Jennifer Clement > Quotes

“Don't ever pray for love and health, Mother said. Or money. If G-d hears what you really want he will not give it to you. Guaranteed. When my father left my mother said, get down on your knees and pray for spoons”
― Jennifer Clement, Prayers for the Stolen

“He stepped on my shadow. I could not walk. And then I could not breathe. I did not know what had happened until it happened. It was like trying to stop the rain.”
― Jennifer Clement

“Don't cry over anything that can't cry over you”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“She told me to tell you love is not a feeling. It's a sacrifice.”
― Jennifer Clement, Prayers for the Stolen

“But the reason I decided to go to New York was because I had seen Iggy Pop and I thought I had seen God. And because I had sent to Interview magazine for Rene Ricard's first book of poetry, The Blue Book. I had never sent for anything before but something told me to do this. I had read that book over and over again like a Bible. I realized that a book can reach out and embrace you like an arm and make you walk away from everything you thought you understood.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“If you were quiet about something then it never happened. Someone would write a song about it for sure. Everything you’re not supposed to know about, or talk about, eventually turned up in a song. Some”
― Jennifer Clement, Prayers for the Stolen

“Dreaming is cheap. It doesn't cost a thing. In dreams you don't have to pay the bills or pay the rent. In dreams you can buy a house and be loved back.”
― Jennifer Clement, Gun Love

“You can leave but you can always come back. You can live here again. Life can be a circle, not just a line.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“He paints a simple square house with a triangle roof that has an "S" inside, "Because, Suzanne, you are my home.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“I miss you even
when you are here”
― Jennifer Clement, Lady of the Broom / La Dama de la Escoba

“You think you get a dose of tragedy and that's that. You think it can't get any worse and that you're saved now. But tragedy is not like medicine. You don't get a dose like a pill or a spoonful. Tragedy always kicks in.”
― Jennifer Clement, Gun Love

“The refrigerator was one of the main things my mother prayed to. She said that a cold beer could make you love a refrigerator.”
― Jennifer Clement, Prayers for the Stolen

“He always appreciated expensive things, as if consuming them would make him valuable.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“You can’t get your arms to stop making circles in the air if you never say good-bye.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Memoir

“Every time Suzanne thinks about her mother's sulfur-blue eyes it rains.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“What most people don’t understand about Jean-Michel is that his crazy behavior had nothing to do with being an enfant terrible. Everything he did was an attack on racism and I loved him for this.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Memoir

“Don't worry, honey, Suzanne's mother says to Suzanne. One day you'll set the world on fire.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“I don't believe in God. But I do believe that each of us has some sort of inner dynamic, that we are not always aware of, that guides us in life to witness certain profound things. These profound things change us forever and bring us closer to our ultimate selves. My relationship with Jean-Michel Basquiat and the death of Michael Stewart were experiences of this nature.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“When we walk I hear your footsteps
and miss your voice”
― Jennifer Clement, Lady of the Broom / La Dama de la Escoba

“The very next morning Julio, the gardener, walked through the front door and I fell in love.

He walked right into my body.

He climbed up my ribs and into me. I thought to myself, Say a prayer for ladders.

I wanted to smell his neck and place my mouth on his mouth and taste him and hold him. I wanted to smell the smell of garden and grass and palm tree, smell of rose and leaf and lemon flower. I fell in love with the gardener and his name was Julio.”
― Jennifer Clement, Prayers for the Stolen

“High heels are a plot against women, they throw our spines out and stop us from standing on the ground.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Eli Redmond is the breeze that makes a hurricane form in the Atlantic.”
― Jennifer Clement, Gun Love

“To have a man kiss you in a women’s jail is a gift better than any birthday or Christmas present. It’s better than a bouquet of roses. It’s better than a warm shower. I could imagine living in this jail for years and living for every workshop day and that male kiss on my cheek. That kiss was rain, sunshine, and the sweet air of outside. Yes. I knew I’d even sit there and glue stupid things onto cardboard sheets just to get that kiss again.”
― Jennifer Clement, Prayers for the Stolen

“Si no hablabas de algo entonces no había sucedido. Pero seguro que alguien iba a escribir un corrido. Todo lo que supuestamente no se debe saber, eso de lo que no se debe hablar, tarde o temprano acaba en un corrido.”
― Jennifer Clement, Ladydi

“Suzanne's mother says, 'Children, you don't need to be going and leaving and looking for a rainbow. The rainbow is here.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“This is why I paint," he says. "To get black men into museums.”
― Jennifer Clement

“One Thursday in 1982, Jean-Michel tells Suzanne to stand up and walk, they are going to the MoMA. He tells Suzanne to wear his clothes. She ties his pants around her waist with a rope. His sweater hangs down to her knees.
At the museum Jean-Michel takes a bottle of water out of his coat and walks through the halls sprinkling the water here and there around him. "I'd piss like a dog if I could," he says, as they wander past paintings by Pollock, Picasso, Kline, and Braque.
[...]
"This is another white man's cotton plantation," he explains.
When they get back home Jean-Michel puts on a Charlie Parker tape and tells Suzanne to be very quiet.”
― Jennifer Clement

“En gång låg jag i en hängmatta med hög feber. Mamma gungade hängmattan i flera dagar och viftade bort flugor från min kropp tills det måste ha gjort ont i armen. På mitt berg är det något av det snällaste och mest kärleksfulla man kan göra för någon annan: att vifta bort flugor. Jag blev illa till mods när jag såg program om Afrika på tv där flugor drack vatten ur barns ögon. Ingen sjasade bort dem, inte ens personen som filmade. Den där kameramannen bara filmade flugorna när de drack tårar”
― Jennifer Clement, Prayers for the Stolen

“Vad är det du försöker säga mamma?" sa jag. "Var tydlig." Mamma kastade huvudet bakåt och himlade med ögonen.
"Ja, ja, ja. En del dagar drog jag loss, med tänderna, jag drog loss huden på sidan av naglarna och gav dig att äta".
"Säger du det här på riktigt nu?"
"Du hade inte ens fyllt ett. Jag blandade det med riset. Vad ville du att jag skulle göra? Det finns kvinnor som skär loss stora hudsjok från sina kroppar för att mata barnen med. Det har jag hört på tv."
"Herregud mamma", sa jag.
"Vad är det för skillnad på det och modersmjölk? Berätta det för mig.”
― Jennifer Clement, Prayers for the Stolen

“Jean-Michel is made for the night, like a mole. The daylight hurts, the sun hurts, but at night he is transformed into a magician, a Merlin with everything wound up tight and sparkling. Nights are for drugs. Drugs are for nights. In daylight he looks for his shadow and crawls up inside it.
Jean-Michael stands at her doorstep. Suzanne says, "No, no, no, you can't come back." He is disheveled. One of the soles of his shoes flaps open and she can see his toes. He is unshaven. He brings no belongings with him. He does not expect her to take him in. Like all stray animals, he knows he will not be taken in.

I always took him in. I'd convince myself that I wouldn't but then he'd appear with the resigned look of someone accustomed to being turned away -- a boy without a friend.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story