“Nobody knows me, but they still need me, all of them.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, We Were the Universe

“The art girl gently explained light and dark to me. She tilted her head, brought her long hand to hover close to my failure. She said, “Can I?” and in my notebook she flipped to the first blank page, pinched a nub of charcoal. She made her case with a sketch of those famous, about-to-kiss vase people, and I let my heart go wild with the thought that something might happen between us.  ”
― Kimberly King Parsons, We Were the Universe

“We store our childhood homes in our bodies—we know just where on the wall to feel for a light switch, which of the floorboards creak.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, We Were the Universe

“Longing wakes me up and keeps me up. Gimcrack ache is a Southern thing, Suki says, but I'd never heard the expression before. It's the feeling you get when you see a bauble on somebody, a cheap necklace or a stickpin so pretty you'd do anything to steal it.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“It's quite possible my daughter will disagree with this version altogether. She might say that I've put words into her mouth. Show me a mother who hasn't.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“Irene, who is sweetly correcting herself for something in Mr. Beezer’s office, steps out in time to see the pukey projection, the distance. She stops in the doorway, her hands in her hair. “Oh my God,” she says. I should love my body more. It carries my soul around, lets me taste food and get high and come, and it never pulls shit like this.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“He's dazzling under the streetlights--so pitiful and pretty he may as well be wrapped in tinsel.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“Light pours from careful limpers in the streets, from the wheezers and wet coughers who stop right in front of me to twist out their lungs. People I once found gross or contagious are radiant, gleaming with need.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“Death is just a countdown to the calm”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“I think about the art shrink, how she told a roomful of monsters to leave space for luminous moments.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“I should love my body more. it carries my soul around, lets me taste food and get high and come...”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“They're all so fragile," I say. I mean the strange heads in front of us, other people waiting for the lights to go out.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“Suki and me, we're hungry and mean. We've got bitter jewels buzzing in our guts. They're bright and gaudy, and we couldn't ignore them if we wanted to. We don't want to. It's the starving that makes us glow--the gimcrack ache, that's what Suki calls this.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“She's really not much of an actress, but she enchants people just the same. I've seen strangers stop what they're doing to watch her shake sugar into her tea.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“I ask her: Wouldn't it be easier to just give death a different name?”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“It’s an unusual question, though not as unusual as you might think amongst women who have had children. Once you’ve been slit open by a surgeon or taken a shit in a birthing tub, a whole glittering world of conversational topics emerges.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, We Were the Universe

“I don’t know if there’s a word for the ache of missing something when you still have it. I’d kiss her and taste my doom.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“It's too much," I say. "Beautiful, shattered people everywhere. Is this what it's like to be you?”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“It's me, it's me, it's me.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light

“He listens to her stories, really listens. Later he tucks her in, traces a cursive message on her bare back when she can't sleep: I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.”
― Kimberly King Parsons, Black Light