Laura Gentile > Quotes

“I believe in Aphrodite, I believe in insane thinkers, I believe in roaring free-spirits, I believe in full-throated poetry, I believe in feverish sex and moony love with all its facets.”
― Laura Gentile, Seraphic Addiction

“You took advantage of every second that I did not love myself.”
― Laura Gentile, Daughterbody II: a self-reclamation through poetry

“Love may be able to force you into precarious situations, it may lead you into double-edged bonfires and you don't smell the smoke, you only see the temptation of a perfume.”
― Laura Gentile, Seraphic Addiction

“A cascade of thousands of pomegranate pits fructify her from above and female hands maculate the goddess's body in the musical mists of mind-blowing nightly sex. But they won't fuck her, they will kill her.”
― Laura Gentile, Seraphic Addiction

“Heat in her birds of prey fingertips, smoke of gilded flowers in her aureate gorging hair.”
― Laura Gentile, Seraphic Addiction

“He witnessed the destruction of everything he had ever created. These are the crippled pieces, the faces that he was stuck with; a puppet show that he could not get out of, all the strings tangled, the dead attached to the living.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“Everything his parents repressed, Severin contracted and kept, collected almost, with the ambition to revive it when needed.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“He would have died rather quickly to not lose track of his wife in the afterlife.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“This would be the room of new beginnings, the room of madness, of death, where everything needed to be cleaned and fixed for the next couple to flourish.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“She had performed as a shape-shifter with no sense of identity.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“The dense fog manifests ever-living gravestones, the tunes of decadence, the hearts that were doomed to dance alone. Here lies untouched beauty, a brittle dream, an unseen sea-born nightmare, an isolated acheirous harf, fishbones without flesh, a face without letters, the hypnotic power o Apollonian destruction. Ashes kiss the grapefruit essential oil skin, the soul beats with eaten sons and daughters, soaking wet serpents with cuspid tongues lollop for legendary goddesses.”
― Laura Gentile, Seraphic Addiction

“Stretch out your tongue and let the words drip on the world like savage shooting muses, never, never to be forgotten, if once fallen on earth, they stand in glittery defloration.”
― Laura Gentile, Seraphic Addiction

“Now we lie here, a decapitated generation, our child-like names vanishing on tombstones, can't you see? Once there was Rock 'n' Roll, freedom of speech, baroque picnics on miraculous boats, there was resurrection on romantic lakes, there were melting kisses under golden trees, there was ticking laughter, clicking metaphors, there were wine and poetic sex, beauty...”
― Laura Gentile, Seraphic Addiction

“She knew those horrid words were addressed to her. They felt like the icy tip of an arrow meant to conjure up destruction, coming from the most venomous abyss imaginable, rammed right into her chest with the utmost authority, entitlement, and pleasure.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“They possessed a peaceful relic to set their child free, and the simulacrum they had fed would fade away.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“I unbury the past
so that I can name the graves.”
― Laura Gentile, Daughterbody I: a self-exorcism through poetry

“While his parents never stopped being enigmas to him, Estefania's physicality felt graspable to him, a promise that would not withdraw itself. In Estefania, he saw a world to be painted.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“They would chase the image rising from death, expect it, but then enter an empty room with a shrine of deadened memorabilia that made them lose their minds.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“No one could decrypt a mother better than her own children, who had shared her body and therefore knew all of her secrets, anxieties, shortcomings, and buttons to push. Estefania feared nothing more than the betrayal of someone she accommodated and gave life to with her scarce resources.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“The widower glanced at her wedding ring and contemplated a solitary life with his son, but then the mayhem of his marital allegiance resurfaced, and he decided not to betray her.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“When you put the word "love" in your mouth,
All I feel is rage.”
― Laura Gentile, Daughterbody I: a self-exorcism through poetry

“Why do you reduce art to an autobiography? Once a piece of art is concluded and ejected into the world it changes with every single pair of eyes and becomes an endless object of transformation. The spectator makes it his or her own. Don't decontextualize it and call it truth, call it your perspective.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“She could taste her children on her tongue, the colors they wore. Jacqueline was yellow. Gunnar was blue. Gabriela had always been red. All their weight. Their history inside of her. And she remembered her mother's synesthesia and was startled as guilt crept up her throat.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“When she reached out to the little girl in her, nothing erupted but the dense muteness of her own children in her belly. She felt helpless, alienated from her mirror-image, perceiving her body as a shallow vessel, possessed by human beings that she never met, draining her energy and suppressing her proper self, which she considered absent again.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“Estefania was an observant mother, but not for the sake of her children.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“Their raspy kisses brand our jam tart necks, their treacherous miasma clasps our herbal thighs. Motherlessly we surrender, too many fathers we have, we, your daughters of joy.”
― Laura Gentile, Seraphic Addiction

“By the time he painted Estefania's features, her appearance had already been hag-ridden and struck by sheer madness and delusion. But he still did what so many other male painters did before him; he created an idol.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“The mother was convinced that the purchase of this piece of furniture would facilitate the bond she so hungered for with Gabriela, although she hated the unnerving history associated with the paravent. But, she thought, what could it possibly do to a child?”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“Suddenly, Gabriela felt an unusual hand on her shoulder, branding itself through her clothing. Someone leaned against her body. A head now lay on her shoulder, and blond-reddish strands of hair that were not hers fell over her chest. The hand was glisteningly white with a hint of gray and overflown with blue, halted seams, and rested on Gabriela's hand like a stone on sand.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls

“Simultaneously, the child's life-mongering energy felt a metamorphosis within itself, having lost all matter and yet still being summoned by intoxicating ideas, an aching fluency of desires, a liberating rearranging buoyancy.”
― Laura Gentile, Within Paravent Walls