Alexis Soloski > Quotes

“My body feels like a dress bought on clearance, one that never really fit.”
― Alexis Soloski, Here in the Dark

“... and soon we're swooping through the Village and then across the bridge. Below is the East River, black and chill. I turn my head around and look back at Manhattan -- at all the headlights and stoplights and streetlights and skyscraper tips glowing together, like some great stilled firework.”
― Alexis Soloski, Here in the Dark

“Relax, Viv. It’s weird. Sure. But this is New York. Weird happens. Last month our car wouldn’t start. Turns out that rats had crawled inside the hood and eaten a chunk of the engine. They left behind some chicken bones.”
― Alexis Soloski, Here in the Dark

“A costume party. A costume. My first thought: cut eyeholes in a black sheet and come as a shadow of myself. But I don’t have a black sheet. I may not even have scissors.”
― Alexis Soloski, Here in the Dark

“I met some guys who do installation art with random building materials and they dragged me out to some loft part in Queens."
"I'm sorry?" I say, reaching for my coat. "I could have sworn you said Queens.”
― Alexis Soloski, Here in the Dark

“In the city, everyone performs. Excepting the very rich and the very crazy, a person can’t just walk Manhattan’s grid as some gaping maw of need and id. Urban life demands a veneer, a pose.”
― Alexis Soloski, Here in the Dark

“Do you gamble?” Only with my health and well-being.”
― Alexis Soloski, Here in the Dark

“I also managed a few thankless paragraphs on the musical version of "Old Yeller," which I had seen, under protest, on Sunday. (Two words: rabies ballet.)”
― Alexis Soloski, Here in the Dark

“Warmth is not my forte. As far as the rich palette of human experience goes, I live on a gray scale. Aristotle said that drama was an imitation of an action. I am, of necessity, an imitation of myself — a sharp smile, an acid joke, an abyss where a woman should be. ...

Except when I'm seeing theater, good theater. When I'm in the dark, at that safe remove from daily life, I feel it all — rage, joy, surprise. Until the houselights come on and break it all apart again, I am alive.”
― Alexis Soloski, Here in the Dark

“I was young then and so hungry for experience that some days I could taste it like blood in the back of my throat. This is what I'll admit: I wanted it. All of it. I did this to myself.”
― Alexis Soloski, Flashout